looks like being on cocaine is standard practice at WashingtonPost
"Thank you for your note. I understand your disappointment with the opinions expressed in Michael’s review and I am aware of the petition. His opinion and those of all of our critics are their own and we give our critics a wide lane to express their opinions.
We post approximately one video game review each week, the bulk of them are written by Christopher Byrd, but Michael is a frequent contributor. Soon after we started posting reviews, about 1.5 years ago, Chris approached Metacritic to see if they would be interested in blurbing and linking to our content. They were, but required a rating in order to do so. Chris and I did not want to include ratings on washingtonpost.com for a variety of reasons, so we came up with a process whereby the critic writes the review and then, based on what they have written, we assess what rating the review implies. We discuss it a bit, and then provide that rating to Metacritic with the link and the blurb. Michael and I agreed that, in this case, the 4 rating fit his opinions of the game, which are expressed in the review."







