Publishers are definitely supportive and are more and more sending us copies. There are already a few reviews up that went live before the release date. However being a newcomer it takes time to become a household name. But really behind the scenes there's a lot going on.
They don't care about credentials, although our reviews are, imo, professional enough, but more about pageviews and VGC is slowly becoming a very big site.

Since the topic of changes to reviews is coming up I'd suggest the site takes a satisfy the majority approach.

This means get people who enjoy genres to review those genres. RGP players want to know what another RPG fan thinks, same for FPS, etc.

Drop the categories for scores - categories need a resonably solid level of consistency to use - if one reviewer sees value different from another the use of the category is shot

Focus on the words (ignore the 'sound bite' generation and have sections in the review for the basic building blocks of the game (gameplay, presentation, sound, etc).

Provide a single score out of 100% that represents the reviews view of that title vs its peers and make sure reviewers stick to that notion. So how does KZ2 score as an FPS title with SP, offline bots and MP vs its peers? How does Eternal Sonata score vs its peers as an RPG?

Again, I'd recommend agreeing a control game to score against. Pick a popular title that most people agree on as the control and go from there. So for example pick Daxter as a PSP adventure game, score it, then compare similar titles to that score. Same for say Halo 3 on Xbox.

Encourage people to read the review vs the score, and use this simply as a placemaker vs industry averages - i.e. Haze is an average FPS and gets 60% as a result as its an average game with issues with presentation, gameplay, etc.

Make sure reviewers start with a summary of the whole review, then proceed through each major area stating good/bad, etc. and conclude with a shorter summary of the game. In this summary you should stick an opinion on the game's value. Note Value should not (and the current system I'm afraid IMHO is broken for doing this) be a score nor quantitative but an opinion for that title vs its peers and expectations. If handled right this should avoid the short = low value. Right now the site is linking value to a player's purchasing power, which is wrong. I know value is to help here but it must be relative and the reader must decide themselves how it applies to their own purchasing situation.

Again, I'd say most reviews I've read are good as written, its the scoring and elements of approach that let things down somewhat.

IMHO of course...

Reasonable, whether or not the higher-ups think that your proposed system is tenable, I like the amount of thought you've put into it and I want to encourage you to look into applying for a position as a Contributor, if you have enough time to review two games a month.

Well sorry for my cynical ignorance. Maybe if there was some more transparency to the big picture we could all understand the point. I hope they all jump on board and this can be a big avenue for driving more traffic to the site. I enjoy reading them and I think the best part about them is the author feedback in the comments sections, where they justify their reasons to such intense scrutiny. Something you don't see on the 'household name' sites.

Use Madskillz connections to get copies of games early......

Just noticed your sig - the wonderful Zapp Brannigan, what a guy.

We do get some copies of games early. To continue getting them early we have to build up the back-catalog. Especially of the big games that were missed this generation. So yeah, it's important to cover those reviews to continue getting review copies, and no, we will not stop doing so until most major games are reviewed.

Yesssss. This is what a man likes to hear.

Thanks!

I was way off on wii games, although having genre specific games listed under universal made it harder to count

I don't tend to agree with VGC reviews, and there aren't many of them, so I don't use them as purchase advice, just to see another person's opinion.

Civ Rev being as good as Uncharted is pretty retarded, imo. So is Mega Man 9 being better than Uncharted, Halo 3, Fallout 3, and Tools of Destruction, and only 2% below BioShock.

And oh god, don't get me started on Chains of Olympus. Sorry, Maxwell, but that is quite possibly the worst review I have ever read. Five hours long? Screen tearing? What? You don't make somebody who dislikes God of War review a God of War game.

Other than Chains of Olympus, Uncharted and Fallout 3 being too low, and Mega Man 9 being too high, I don't have many problems with it, but like I said, IGN's tastes seem more similar to mine.

Ah well, at least you guys gave Shadow of the Colossus above a 9.