I'm not sure I really trust game reviews.
It just seems like there is this "popular consensus" that develops when a game is getting close to release. I think the cross polination of one person's opinion, ends up influencing a bunch of other reviewers. It's like once a game gets tagged as an artistic darling, ( for example Journey on PSN ), it's going to automatically get the benefit of the doubt. Everybody is expecting it to have this profound meaning in it, and then their reviews of the game end up getting influenced by the expectations that this is one of the "good" games. I'm sure it happens in reverse as well. There are probably certain Dynasty Warriors games that are actually good, but they probably got shat on mostly due to the overall reputation of the franchise. I'm sure there are also super high profile games that deserve to get a 7.5 review, but somehow end up getting a 9.5 instead.
What made me think of this was the game Dishonored. I've heard it's got pretty good reviews, and I've never played it myself, so I don't really know if it's a decent game or not, but it just seems like a game that the gaming journalists would all kind of decide beforehand that this is one of the "good" games. Maybe it really is a damn good game, and worthy of any praise it gets, but there is also a legit possibility that the game is only adequate, but it's getting the benefit of the doubt from the gaming press in general, because they already had a built in expectation about it. It's just human nature I guess...