[Dire]

Another problem that hasn't been mentioned is that it's not only publishers who want inflated reviews. Many times it's also the readers. For example, when the extremely hyped Lair received a 4.9/10 from PSM - readers (who obviously had never played the game) were completely outraged and on their site there were numerous posts of people flaming and stating they were cancelling their membership. Obviously there's no way to know if anybody actually did (or if they were even subscribed in the first place), but it still shows the mentality - and yet another problem reviewers/sites have.