Surely some posters here regularly watch (or even contribute to) shows about gaming. The one I watch is Good Game on the ABC. It’s decent, reviews a wide range of games, and has a news segment that usually boils down to a CEO changing jobs or a company in trouble. I have no idea if people not in Australia can see it easily or not, but videos from as long ago as 2007 are available on their site. Good Game - Video
There’s some lame things about Good Game. Seems like every game gets at least a seven (it’s as if certain numbers are forbidden) even if Bajo or Hex mention that it has bugs or how they hold a complete disinterest in the game’s genre. Also, I think there’s an element of pandering to stereotypes, like Bajo… I was going to say “Bajo’s DC figurine collection”, but really, Bajo is a stereotype in at least a couple different ways. Finally, they pad out the show with segments like a bad cartoon about a guy who creates a game to impress a girl he likes or some that comedian they get to talk about what’s in the lore of games like Oblivion. If I wanted to know that, I would have read the flavor text.
I’ll mention Zero Punctuation as well. There’s a few things I like about Yahtzee (beyond the fact that he’s funny): he attacks cliches relentlessly, he loves gaming and sometimes isn’t sure why, he’s not shy about handing out negative review or pointing out weaknesses in games he does like, and he’s influential. TV Tropes lists him as the trope namer for Press X to Not Die, but he’s also known for some other terms he’s coined, like The Glorious PC Gamer Master Race, for which we’d not have to look very hard for examples. The downside of Yahtzee, IMO, is that he only reviews one game each week.
Yahtzee is only useful to me as entertainment (which, I confess, he’s pretty good at) and VERY broadstrokes reviewing. His actual TASTE in games doesn’t really align with mine at all, so it always surprises me when he likes something I do.
Honestly, I don’t really HAVE a good source for game ‘reviews’ anymore, because I don’t really have any confidence in anyone who does it “professionally”; The closest thing I have to a “game reviewer” I trust is that I know my tastes in certain types of games align fairly closely with Tycho from Penny Arcade (He also likes a bunch of stuff I don’t, but that’s usually easy to spot along genre lines.)
But he doesn’t really do reviews, instead concentrating on first hand impressions of a game. He also has a daily report on gaming news.
I get most of my news from him, polygon, kotaku, PC gamer and rock paper shotgun. I don’t really care about reviews. With so many previews from TB and others I usually know what I’m getting and what to expect. For the few titles that intrigue me and for which I genuinely can’t find any solid info about on youtube, I’ll go to metacritic and look to see if polygon, ign, gamespot, etc have a review up.
I’ve been watching a lot of Lazy Game Reviews lately. Reviews of new games, old games, good games, crap games, etc. He also has a bunch of Let’s Play videos.
I find MikeB (aka Fony) to be not only hilarious and personable, but also fairly insightful in pointing out flaws/strengths in games that aren’t usually mentioned in depth in mainstream reviews (unexpected things that come out of emergent play, for example – things your average gamer doesn’t think about or discover). Plus he does a ton of indie games.
He does a lot of streaming and let’s plays on his yt channel, but his main reviews are the BFF (Big Fat Fony) Report.