Many of you will remember the two golden eras of gaming . The SNES and PS 2 era . One thing I remember so clearly about those eras . Lack of professional reviews . Um . I ' ve read professional reviews my whole gaming life , since the NES days . Not sure what you mean here . We even had magazines during that era that came with a demo disc . Sounds to me like what you didn ' t have back then was access to internet forums or BBSs I did , they haven ' t changed . You didn ' t think of reviewers as pretentious then because there was no one else telling you they were , getting upset when a game they liked didn ' t match up with the reviewers opinion . Well , that one asshole that your buddy always kept bringing around would say stuff , but he was an asshole so who listened ? In short , right sentiment you have , misaligned explanation for it .