94%.
To my knowledge, the only review they ever actually apologized for. What’s worse, some people probably bought the game based on those reviews, long before it went into the bargain bin.
Having reviewed the forum rules, I have concluded it is ok for me to continue my disgreement with you in this thread since it seems to be directly relevant to the topic. Hopefully a mod will let me know if I am mistaken.
First, so far your “evidence” of corruption has consisted of the following:
-
A review of Ascendency by William Trotter in 1996 since he also wrote a strategy guide for the game.
-
The C&C:Red Alert review that was published in Dec 1996 when the game came out in Oct 1996.
From this you have determined the pervasive evilness of multiple scandals and corruption tainting the very soul of the magazine some 12 years later, so yeah, maybe you aren’t fit to judge.
In neither case have you determined the review score itself was at odds with the general public’s perception of the game, just that you are convinced there must be something amiss. On the other hand, I at least can point to evidence at Metacritic indicating the reviews were in line with the quality of these games, along with my personal experience at playing these titles. So now for the real question at hand – did you even play these games? If so, did the review match your experience, or is it all just too sinful an industry to be associated with?
Of course, with logic such as yours decrying the rotten core that is PC Gamer, I guess a publication like The New York Times is far too corrupt to trust (see: Jayson Blair), and CBS is probably Satan reincarnated (see: Dan Rather). However, I would be interested to know what virtuous media passes the Just Some Guy filter of happiness and purity.
Considering your standards of evidence so far as to what comprises “corruption”, forgive me if I am dubious and require more than just your assertions based on rumor and innuendo. Furthermore, even if you could somehow find an actual fact somewhere to bolster your argument, it wouldn’t support your conclusion that PC Gamer was corrupt (and here is the really important part you need to pay attention to) unless it was actually evidence involving PC Gamer.
Someone is obviously unaware how the game magazine publishing works, but it ain’t me.
Game companies, particularly the big ones, go “gold” with their game code months before the game hits the shelves in your favorite retail outlet. This lead time is necessary to allow for the pressing of all the CDs, along with the boxing and shipping of the product, including manuals. A copy of the release version of the game is sent to major publications for review almost the minute the game is complete, especially during the expected rush of the Christmas season. Now if you want to see this as evidence for an evil cabal of Santa’s elves passing out payola to a specific game magazine, knock yourself out. However, I prefer something a little more “solid” to go along with my wild-eyed conspiracy theories.
Bottom line is this – PC Gamer has consistently met my expectations for accuracy in game reviews (though I wholeheartedly agree their Black and White review was out of whack as I hated that game :D). I have been a voracious reader of pc game magazines, and a devourer of pc game titles since the mid 80’s, and no other publication has come close to matching my experience. PC Gamer claims to insulate their editors from the marketing department, and I see no reason to doubt their claim. The Trotter incident was rightly called out at the time and corrected as it should have been, so to portray the magazine as some evil cesspool of journalistic bribery in 2008, when as far as I can tell you didn’t even disagree with the review itself, seems to be an obvious case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, or the weirdest case of disproportionately holding a grudge I have seen since Bush Jr. whacked Sadaam for trying to kill his daddy.
Not to get into a history of magazine publication, but you are wrong. Magazine cover dates are typically two to three months ahead of the date they reach newsstands. This was done as a signal to the owner of the newsstand on when they should pull it.
In addition the typical gold to shelf on a PC game is around a week and half (I’ve seen it as short as three days and as long as two weeks). Boxes and manuals are printed well in advance.
I had more, but forget it. In my first post in my thread I enumerated the situation that causes gaming journalism barely fit to be printed on toilet paper. Rather than address the question of if editors who public game reviews have a conflict of interest in reviewing the products that they have to have access too before the public in order to make money. You keep setting up strawmen, ad hominems, and using single counter examples from one magazine against patterns of behavior that are prevalent across the entire spectrum.
I’m not singling out reviews of games because that gets into “Well that’s just your opinion!” shouting matches. Instead I return my basic questions and you can apply them to anyone:
I don’t expect the big name titles that game publishers sink a lot of money into to stink but few of them even get average reviews (typically the worst of them) across any major review site. Even the most beloved game has those people who just didn’t care for it yet if we go by the reviews the reviewers rarely even feel unimpressed. From that you have to draw a conclusion and I am left with either the entire set of professional gaming journalists are completely incompetent (something I have not entirely ruled out; again refer to my initial post in this thread on that) or the editorial staff of these magazines and websites are dancing like puppets on the game publisher’s strings.
