Yeah, IGN inflates their shit a bit.
Like Xero said, it's probably just the personal tastes of the reviewers and such that dictate the averages. Gamespot isn't quite as generous though. You can usually take off .5 from whatever IGN gives something and you have GS's rating.
One thing that boggles me though is the reviews for Shadow the Hedgehog. A fucking 4.9 for it. As a huge Sonic fan, I pre-ordered this months ago, and I've been playing it since the week I got SvR '06 as well. On that note, I have NO idea how they got a 4.9. The average fan rating is somewhere around 8 - 9. A lot of that COULD be devotion to the Sonic series, but there is NOTHING (Graphics, Gameplay, Sound, etc.) in Shadow that constitutes a 4.9.
Meh, sorry to get off topic, but that bothers me. I think all of the game review sites were all passing something around when they reviewed that.
ON topic though, I think a lot of it depends on the hype of the game. Halo 2, for example, had TONS of hype, and the scores reflected it, whereas more obscure, less advertised titles get swept under the rug somewhat. Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari are exceptions to that one though. Those games are considered somewhat cult classic-ish, but still managed to get extremely high ratings from IGN (for good reason), but not QUITE that high from GS.
- Edit -
Off topic again, Jason Cage, you are the man. July 24th born here too. REPRESENT.
