People love to cry foul of shady practices and reviewers bowing to publishers. And that is true, but to such a small degree, compared to how often that claim gets thrown around.
However, Shadow of Mordor was one that was legitimately "fixed". WB paid YouTube reviewers--note, not ones that get aggregated into Metacritic scores--to talk positively about Shadow of Mordor. They were told to spin it as a video review, or as a recommendation, WITHOUT noting that it was sponsored content. I'm pretty sure they were sued for it.