could this not be more score inflatoion, and not really bribing. much like in colleges have become acussed of grade inflation. Games have gotten to the point where most of them are, A fun to play, B look good, C dont crash. so there we have met the criteria for a C or 70% in gaming scores. since gaming much like some majors in college is more bent on subjective grading, we can asume that personal taste of the review/grader is involved this is the major diffrence in almost all reviews, now in college, sometimes you have to play up to your prof personal tasts in politics, core beliefs or you have been sent to the C group even if the work is clearly above that level, same aplies to gaming review industry.

there are ways to fix it.... if you belive the briliant people who over see colleges, they set up a bell curve for the classes before they start, and x number of people can get x grade normaly vastly restricting upper grades, these restrictions will keep you for getting say an A for overall grade even though you work totals out to one, you will be pushed down to a b or even c, if you did not play the game

back to my point really the diffrence today between a 70, and a 90 is barly noticable, the reviews you should pay attention to are the 50s and below... outside of that who cares its a playable fun game

BTW, I have to mention... When we start expecting this stuff and saying "that's just how it works," lowering our standards for journalism, it's the richest companies who win.

Like in that Mercury News link (and in other discussions I have read), when people say good reviewers would keep the bag/raffle it to readers, and insult the journalists who made some noise and sent the bag back... That's stunning. When you hold the sites who make no bones about receiving bribes in higher regard than the ones who refuse to accept them, now it's YOU who are being bought and sold by major corporations, not just the reviewers, and you aren't even getting the goodie bag. How pathetic.

Personally I think it's broken just because reviewers let their personal bias affect their reviews. I can't see Swag bags having much affect when they have to stay at the office. Still, there are a lot of games who's reviews are ridiculously off-base, and you have to wonder if they were paid off.

A good example for that is Final Fantasy XII. It's one of the worst Final Fantasy games ever made and honestly just a horrible RPG in every way. It's plot was bad, it's music was unmemorable, it's characters were horrible, and it's gameplay could be set to autopilot.

Then there are Gamespot's reviews. To summarize their Metroid Prime 3 review: It does nothing but improve on the formula of the last two games but since it didn't change much we are only going to give it an 8.5. Then they reviewed Halo 3 and said: It does nothing but improve on the forumula of the last two games and it didn't change much, but that makes it great! 9.5! Not that Halo 3 doesn't deserve a 9.5, but what's the purpose of a review system with no consistency?

It's not just gamespot either. Most major review sources are the same way. Another good example is The Godfather: Blackhand. Yes, it's a GTA clone, but if all that mattered in reviews were the quality of the game itself then it surpasses GTA in every way. The game is longer, the combat has so much more depth it's not even funny, the AI is better, the plot is a lot better, and there is more replay value. The only thing that's worse about it in comparison to GTA is that there is a much less diverse selection of cars and weapons. Not that the weapons matter when the combat system is so much better. Either way it hardly deserves 2 points lower from reviewers.

I agree that the system is broken. I don't think review guides, temporary score embargos, and office located swag bags are the reason it's broken. It's simply an industry that caters to the hardcore and ignores anything that's not big-name and doesn't have millions of dollars behind it. Think about what's going to happen at the GOTY awards for each site this year. You think Bioshock, Mass Effect, Super Mario Galaxy, Ratchet and Clank, or Super Smash Bros. Brawl have a chance of winning? Of course they don't. Every single site is going to give GOTY to Halo 3 regardless of the quality of any other game because giving Halo 3 GOTY is what will increase their site traffic.

It's not something that you can fix though. About all you can do is stop using review sites that give off these bad reviews. It's worked for 1UP, who's site traffic and magazine subscriptions have gone down so much due to their perceived hatred of Nintendo that they are about to go bankrupt. Gamespot has similarly entered some recent financial trouble. The solution is simple: Trust your own experiences with games rather than stupid reviews. Or, maybe trust the experiences of a friend who you know. Read the content of some reviews you do trust, but don't go on just the score. See if the problems with the game are problems that affect you. See if the good things about the game are things you care about. Play what you enjoy, and ignore the idiotic big name sites that cater to big games.

First off, I'm not sure that all (or even most) swag bags are left at the office; most game journalism comes from small start-ups which may or may not have any set rules on ethics. I remeber that early in 2002 a gaming magazine released a review for Eternal Darkness and gave it an awful score (5.5 IIRC); this caused massive outrage because soon after the magazine would have began its print run (about 6 weeks before it hits store shelves) Nintendo announced a delay for Eternal Darkness. In other words, the review was completed 9 months before the game was released, the reviewer only ever played a demo, and was bashing it because (in his mind) Nintendo did not send him review materials in time for him to review the game before his deadline.

Final Fantasy 7 gained  great scores (in spite being a far worse game than final fantasy 6,5 or 4) because it was one of the first "cinematic" games that was actually playable. At the time any game that included FMV was hot and you could actually play (and complete) Final Fantasy 7 without wanting to kill yourself.

Happy, Swag bags are a moot point. I'm almost 100% positive that any reviewer that took a swag bag home for himself would be fired immediately. I doubt they are given out to any reviewers so small that they have no regulations on taking these things.  That's not to say there aren't other problems, but swag isn't one of them.

 Quoted for effin' truth.

Saying, "That's ok. I expect them to be corrupt." is like saying, "My girlfriend can go out and sleep with whoever she wants without telling me. I expect her to want to sleep around."

Some things in this life are worth fighting for and the privilege of not being lied to is one of them. 

Naznatips... You seem to be saying the system is corrupt because reviewers don't have the same opinion as you. You think FF7 sucked, you think Godfather was better than GTA... Therefore the system is broken.

I don't buy it. You even shluffed off temporary score embargoes. The fact that a publisher can hold the press hostage so that consumers only see high scores before a game's release is far better evidence that gaming criticism is dead than your personal opinion of a 10 year old PS1 game.

And I'm sure there's plenty of sites getting swag with no real standards on it. Let's start with IGN, Gamespot and 1up, the biggest gaming sites of them all, who take all the press junkets, getting flown around the globe for special events on publisher's tabs. I guess it's not people going on those trips, though, it's just "the office."

 Am I one of the only one's who hated San Andreas?  Vice City was soooo awesome, I expected a game as good or better.  I felt so let down when I plopped in San Andreas...  Ugh...  Godfather was not as good as Vice City, but was easily way more fun then San Andreas for me.