Funny you say that, I think user reviews are the only useful reviews for me to measure if a game is worth playing. I find professional reviews less than useless - those are essentially trash.

Start with a quantitative analysis. A game has a 7. Is it a bunch of scores around 7? A bunch of 10s and some zeroes? Those will inform you some.

Then do some qualitative analysis. See what people are praising or complaining about. Check if the complaints matter to you. If they don't, you should try it.

> My point is that if a game gets exceptionally good critical reviews then a 0 is almost always a hissy fit, not a serious assessment

Hard disagree. Critical reviews are pure marketing. I played games that are aggressively mediocre that were critically praised before.