I did it ONCE and got burned so bad I've never even considered it ever again. Just Cause 4. So bad, it's not even on the lists of biggest letdowns. A letdown of letdowns.
Reviewers won't give anything below a 70% and marketing material is just that. Also, it rubs me the wrong way when a game's first section is full of scripted stuff specifically to "trick" reviewers, who invariably go "WOW look at the scenic shot here!" As long as it keeps working they're going to keep doing it. Bad ratings and record sales, why would they change?
Reviewers have always considered themselves and been considered part of the games industry. With a few rare exceptions they’re a glorified marketing wing.
I pretty much only watch Mortismal Gaming at the moment, who 100%'s every game before reviewing it, but I think with a strategy like that you're highly biased into playing games you're already going to enjoy, so it's not great at finding which games are bad. I believe he has also quit games in the past if he was not enjoying them, and then didn't review them as a result.
I think there are also other reasons that reviews trend positive - it's probably better for ad revenue/engagement to prey on people's hopes that a game is good, and people like for their purchases/prepurchases to be validated. Not as many people will stick around through a 30 minute review of nonstop negativity.
I like Steam forums for PC games, since they are the ones who pick up things like game having mouse issues or lack of fov options. So many reviewers completely ignore that aspect. Even ones like digital foundry might be technical, but it's only for performance and graphics.
Actual pc gameplay quality is one users have been more informative on making me a lot of my times go wow none of these reviewers must use a mouse and keyboard, or they just copy paste their console review to the PC.
Took me a while to realize what you meant by that list of games. I thought I was on the piracy community so I was thinking "why would I want to pirate any of those???"
The release of Baldur's Gate 3 was when I re-purchased Baldur's Gate 1 for a play. Owned the physical for windows 98 back in the day and wanted to give it a nostalgia run while I wait for the price to come down on BG3.