Basically, there are two problems with video game reviewing: 1) Ratings are rarely adjusted based on the innovations in later games and 2) Reviewers base their ratings in part on what the previous games in a series of genre were like.
Movies, for example, are usually given a second look after some time has passed and reassessed based on their qualities within a genre and period, but in gaming, that doesn't really happen, so that games that were released at the beginning of a console's lifespan will be given exceptionally high ratings that no title that comes along later can match. I mean, according to Gamespot, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 which was released in 2001 is the absolutely unscalable pinnacle of Playstation 2 gaming with a perfect score of 10 out of 10. Is it a great game? Yes... but in 2007, is it the greatest PS2 game ever made? Not by a long shot. I would be willing to bet money that at least 10 better games came out in the last year and feel confident in keeping my money. There are quite a few titles from a system's launch that will stand the test of time, but by keeping those original scores unrealistically high, they make judging future titles that much harder.
Because of this type of skewing, the numbers definitely lie, and anyone who has bought the sequel to a well-reviewed game and then went back and played an earlier game in the series would attest to that. I don't think reassessment is such a bad policy based on the entire breadth of a system's library.
This leads me to the second problem with video game reviews, one that is most clearly seen in the reviewing of sports games.
If you were looking at buying a sports game from a series that is released annually and you just looked at the reviews to try to figure out which version to buy, you'd be lost because even if a game improves many flaws in a previous version, the latest version is usually rated lower than the version that preceded it so you don't really have an objective way to compare two titles. What seems to be happening is the reviewer is assuming that you own the previous version so they are giving you a rating that reflects that when there are a lot of gamers out there(like myself) who only buy one iteration of a sports title.
So my solution for this particular problem is for reviewers to give two ratings to games... one for those who have played a previous version of a title and one for those who haven't with the assumption that people can't play games all day so they have to make some tough choices, and as a reviewer, it is your job to help us do that.
I think these two factors are hurting scholarly efforts to make gaming a more accepted field of study at a time when it could taking steps into a greater artistic community, and that is a shame.
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