Actual professional videogame critics do spend quite a bit of time with the games they are reviewing and most do their job because of the obvious benefit: they love playing videogames and they get to do it for a living. I've met maybe three professional game reviewers in the past six years who were obviously in it for the status or free stuff or other "fringe" benefits.
This is true of the better reviewers. In print, where I think the standards are higher, there are more good reviewers than bad reviewers. Though, one of those calls for the "invulnerable cheat" was from a major magazine of that era. (They apparently subcontracted out to reviewers with specialities in certain genres? This guy was not on-location in any case, even if he was technically part of the staff. And this was a major review, not one of the filler B-titles that are used to puff up a slow month.)
(Also, I've got to point out here though that print magazines have a long lead time, they're written perhaps three months before they hit the stands? (You know better than I do.) Anyway, this means that the reviewers are playing versions of the games that are far from complete, especially as schedules get shorter in the development industry. Theres not as much "love" involved in playing a pre-Alpha build of a game you may not even be that excited about. That's when you have to be "professional" as a reviewer.)
So, I'm going to agree with your first statement, just with the caveats above.
I'd agree with your second statement too. I really am more concerned with the idea that the marketing departments of the major game companies know how to play both individual reviewers and entire entities like magazines and websites than the idea that certain reviewers are corrupt. I agree that openly corrupted major reviewers are very rare.
But there are a lot of influences brought to bear even on the print media that I think people outside the industry are not aware of. Exclusives were a big incentive back when I was in the business, for instance and so were Previews. Like it or not, there was a certain quid-pro-quo involved here. I can't speak to how the magazines viewed this relationship, but I can say how the marketing departments viewed it and I can also give my opinion that certain major magazines appeared to succumb to the pressure and give very few bad reviews to major publishers.
Anyway, this was all a long way of saying that I've seen a bit of the review business and there's more to it than meets the eye. Thats not to say that there arent a lot of professionals out there, and a lot of non-professionals who are purely doing reviews because they love the industry. I stress that fact. And then I stress it again, because its too easy to look at the negative things I am saying and take them as my whole message. ;-)
