Feel free to give your "hundreds" of examples. No, seriously, please do. From what I've seen, most games with release date embargos turn out to be mediocre, and now we can add another game to that growing list. Literally nothing you've said refutes what I'm trying to say, other than your citation of one game.

Alright then. Here's some more games that didn't lift embargo until the day of release:

Assassin's Creed 2 - 90 MC

Starcraft 2 - 93 MC

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood - 90 MC

Call of Duty 4 - 92 MC

Grand Theft Auto 4 - 98 MC

Yeah look at those awful review scores. Who would ever want a 98 metacritic. Just terrible.  Oh but I know you're just going to blow off all those examples as well. Why don't you check out a video on review embargos from Jim Sterling and stop with your silly internet conspiracy theories

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNj-EhI_wVA

Starcraft 2
On February 17, 2010, StarCraft II began closed beta testing, as promised.^[45] The beta was expected to last for 3–5 months. Beta keys for the initial release were sold on eBay for prices as high as $400

Call of Duty 4
An Xbox 360 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare public beta test was announced on August 30, 2007. The beta test was designed to test the servers, find glitches, and help balance out the weapons. It was originally only for residents of the US, but was later available to other countries. The beta concluded on September 30, 2007.

I assume this post has a point? 

I feel like you're being a little naive. There are multiple reasons why a game might have its reviews embargoed until relatively late in the release cycle. One of them is certainly to mask the fact that some games have not lived up to their expectations. As you point out, that does not have to be the case. I also pointed that out in my original post.

I do think that it is certainly inappropriate to restrict reviews to release day. It restricts the ability of a consumer to make informed choices.

The amount of bans in this thread is baffling. When compared to threads like "Can PS4 Handle Assassins Creed Unity 1080p? I think not homies"

I'm probably going to get a lot of scrutiny for this, but I am really confused.