Are reviewers retarded or am I so great?

[Arrrhalomynn]

I just finished Jade Empire, which took me about 16 hours. I did pretty much all sidequests and took my sweet time talking to whoever I could. I didn't rush to the ending.

After finishing I took a look at IGN to see what they thought. Apart from the rather ridiculous 9.9 grade, it was also remarked that the game would provide 'at least 22 hours'. It is of course silly to take IGN as a source for pretty much anything, yet even for them a 6 hour difference is large.

And Jade Empire is just an example. The same can be said for basically any game. Whenever a reviewer says something is hard, it turns out it's not that hard at all. And whenever they mention it'll have x hours of fun, you can be sure it'll be only 75% of those hours. At most.

I don't really consider myself a great gamer. Sure, I've played games for 15 years and own a shitload of them, but if I were to join one of those crazy Korean gaming contests I'd be the first to get kicked out of the tournament.

Are reviewers bad gamers? Or do they add extra difficulty and hours, so it'll be closer the abilities of the 'mainstream gamers'. Or maybe they got money from the developer to exaggerate the lasting appeal? Or are they just lazy and take the developers word for true?

[Izret101]

I think it is a mix of a few things.
I totally agree with you though that IGN isn't the most reliable place to get info too.

I would bet not all their reveiewrs are all that good.
Infact in some cases i would bet they don't even play much of the game if they play it at all.
I think it was Persona that had a 2 paragraph review on IGN. It consisted of 8-10 sentaces probably.

[PDorr3]

I find they always add on more hours than it really is. Maybe they do this because that company is paying them to beef up their review to make their game sound better...who knows.

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

The first one, and maybe a tiny bit of the second one. I played JE for a few seconds once and thought it sucked.