Which I guess is true but very unfortunate.
I admittedly have much less faith in my taste that most people do (or claim to have on the web)
Whatever good taste, education and culture I've developed in my life I consider it a result of trusting that someone who has invested in the study of a subject, and therefore knows it better that I do, can instruct me in ways that would ultimately benefit me by expanding my taste or my perception ultimately making me 'better' or at least less prone on being fooled.
A critic that will simply give me what I want by simply assuring me that my own taste is the ultimate measure by which the world should be judged, while ignoring what will benefit me, is therefore a critic that I don't want.
The way I see it "herds" consist of people who are simply assured that their individual lack of knowledge, common to all, has the same weight as any knowledgeable person's opinion. As such, what 'having the ears of the mainstream' means to me is nothing more than assuring a crowd that appealing to their untrained eye should be the ultimate goal of any work.
(Also, I have no idea who Ebert is)
I'm not really sure what any of that meant
In any case, I don't think of taste as good or bad. I see my own personal taste as a result of my own development and whatever features/implementations that I've come to appreciate, given my personality.
What other people prefer or like is largely completely irrelevant to me, when I'm considering the investment of time that a game requires.
So, the ideal review - to me - would be one that, in detail, lists features and implementations of those features, as well as giving as objective a view as possible, regarding who might enjoy the game.
Some random reviewer's personal opinion is interesting from a psychological point of view, because I'm deeply invested in understanding the human mind - but it's nearly 100% irrelevant to whether or not I will personally enjoy the game.
That said, if I come to respect the competence of a reviewer, as in the understanding of genre traditions and the history of the gaming industry, I will naturally rely more firmly on their words. That's why I prefer to discuss games on sites like this one, where people are very well versed in the RPG genre, which is my own personal favorite genre. Beyond that, we're not connected with the industry in a business-like fashion, which means I can mostly trust the neutrality of opinions here.
But I consider the vast majority of "popular" gaming journalists to be extremely incompetent in this specific area. People like Tom Chick on QT3, seems to have little to no understanding of what enthusiast "old-school" gamers enjoy, and he has but his own mainstream angle from which to speak. Now, I realise that the QT3 crowd is diverse, but in my view they're way too entangled in the industry, and with industry people - to be able to objectively state their opinion in a way that I can trust.
They're part of the problem I have with the industry, but I realise that it's MY personal problem. I can't possibly expect the players of the industry to give two shits about my point of view, so I will never fault them for going the mainstream "popular" route. That's their business.
Roger Ebert is (or was??) one of the most famous american movie critics.