*rolls eyes* grow up

Yeah, I have to agree that a ton of games which get pretty promising previews just fall to shit in the review afterwards.

Makes you wonder. Are publishers making sure the demo is the BEST part of the game? Probably, but you'd think that someone would still be giving a lot more poor previews.

Here's a question: are the previewers the same people as the reviewers?

Maybe the previewers are happy, optimistic people who like to see through a game's faults while reviewers are bitter, shriveled human husks, eager to inflict pain on any game they can via trashing it in a review.

*cough* Haze *cough*

OP is right though, I've felt the same way for awhile, especially about IGN. We'll see games getting hyped left and right, usually saying things like "this game is looking very promising, one to watch" and then BAM... 4.5 review!

So i try not to get hyped up about games that much anymore, especially when it comes to The Conduit... I'm really hoping it lives up to everything we want it to be, but i just can't help but think it's gonna be somewhat of a letdown when i finally get my hands on it. The only notable exception to the rule when it comes to overhyped previews was Zack and Wiki, which, even though i don't think it was as amazing as IGN said it was, it was still a great game and definitely lived up to the hype it got.

While there are some games that obviously warrent bad scores such as infinite undiscovery, too human, haze, lair, reviewers have been exceptionally harsh of lately.

They start to chip away at the final scores of games for the simplest flaws. They are apparently keeping their standards very high for this gen of gaming and because the holidays are around. They are also very prone to personal dislikings to give a game a really bad score.

They gave Disgaea 3 a 6.8 because they simply could not get over the fact it was not graphically heavy. BS, cuz that game is at least a 8.5. This makes me question every review this christmas season....

You have to read between the lines, deep down these guys are screaming "SHIT!!!!!"

When they say, "this needs work" they mean, "fun killing flaw."

Haze and Lair got bad scores for good reasons.  Haze was hyped as a thought-provoking game but turned out to be some generic shooter with a small drug gimmick and Lair has poor controls and wasn't user friendly.

And there in lies the problem

Why?  The publications are just trying to avoid legal trouble

Some would say it is ironic that the person who posted a Malstrom article told someone else to grow up ...

So would you rather they tear games apart that arent finished when they see them? Or look for the good and keep interest in the game so when it comes out, if they have fixed the issues, it will sell well?

They cant bash games that arent finished, get with reality.