Writers of previews or reviews of pre-gold releases tend to cut such games a lot of slack because they like to think that the glaring bugs will be ironed out before release.

Expansions also fall into this category, but usually the developers can use an expansion to correct additional bugs not yet corrected in the original game---that is unless they introduce new bugs like the 56 year old bug that came with the Viking expansion to the original MTW.

I still read previews with with a lot of skepticism--well even reviews for that matter. I have seen even the US version of PCGamer give a modestly good review to a really crappy bug-ridden mess like Microsoft's "Combat Flight Simulator 3" and in the same issue give a really poor review to a bug free fun little game based on the Disney movie "Treasure Planet".

It wasn't the same reviewer, but obviously the reviews were skewed based on the prejudices and pre-formed opinions of the reviewers plus a lack of true managing editorial supervision. I actually let my subscription drop after that issue, but being the game-whore that I am, I eventually renewed it.

You may already be aware of this site, but the place to really get a handle on reviews is "game rankings. com"

They gather and link to almost every online preview, review, or news release. They will also list all the mager magazine review scores along with the on-line stuff, and will include a pie chart of all the rankings.

For example here is their page for MTW2.

http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpage...asp?q=Medieval

It is interesting to note that the average of 30 or so published reviews computed in the findings give MTW an average 0f 87% (there is not a single review below 80%) while the individual rankings base on votes from players is only 78%.

This is usually always the case with such complex games as the totalwar seriies, and it all boils down at least two major factors.

1. "professional" Reviewers are never going to have the time to explore a game fully like individuals will; that is--before the reveiwer has to meet his or her publishing deadline.

2. individual scores are going to be skewed by those individuals who absolutely hate the game and give it a unrealistic ridiculously low scores like 0% or 10%.

It is alway interesting to read the reviews of games where the large majority of reviewers give a game very good scores while one or two reviewers give the same game a horrible score. You always wonder if they hardly played the game at all, but were simply pre-disposed to dislike it, and wrote their review accordingly. After reading a lot of these bad reviews, it is usually obvious that this is the case.

Cheers