There’s nothing worse than publishers influencing/bribing editors, but there’s something to be said when reviews can’t be published if rated under a certain score.

Is that the story here? Yes and no. What Eidos wants is a chance for Tomb Raider: Underworld to sell itself over the weekend before editors pounce and sway possible consumers. But it’s hard not to feel a sense of dread when publishers lay down the law about what can and cannot be said about their final product; betas and press builds are understandable, but not products than can be freely bought over the counter. If anything, 2008 was an excellent year to show just how nasty publishers can be towards editors, Eidos included.

This time around, however, Eidos is asking British gaming sites to not post reviews of Tomb Raider: Underworld until Monday if scores are lower than 8.0 (Twitter source). This in itself may not seem like a big deal, but the fact that the company wants to filter opinions makes one question just how confident Eidos feels in regards to Tomb Raider Underworld. According to Metacritic, the game’s current scores are just below average, with a 76 for the Xbox 360 version, 68 for the Wii and 77 for the PlayStation 3 edition. Most sites seem to have ignored the plea, with IGN (75), 1UP (75), GamePro (70), GameSpot (70) and GameSpy (60) serving as just a handful who loaded their reviews this weekend.

“We’re trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos,” a representative (ala Barrington Harvey) for Eidos told videogaming247. “Just that we’re trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that’s handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game, basically.”

But then Barrington Harvey, Eidos’ PR company in the UK, turned around and released a statement in regards to the whole matter, changing their tune and saying that the company has no position to tell editors what they can and cannot say. If any kind of NDA was involved, it was the one where editors with advanced copies could not post reviews before 5:00 p.m., Wednesday, 19 November 2008.

"As you can clearly see from the scores posted so far, Barrington Harvey has no issue with scores of below eight out of 10 being posted online," said Simon Byron, one of Barrington Harvey’s directors in an email to videogaming247. "The Eurogamer review in questions caused “problems” in so much as it originally contained a couple of minor factual inaccuracies which, to its credit, the site has quickly rectified and addressed (without, quite rightly, changing the context of the review)."

He goes on to state that websites are entirely in their rights to post whatever score they want and that no establishment is under any kind of obligation to delay the review. So what was the reasoning behind the Twitter comment? It could merely be some way to spark a little controversy on behalf of the game, to have journalists ramble on about publisher conspiracies and an attempt to stifle an editor’s freedom of speech.

Then again, we like a little drama too, that’s why all editors have complimentary copies of The Weekly World News (now included in the all-new Sun!)