At the end of the day, I think people shouldn't be so concerned about review scores. One of my best friends uses them to determine his game purchases and while it's something I can get in his case, we still sometimes have little debates about the subject...
...However, I would be lying if I didn't say I think many triple AAA game publishers pay certain big review sites to give a positive review, and I definitely do think Nintendo does do this with their more major titles like Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. For one, we know for a fact that the "Nintendo Ambassador's Program" exists (I think that was the name of it anyway, it's been a while since I've read anything about it). So, many of the YouTube content creators who give rave reviews to these games are pretty much obligated to not say anything particularly negative. We saw what happened with both TheBitBlock and Haedox, for example, when they got harshly critical of Nintendo's games and their practices. Both were on that Ambassador Program and were taken off it for not being 99% positive about Nintendo at all times. I know it's not the nicest way to put it, but when it comes to people on the Nintendo Ambassador's Program, being a Nintendo shill is basically a part-time job for them. They don't get paid in money by Nintendo, I know, but they get free Nintendo products basically every week, which is a large amount of merchandise/games they would otherwise have to spend lots of money on. Plus it benefits their channel and increases their revenue that way, since people will obviously be looking for videos about the big new Nintendo game.
When it comes to IGN and GameSpot and other big AAA game journalism companies, I mean there's really no question that some developers pay them. They are just as much multimedia marketing companies (especially IGN) as they are game journalism outlets (at times they feel more like the former than anything). And there is no reason for Nintendo or any other company to not pay them to review their games. It generates more excitement.
I'm not saying that BotW and SMO don't deserve lots of praise (I've poured over 200 hours into BotW myself - it has many flaws but I still love it), and that any review ever that gives games like these a 10/10 should be immediately disregarded. But review scores literally only exist to be marketing tools anyway, for both the reviewer (gets them on Metacritic, on the trailer or box art for a big new game, etc) and the publisher (generates more hype, sells the game to those who rely on good reviews to make purchases, etc). And a 10/10 score is more marketable than any other score.
This is why I ignore review scores entirely. I read the actual review if I have to look at reviews. Usually, how I tell a reviewer was paid to write a positive review is when, after I play the game, I look at the reviews, and see if there was a major part of the game reviewers didn't talk about. Using Breath of the Wild as an example, a lot of reviewers barely touched upon the story. I'm not even saying they unreasonably praised it or anything, they just...didn't really talk about it. Which was odd. Normally they do in a game like this, since it should be a pretty important part of the game (and in BotW's case, it was built up to be by Nintendo themselves).
Of course, I then played the game, saw how generally poorly handled the story was in the game, and thought "oh, that's why". Their 10/10 scores would not have made sense if they had discussed the story and how poorly handled it was. So there's a good chance they were paid. General vagueness and reading like an advertisement and not a review, are other big indicators.
