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lol, "scandal". This has been happening for years. When was the last time a Sony made game got a bad review in OPS2M? Or in official XBox magazine, how did Brute Force and Blinx get such good reviews? And the only good review Doshin The Giant ever got was in the official Nintendo magazine.
I rememeber reading in PC Zone. I bought the magazine off the strength of the 1st Grim Fandango review ever. As i read in, the review had been pulled. They had been offered a gold final version which they accepted and typed up a review for. A contract was drawn up which was given to them 2 days before they went to press (in other words the cover had already been drawn up so Lucasarts thought they were being smart here) but the contract said that if the review was under 80% or if they disagreed with anything in there they could pull the review. PC Zone refused and at the risk of upsetting customers with a mis-leading cover pulled the review entirely.
I ended up subscribing to them because of this integrity. The fact that it WAS a fantastic and classic game and they already knew this but didn't want to sign a contract like that made me respect them as an unbiased magazine for once. I also repsect IGN for a strange reason because I know they don't get most of their games from the publishers and it's pre-release warez half the time ;-)
Seriously though, review fixing has been happening for years. Mean Machines Sega was the first "scandal" I had heard of. To be honest, the only way you should ever buy the official magazines is for the demo disc and little else since their opinions always seem to be biased to the 1st party/2nd party/exclusive games and it will always be like that. The rabid fanboy magazine. P2 is the only PS2 magazine I've ever read with a shred of integrity. Same with Cube for the Gamecube. Never read an XBox one that wasn't an FHM with a bigger games/girls ratio :P
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