To answer your question, most reviews ended up praising all the time and had less about being critical to different aspects of the game. I simply found SkillUp explaining their opinion much better than most "reviewers" did given the insane amount of restrictions Sony has put up.

Well I am not against low scores given, not every game is made for everyone. As long as they are not troll reviews like scoring a game a 2/10 than it might be going too far. 7/10 or even 6/10 are not bad scores, they are considered average scores so there are a few reviews that think the game is average. It comes down to your personal take, review scores are just guide lines, without the flexibility and freedom for reviewers, everyone will be just scoring games 10/10s.

Prequel or not, many were saying the God of War franchise was getting stale and Ascensions was exactly that. Why do you think Sony revamped the franchise? because the game design was just not carrying over anymore. Games can score high and still not be in contention for GOTY. 2018, Forza Horizon 4 scored a 92 and wasn't in the overall GOTY category and placed in a sub Racing genre which it did win, however wasn't even looked at for GOTY. 

Either way the point is, if Sony companies can turn there fortunes around, same can be said for any company. Capcom turned there fortunes around with Monster Hunter, RE2 Remake and DMC5 releases and so did Santa Monica with GoW4 coming from Ascensions. Things can happen, weather it does for 343, we can only wait and see.

the restrictions to skillup were the same for everyone else.

the fact you preffer theirs critique doesn`t mean it is the only one genuine, just that it matches your taste.

See the summaries, they don`t match the score.

A 6 or 7 for a 10 game is a troll review. No one would take seriously a 2 review for almost any game.

Yearly like games don`t really go for GOTY, you are trying to make GOTY as if it were meta only. It goes for unique experiences.

And using if as potential no game could be sure to win or lose a GOTY until the end of the year. There could be a Candy Crush game release this year in IOS that could score 100 in metacritic and be GOTY using "any company could improve and put a GOTY contender"

I'll just say there are too many positive reviews for this to be a conspiracy.
I felt the same way about God of War. I mostly found it boring, but that doesn't make me doubt that critics loved it. I'm sure they did.
Name recognition may influence the scores a bit, but not to the degree that it would make up the difference of how I felt about the game. Most critics definitely liked God of War significantly more than I did. And that will probably be the case with TLOU2.

I've heard from another reviewer who loved TLOU2 that the spoilers he read made him think it would go in one direction, but it went in another. That he thought he knew a lot, but only knew a little. That doesn't mean it won't maintain being a grimdark revenge story throughout the whole game. But rather that he still liked it for that.

I can enjoy dark stories like that as well. Maybe I will here, or maybe I won't. But the keyword SkillUp used that made me concerned was that he called it a 'petty' revenge story. And that it could have been anyone's revenge story. Along with characters behaving in unbelievable ways, those are things that tend to break my immersion. But I know a lot of people either don't think about those things, or are not bothered by them. I'd say they may even be in the majority.

I haven't read the 7/10 reviews however I will say that 6 or a 7 are not troll reviews. Some people just don't like the game or think its a masterpiece, no one has to like the same things as everyone else. with your logic, every masterpiece should have a 100 metascore, is that what you want to see? After all, those 7/10 scores come from people who have actually played the game, how would you know what the games score is entitled when you haven't actually played it? You might hate it.

Your example of that Candy Crush IOS game that might score 100 meta will most likely be sub categorized into best mobile game and win that category. Iv seen a lot of GOTY awards and iv seen a lot of games get sidelined in favour of what's more fan pleasing. Its just me though, some people treat GOTYs like life and death while others like me don't care for them. My taste in gaming is very different to the majority.

I also highly doubt IGN Japan would be a troll reviewer, considering the brand. Also Polygons review doesn't sound good either and that's another major outlet.

A 7 definitely is not a troll review, even as yes, it can be.

A 6 is quite in the muddy territory for such a game, not that it can't happen, but there is hardly any actual reason to drop a work of excellence a 6 just because it didn't meet a personal taste.

In my way of viewing things a critic review for a paid outlet is a professional work, and as such it must reflect objective standards instead of reflect a personal opinion only, even as it will always be bound to it, it should be technical first and foremost, so reserving as much as 40% of the score to your personal bias while you represent an organization... is quite too much, imo.

So if every reviewer has the same capability of being as critical as SkillUp, why did you mention the 'insane' restrictions?
Which SkillUp did not refer to as insane, but rare. He says they're not unique to TLOU2, and that he has reviewed a handful of games like that before.

You also said "most reviews ended up praising all the time". Have you read through 43 other reviews?

So you didn`t read the reviews but are sure they aren`t trolls?

And again not liking a game is one thing totally different than doing a professional work. Also from 25 points bellow average the alternative of not liking but seeing the game is great there is a lot of leeway until you hit 100.

So you think major outlets don`t put troll reviews? Ok then

CDPR only released TW3 as a top tier game up until now and you considered them xP (yeah Cyberpunk is close tho)