I did a search on the site and wasn't able to come up with any hits. But if I am posting a duplicate topic, I apologize in advance.
My question is simple: Where do you guys (and gals) go when you're looking for a game review? Any and all suggestions for reliable/objective reviews are greatly appreciated.

All reviews are subjective, so you should keep that in mind. That said, here's what I usually do:
1) Check for user reviews on Metacritic, Gamespot, even Amazon.
2) Read reviews from specialized sites. For instance, if I'm interested in a strategy game, I look for reviews in sites specialized in strategy games.
3) Read (as in READ, not read just scores) reviews from many different sites, normally starting from the game entry in either Metacritic or Gamerankings.
4) Check for youtube videos and forum postings in specialized sites for feedback.
5) Check official forums for the game in question.
I don't necessarily do all that every single time, of course - that would be too time consuming - but I always have those options in mind in case I need them.
I hope it helps you.
Just adding to it: some of my favorite review sites are Gameshark and Out Of Eight. YMMV.

I tend to trust community posts much more than professional reviews on average. Professional reviews are written for the mainstream gamer who grew up on Nintendo games on average, and feel the need to put a score at the end that means nothing. Real people on forums who share your interests are a much better guide. "Hey like Gothic games but hate the bugs in Gothic 3? You should get Risen" and so on.
That said I enjoy reviews on Rockpapershotgun.com, Kotaku and PC Gamer from time to time.

I usually read the user reviews on Amazon.

I tend not to bother with "press" reviews at all. If a demo is available, that's what I base my purchasing decision on along with feedback from other people who have purchased the game.

There is no such thing as an objective review. And who would want one of those?
"There is a weapon that fires bullets. It is hitscan. The rate of fire is 20 ammo units per second. There are 3,249 polygons in the model. The texture is 1024x1024 and uses 395 different colors"
Your best bet is to find a reviewer (or reviewers) who have similar tastes to you. If you can't pull that off, do your own review aggregation. Take a look at a few professional reviews, then a few user reviews, and then look for a thread on the game in a message board you hang out in. That should give you a pretty good picture.
That being said, I find that I tend to agree on most points with the guys at Rock Paper Shotgun (I enjoy hat collecting in Men of War and I got sick and tired of Ghostbusters after getting sodomized by a candlestick repeatedly :p). If one of them does a review of a game I am on the fence about, I'll read it. Then I'll try and find a demo or look at a few other reviews to make a final decision.

In the absence of a demo, I tend to find videos of games that look interesting then look for negative reviews of the game and see why people don't like it (far too easy to be blinded by "omgwtf awesome!!!1").

True, but a lot of reviewers could do a much better job of explaining who might enjoy the game and what aspects of it might appeal to which groups. Most professional reviewers just give their straight-up opinion, which is only helpful if you happen to be their clone.

sometimes you can get lucky on Moby games... but i usually hit GameFAQs and read though there forums and questions to get a feel for the game.. also mini reviews are in FAQ's about games sometimes... its how i discovered 007 Nightfire and fell inlove with gearbox

Most sites/magazines may have a rating guide, but it's my experience over several decades that very few sites/magazines actually stick to what is set out in those guidelines.
Too many will either praise a game or rubbish it and then award a score that would indicate the complete opposite. But in the end of the day, I guess it's hardly the reviewer's fault. The problem is, if they are too honest and piss off the game publisher, they stand an all too real chance of kissing good bye to their job. And that's just not conductive for good, honest, meaningful reviews.
Besides, take a look at many magazines/sites that have score guidelines and see how many games actually fall into the lower tier of those guidelines. You'll find very very few. Not because the games are actually deserving of the higher scores, but because they're afraid of actually rewarding the lower marks due to publisher backlash.
And that's why I don't bother with reviews anymore.

yeah that part I understand and agree with, the scores are unreliable because of publisher pressure. But that pressure would also mean the text review is also unreliable/meaningless, not just the score part of it.
anyhoo I originally meant I see a lot of people (not here but on the internet in general) say things like "what the hell does a 7 mean anyway? Does it mean average? Does it mean great?" (I'm not sure if that's what Stinging Velvet meant, it could have gone either way)
when the answers usually can be found easily.

You can't quantify an opinion, it's more detailed and nuanced than that. You can't boil down 3 pages of explanation, perspective and description into a "7" or what-not. It's a pointless exercise done only to appeal to people who refuse to read.

no, you can't boil 3 pages down into a number. I don't think that's what the number is intended to do.. It just gives a quick indication of how highly the reviewer thought of the game.
and it's not pointless. The point is to save time for the reader so they don't have to read every single review of every game out there if they don't want to.

I rather like the way that xbox360achievements does their reviews, their review of Alan Wake gives a good example, good amount of body text with the scores broken down into the usual categories but well each is explained