Kotaku is mad about the IGN Bioshock exclusive

All the big gaming review sites are sitting on their own review of Bioshock Infinite, since they've had the game for a few days and have been beavering away to make sure that they had their review ready for Monday, when the official NDA is lifted and everyone can say how they feel. However, IGN has apparently been given the nod to release its review early, something Kotaku is kind of mad about.

In order to lampoon the favouritism, Kotaku has put up a review of IGN's review, giving it the thumbs up that “Yes” you should read this review and that it was pleased with the graphics, but it wasn't a fan of the length, since this review actually came in under the word count of reviews of Bioshock and Bioshock 2.

Describing it as a text adventure, Kotakus is obviously poking fun, but it's highlighting an issue as well. The IGN review gave Bioshock a score of 9.4/10. That's about as high as any game is going to get. This is across all platforms too, despite claiming that the Xbox and PS3 versions stuttered graphically compared to the PC. The question quite obviously being posed, is did IGN get the exclusive because it gave the game such a high score? Would 2K games have done the same if it had given it a 5/10? It seems unlikely.

Of course Infinite is expected to get pretty good scores, but if that's the case, then why not just let everyone post the reviews at the same time?

KitGuru Says: Game publishers hold all the cards in these situations. If it's sitting on a crap game, it can just not release a copy early meaning no one will know what it's like before release – prompting some to buy it without realising what they're getting in for. Whereas if it's a good game, it can make sure everyone knows it – with apparently just one review. Not sure how you'd fix this situation, but it's far from perfect.

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