I had the most eye-opening, disheartening discussion with a video games journalist today about review policy, free trips, and objectivity.
Lemmings off a cliff came to mind more than a few times throughout the course of the discussion. These guys really are being paraded around by the major publishers like puppets. Sad thing is they don’t know, or, if they do, they’ve managed to convince themselves everything is peachy keen so long as they throw up a disclaimer and say it was all done “in the reader’s best interest.”
In a land where all reviews are apparently bought and paid for by the publishers, the real “reader’s best interest” is the one publication that picks up the game at retail, sacrifices the page views for not being first, and reviews the game honestly.
I don’t see that happening anytime soon.