I think they seem to be based mainly in the UK thus why most of you won't have heard of them.  But even being in Scotland myself I would never listen to them, the best reviews here come from PC gamer UK and its their 81(i think) that I would place my faith in.  Still its a pity that bad reviewers can bring a game down, fair enough if they game a bad review on the games merits alone but completely missing the point is unfair to developers.

Sorry, but if you have never heard of Edge, then I am not sure who is crappy...

And from Edge, a 7/10 is pretty good.

In fact, in Europe it is a full-price game (50€)- we dont even get the (very fair) price reduction from the standard full-fledged game price.

The game is advertised as having action RPG elements.  RPG screams single-player story mode.  Heck in the past, Frogboy even posted about how he was pushing for a great single-player experience for the game.  As I play the game and enjoy the MP-goodness of it, I can't help but thinking how awesome a single player campaign (with better AI) would be.

Why is it so hard for you to understand that some of these reviewers are thinking the same thing?

Did all these reviewers also give TeamFortress 2 poor scores? It has no single-player at all, and released with a similar number of maps and classes.

LOL.

Left4Dead was $50 at release and is MP only. 

And do you think GPG would have been okay with Demigod being a $30 game?

What he said.  Edge has been around something like 15 years and for me it's the only games magazine worth buying, I expect any keen gamer over the age of 20 or so in the UK knows about it.

Edge actually thinks about the scores it's giving out, 5/10 would be an ok game.  7/10 is good!  In the last issue one game got 2/10, most magazines/websites never seem to go under 60% which seems odd.  They review every game just as harshly so they're all having their metacritic etc scores brought down accordingly.

About the price, I pre-ordered from Amazon for £24, might arrive Friday if I'm lucky.  I consider that a fair price for a boxed version (yeah I'm old fashioned) multi-player only game IF the game is well supported.  And obviously from what I've read on here Stardock/GPG will do that.

Yes, I'm sure, go read here : http://www.metacritic.com/about/scoring.shtml

The ones mentionned by OP have low weights. What's killing Demigod are Gamestop, IGN and 1up. Especially 1up, you really need to have them re-review as promised, it will jump the score to 80 if they change their mark to 75.

You can play campaign single-player.  Although the focus is on MP.

TF2 achievements and multiplayer worked out of the box IIRC.  Left4Dead has a decent single player experience so I am not sure what one of the posters was referring to when they said Left4Dead was MP only.  In fact, it had more SP maps than MP maps. The multiplayer for both games runs smoother because of the server / client model and you get to pick the server.  The better example of an overrated game is Total Empire.  The game did not work for a good number of people out of the box, it was horrendously unoptimized, and the AI couldn't do an amphib invasion.  And yet the critics all loved it because of marketing hype and nostalgia for the franchise.

Demigod is a great game, but there is a strong argument that the game is just now getting out of beta.  Until this week, I would never have recommended the game to a friend because they would have immediately become frustrated and never picked it up again.  I have a bit more patience than my friends, which is the only reason I can play the game.  My favor still does not increment, though.  AI in online play is retarded.  Netsplits are ever present.  And isn't it lovely that I can't execute a killing blow because I get bugged and can't execute an action without moving first.

I think it's mostly just a state of mind.

If you look at the games that Demigod most closely resembles (RTS games or Diablo style games), they all have a fairly robust single player component.

So when many gamers and reviewers sit down with demigod they've been trained that this style of game has not only multiplayer components but also single player.  Hence because others in the past have always included it people expect it and when they expect something and don't get it they're disapointed.

Unreal Tournament bucked the FPS gener to stop including single player aspects in a multiplayer game long long ago -- and there was a out cry then.  TF2 has come long after and at a time were it is now acceptable to ship a FPS game that is purely multiplayer.

Of course there is the issue that TF2's multiplayer never failed at connecting most users to a game or dropped users while in a game...

-Jara