What about the Maxim review that gave killzone 3.5/5?

Why would the reviews for Killzone 2 be different than any other game.  Some will give to much praise, some not enough.  As far as the reviews coming out a month in advance I believe it's part of their marketing departments job to get as much hype as possible for a game.  The game has gone gold so the reviews should be coming out.  Good internet buzz is a cheap way to get the word spread.  Sony has created a enough hype to make it the first game I pre-ordered for my PS3 so they're doing something right.

It has been a little bit early for reviews but people are doing the same thing with Street Fighter IV. Killzone 2 is just getting a lot of hype.

The game has gone Gold already and review copies were sent early to various media outlets, and it seems they weren't sworn to secrecy about the game until its release (kinda like they lucky ones to get a review copy of MGS4 were), so there's nothing to be surprise about it, these magazines and websites want to make money.

You mean perfect scores? Yeah I'm pretty sure it's going to get some. Gamepro already gave it 5/5.

Regarding the greater topic, yeah maybe it's corrupt, or they're biased, or paid off, or whatever, but it's happened before with a lot of other big games across consoles. It may be wrong, but at least it's consistent.

Hmmm, I guess the best way to get a handle on how good the game is by comparing the sales of the closest rival which is Call of Duty 4 and if sales are lower but reviews are higher then one can call it a manipulated review process. If sales are higher but reviews are lower then the game was likely unfairly treated by critics. Because you see, theres a strong correlation between a high review and high sales between Metacritic and vgchartz.

I concede at this point that it is impossible to know for sure. But the standards for games have increased substantially this generation, what was once a shoe-in for a high score is now moving into also-ran territory.

 That must be a very expensive way to find good games.

This is the funniest thread I've read in ages.

"Killzone 2 might actually get incredible reviews across the board. What can we do to damage it?"

"Let's say that there's a conspiracy and deride the credibility of reviews."

Some people just can't let a Sony game get its due. If it doesn't sell 10 million on launch, suddenly it's failed to do sufficiently well commercially. If it gets stellar reviews, suddenly we can't trust anyone. It's times like this that VGC becomes so predictable.

I always hate the "sales denotes quality" arguments.  There are far too many gems that never really hit it with the mainstream for me to agree with such a theory.

 Do you really think one can reason like that?