Part of me doesn't have a problem with EA doing this, simply because almost every major publisher does something like this to some degree. Activision is notorious for its efforts to manipulate review scores, especially with Black Ops. Then there was the whole "Gerstmann-gate" affair involving GameSpot and Eidos over Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. More recently, it was 2K's PR firm threatening to "blacklist" media outlets that panned Duke Nukem Forever.

While I can occasionally glean some useful information about a game from a review, the scores at the end are uniformly worthless as a way gauge the overall quality of the thing. I've never said to myself: "hey, that game got an 8.5 out of 10 from IGN; I'd better try it." Some people do that, I guess, but I have no sympathy for anyone that lets others do their thinking for them.

A review score is either a marketing tool for, or an anchor around the neck of a publisher. When you have shareholders to answer to, your marketing department is obligated to protect your IP from negative press. If your customers are that easy to manipulate, well ... that's on them. The people that are opening their wallets have to take responsibility for themselves.

If the game is so good and lives up to the hype then they should not need to do this

No, no, the government should do that.

Who cares? 99% if the reviews will be the console version and 85% of those will be single player only. 2 things that are NOT Battlefield.

Still its censorship i don't like it, there should be a wide range of reviews not just ones from BF fanboys

Joe: if someone comes on these forums and tells us that BF3 has a 90+ metacritic score, so it must be a good game, would you take them seriously?

Exactly!! If you don't believe that, then get your head out of the sand.

I don't care what other publishers do. EA should not be doing this, but I have a feeling they have been contemplating such measures since before Battlefield games received negative reviews as have some other publishers. Hell, I'm pretty sure Activision has paid off a few critics in the past decade to give good scores for certain games.

You could argue and say that EA (or anyone for that matter), is just trying to make sure that people that are reviewing the game is going to give them fair and balanced review. No harm with that.