Quick, Aaron! Talk to Gamespy!

[Sivran]

What do you expect? Gamespy sucks. The whole gaming-review industry sucks. Why? Because it's not the best games that get the good reviews, it's the ones that paid for them.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

thats not entirely true. i agree that review scores are to some extent bought, but i believe it has more to do with laziness on reviewers part- noone bothers to play a game for 40 hours before writing a review on it; it's easier to play for 5 or 10 hours. On top of this, the publisher PR department will undoubtedly send a list of highlights, etc. of the game, and the reviewer will be keeping these in mind while he or she writes the review.

A good example is Battle for Middle Earth. Which, while a decent game visually and with excellent voice work, is utterly lacking in balancing and long term play value.