The situation first came to light on the microblogging service Twitter, after one reviewer said he had been asked by the PR company representing Eidos, the game's publisher, to hold off posting a review of the title if he gave it a mark of less than 8 out of 10.
Several other games websites picked up on the story, although the PR company at the centre of the row has denied trying to influence reviews.
According to the website videogaming247, a representative of the PR company initially said that it was "trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos". They also said that the US brand manager for the label had asked them to keep reviews in check "before the game is out...just to ensure that we don't put people off of buying the game, basically".
However, the PR company, Barrington Harvey later corrected its position, with one of the directors, Simon Byron, vehemently denying that his organisation had sought to influence review scores by keeping bad reviews under a longer embargo.
"Barrington Harvey is not in the position of telling reviewers what they can and cannot say," he said. "[We] have no issue with scores of below eight out of 10 being posted online. Any site...is entirely within their rights to post whatever score they want, and no-one is under any sort of obligation to delay any review."
Tomb Raider: Underworld, was released on Friday and is available for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. The review aggregation site Meta Critic currently gives the game an average score of 76 out of 100, based on 23 reviews, while users of the website rate the game an average of 6.6 out of 10.
Underworld follows Lara Croft as she embarks on a new quest that takes her across the world, from the frozen wastelands of the Arctic to the jungles of Mexico, via the beaches of Thailand, as she seeks to unravel another ancient mystery.
Click to enlarge, it's a wallpaper!
Source: Telegraph.co.uk
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