Because you don't lose any crediblity for writing puff piece previews and preview copies are guaranteed to have glitches, have incomplete storylines  and framerate issues that frequently won't be found in the finished product. Also being too hard on previews could result in a more difficult time obtaining them.

Most of the time serious flaws are found the writers quickly mention that it's not a finalized copy and they hope such errors will be fixed before release.

when they say "70 maps" that makes me think they might actually mean 70 layouts (ala warhawk). When warhawk launched it was billed as having 25 maps when it really had 5 maps with 25 layouts.

Guys may I redirect you here-

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?start=0&id=42890

Already over two thousand views

i have to admit that resistance one was good, but R2 looks like theyve put alot of work into it and it looks awesome! the word "blockbuster" comes to mind when i see it

That thread is completely one-sided. If we decide to have a fair discussion about the game, we'll need a fresh thread. You've asked people in that thread to refresh the page in order to artificially bump up the page views. Don't tout that as a feature. The thread is a puff piece glorifying and hyping a PS3 exclusive, which we already knew would be good. It's not a valid forum for arguments against the game, and no one with a descenting opinion was given a fair shake. Avoidance of particular threads is just as important as participation, in certain circumstances. The OP has also grown to unacceptable proportions.

One particular insult to my intelligence is the large amount of Sony fans in that thread acting like they'd never cared about the game until these nearly redundant images have surfaced. For instance, if I made a thread saying:

Oh

MY

GODDD!!!!!!

Gears of War 2 looks SOOOOOO GOOOODDD!!!

I would be over-embellishing my excitement, and pretending that I didn't already know that for months and months.

It's a disguised hype attempt, and apparently it's the hype-de'jour, as it seems that nearly every Sony fan on the first 1.5 pages, used that line. I've seen the same trailers and gameplay they have. The game looks great. The faux excitement is unnecessary, and it's leading to an unfettered attempt to increase the viral hype for R2, by fans of the console, rather than the game. Were this game a 360 exclusive, it would be written off in favor or LBP, rather quickly, and the graphics would be criticized in many instances, while the hype-de'jour would most certainly become Killzone 2.

Every single day I point out inconsistancies in behavious of people on this forum, and every day people try to change their bias up, so it is undetectable. Disguising bias is like being a good salesmen. You always have to end the conversation with, "BTW, I'm selling this." No matter how perfect your pitch is, we can always smell BS when that part rolls around. This is the internet. We know things.

yes, it could possibly be one of the best games this year, its extremly difficult to say only 1 game was best for the year because of differing genres, but R2 is certainly looking like one of them. insomniac are correct in that R2 is like 3 games in 1

fully fledged single player

fully fledged multiplayer

fully fledged 8 player co-op

Fair enough. I was just wondering why Leo-J was hesitant to infer that R2 is one of the best games of the year. The word "biggest" disguised a bigger meaning.

It could simply be that he refused to use any descriptive terms that weren't said at IGN.

However, I had a feeling that he was particularly hesitant to compare the game to MGS4 and GTAIV, which might be over-hyping the game, considering exactly what we know about it.

It doesn't take much for a game to be "one of the best games of the year," and it only takes money for a game to be the "biggest."

However, if you're going to compare a game to MGS4 before it's released, especially if that game has a rather questionable, but good, first entry, you better be sure that statement doesn't come back to haunt you.

Leo-J, like most smart posters, knows the danger of overhyping a game, and how if that games only manages to be somewhat great, overhyping can marginalize it completely. Calling it the "biggest" prevents him from defining what IGN meant, but it implies "best," which is the best of both worlds. Leo-J, and I, very much hope that R2 is one of the best games this gen. However, we both realize that there is a very significant chance that it might not be, thus, watching our verbage around our predictions is necessary.

"it's no wonder that the Skirmish mode splits players into five man squads and delivers objectives to them as the battle rages on"

That sounds really cool. Looking forward to it

IGN are reporting that the game will have more than 70 multiplayer maps for online play.

"Combined across the traditional multiplayer modes (like Deathmatch) and the squad-based Skirmish mode, there will be more than 70 maps for players to fight across, which could be one of the largest multiplayer experiences ever made."

"Large" does seem to be an apt description of the game.

Considering what we now know of Resistance 2:

70 multiplayer maps
60 player online
8 player co-op
2 player offline co-op
300 foot-tall Bosses
Different Bosses for each SP mode

The game is literally bursting at the seems with content.

How about Gear 2........ the ultimate game in 2008.