If you would read my reply closely, you might realize that I didn’t take issue with the 2 month lead time for magazine cover dates. I explained the lead time for gold until release, which addressed why the magazine could publish the review about the same time as the game hit the stores.
Not surprisingly, you again make an assertion with no evidence. Today’s times are shorter than they were in 1996, no doubt, but even today, WoW has gone gold on October 10th, while the release date is Nov. 13th (see World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Wikipedia). 4 1/2 weeks is quite a bit longer than what you assert, but don’t let any pesky facts get in the way of your predetermined conclusions.
Again with the assertion and no supporting data. How shocking!
I would challenge you to produce one ad hominem or strawman, but your standards for evidence would probably lead you to just assert the accusation once again and proclaim it therefore true.
Strangely enough, I have already addressed this with, you know, actual hard evidence. Odd concept to be sure, since it seems I am the only one bringing verifiable facts to our discussion. I will again note for the record that I cited their Sep 2008 review of Age of Conan and the score of 77% (http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/ageofconanhyborianadventures), while mentioning their previous cover story and preview of the same game. But hey, ignoring facts has been working extremely well for you so far, so keep up the good work I guess.
Metacritic is good as a review collection point, and for comparing scores within the same genre. Yes there is serious grade inflation, but the difference between a game that gets an aggregate 90% and one that gets an aggregate 70% is usually noticeable, and I almost always agree that the 90 game is better than the 70 one.
Among individual reviewers, PC Gamer and IGN generally give me a very good idea about whether I’ll enjoy the game or not, though they do disappoint me every now and again. Also, disregard the inflated scores and just read the review.
The gold-to-retail timeline of a typical title is 2-4 weeks.
The only one I saw outside that norm was Far Cry 2, which was one week.
…Dad? Is that you? waves 
On the actual topic, though, I wanted to add Daikatana to the list of much-hyped games that got the smackdown in their review. Remember those months and months of “John Romero’s about to make you his bitch” ads? Their advertisements were practically centerfolds, and they still gave it like a 53%, IIRC.
I stand corrected, then. I thought that game deserved more like a 60-70something. Honestly, I think I would’ve enjoyed it a hell of a lot more had it been on a console, though. I didn’t think it was a bad game in general; I just hated the clunky-ass controls.
Anyway, I can’t muster up too much disdain for that review, because it seems like everybody else gave it similar scores.
Hard to hide the snark, huh? 
Yeah, they had wall to wall ads, interviews and previews for that game, yet somehow still managed to resist the forces of evil and give that game the horrible score it deserved.
:\ Hey, I liked Black and White.
I think a big issue with game developers is an indecision of whether 75% is “average,” or 5/10.
The thing was, Black and White was a perfectly good God Game. It had a great sense of humor, good graphics for the time, and some really interesting game mechanics (like teaching your avatar how to water your people’s crops on its own initiative).
As a God Game, it was excellent. But IIRC, by PC Gamer’s own standards, a good niche game gets a solid 70-something, not a 90-something. 90+, in PC Gamer’s terminology, represents a game that everybody should run out and get even if they don’t normally like that genre; a true instant classic.
Black and White was, however, damn short on actual game. Many people who were not there for a God Game would be sorely disappointed after just a bit. Combat sucked. Using magic spells was done through the clunkiest and most awful interface I’ve seen in any game, ever. Etc, etc, etc…
For the record, though, I’d agree with those who’ve said that the best way to get at a game’s quality is to read a bunch of reviews (at metacritic or gamerankings), and then see what you think. (The Dope itself is also a surprisingly good resource as you can get detailed discussions going here that you simply can’t and won’t get at game mags) And speaking of the mags, avoiding their scores is also a very good idea, as long as you can concentrate on what the authors actually say about the game.
In general, a badly scored game is one that folks should stay away from, sure. But without knowing why an author gave an X% score to a game, the number alone is meaningless. If Billy BoBob McPhee the reviewer thinks think Quick Time Events are the height of game design, that’s a hell of a lot more important to understand his review than what the magazine generally classifies as a ‘good’ score.
dehacker seems to be handling the bulk of this debate fairly well, but I just wanted to chime in that C&C: Red Alert’s PC Gamer and Metacritic scores aren’t the strongest evidence of corruption ever, as (IMO and probably others) that was a damn good game and well worth the rating.