@Myron117: Gamespot's site is totally broken in my browser (Pale Moon). Forced to use Chrome for it. Oh, and disable adblockers, because they go out of their way to get ads shown on their content.
@saturatedbutter: It definitely does not happen to all AAA games.
And most review sites don't even look at a game's performance or visual fidelity. Gotta find ones that actually care; like Eurogamer. I don't bother reading critic reviews; I watch gameplay footage (eg; Totalbiscuit) and read technical reports on games to find out if they're up to standard or not.
I can damn well guarantee if consoles didn't exist (or were at least twice as powerful as they are now) that the games would've never been downgraded. I feel so bad for the art teams being forced to castrate their game because of inferior hardware.
DAOWAce's comments