Vigilant Gambit
Member
The "horror" of it is from a journalistic integrity point of view. Before 2006, EA had a high budget for flying people out to play the games before release to get their reviews ready. It was an awesome program if you were in it... I was a recent college grad, a hair over 22, flying out to Orlando and Vancouver regularly to play videogames, go out to expensive dinners, and have basically a free videogame filled vacation. It was awesome. Except it made you put on rose colored glasses. Even when you're not being wined and dined, playing a game with the developers makes you overlook and not question things that should be questioned about a game... At least for me, there's a subconscious feeling to not want to insult these guys..
I think I might've missed some sarcasm in my last quote.
Stories like yours and the Gamepro Black Ops review only serve to solidify my perception of game reviews, sadly. The only reviewer I trust is myself. What sucks is, that significantly limits my options in terms of figuring out if I should buy a game.
Now, it's mostly trusting my gut feeling and trusting developers whose work I already enjoy. Kamiya, Inafune, Kojima, and so on.