In the past I always took them with a pinch of salt. Always thought they were biased and gave better scores to some games.

In the UK, a few years ago I noticed a trend where the reviews became harsher and more realistic. In fact whenever someone said that a review in a official (or single platform) mag was biased, another review, usually in the very same issue showed that they weren't.

I've often seen games you would insinuate would be biased actually given low scores from 4.5 to 6.5.

So now I taken them as just another review source, no worse or better.

I think at the end of the day reviewers are still reviewers regardless of the mag or site they work for. And whilst sometimes they may be tempted to give a game an extra push, I would like to think that the editor sets the tone that this should not happen and people come to trust official magazines more.

The best official magazine I ever read was the Dreamcast one here in Europe, the team went on to do GamesTM and Cube magazine.

Something like Conduit you would think that official mags would be 9/10-ing and spooging over, but they're not. They've been quite on song with other reviews, maybe even lower in some spots and harsher.

I remember when the official xbox mag gave Halo 3 and RE5 sobering reviews. I can't trust or disregard official reviews more than or less than any other source these days. Like Eurogamer who sometimes do good reviews and are sometimes off kilter. EDGE mag too.

I think the only reviews I can't trust 100% of the time are Jeff Gertsmann or Lark Anderson ones. Or any ones by former or current gamespot staff