Sundays are a mixed blessing. They're good because I get a whole day to sit around doing nothing without feeling guilty, but they're bad because I invariably end up so bored that I type www.evilavatar.com into a web browser and feast my eyes on the depth of humanity...

Actually, this topic is nothing to do with Evil Avatar, I'm just using it as a lead-in because I don't like the guy and I enjoy making fun of him.

Commenting on Daikatana in a recent news item, our beloved Mr Avatar explains how he has nearly finished the game, but will "hold back on making any comments about the product until my official review". Then, in the same paragraph, he comments that "it really is as bad as people thought it might be".

Ignoring the untamed stupidity of one web journo (something that 'Crap readers might learn to do one day) this got me thinking: How often are game reviews influenced by something other than the game itself?

This is how l'Avatar d'Evil expressed his thoughts about Daikatana reviews on other web sites:

[They] range from outright bashing to saying it is just plain "average". I have seen a couple of scores in the 70% range, but I really think that most of those sites were just being kind and if a game of this quality came out without all the hype and back-story, most reviewers would have lambasted it good without a second thought.

Does he have a point?

The way I see it, if I spend the next six weeks writing a fun little game, and a hundred-strong team spends four years locked in a giant greenhouse with more money than sense and somehow they manage to create a game too, the two games should be judged equally. Shouldn't they?

I've not played Daikatana and I haven't read any of the reviews, so I'm going to use Quake 2 as an example. PC Gamer gave that game 96% and splashed "The Best Game Ever" across the cover of the issue it was reviewed in. Did it deserve that sort of praise?

It was a huge game with loads of content, some impressive technology, made of course by Id Software, was perhaps the most eagerly anticipated game of the year and had been screaming at us for months that it was going to rock in a major way.

But ultimately, it was a mediocre game with, shall we say, more than it's fair share of bugs.

I wonder, what exactly was that 96% score based on? Was it the bugs and the mediocrity, or was it simply that people were expecting a good review?

I'm sure there are lots of other examples but I very rarely read reviews, so that's why I'm starting a thread about this to see what you guys think. Are reviews affected by reader expectations, game backgrounds, and of course the fact that a lot of reviewers are on friendly terms with the developers?