We discuss it all the time at the ITU: How much time do you have to spend on a game before you can claim to be knowledgeable about it?
Gamespot have pulled their review of Savage: The Battle for Newerth in response to allegations that, according to the server stats, the reviewer had only played it for a few hours.
Here’s the original review.
It ain’t easy: Scott Osborne is generally a very good reviewer IMO and I’ve quoted him several times in papers. Perhaps he just immediately hated the game and felt that nothing more would come from playing it further. And then he may have been wrong.