Can't spell ignorance without IGN.
IGN is notorious for being biased towards games, ALMOST like a video gamin Armond White, but not as crazy. They still gave a Gears 3 a 9, probably due to the immense hate they'd garner otherwise. The mass amount of gamers that read their site keep them from being ridiculous, but that bias still shines through at times. I suspect they get a lot of pay offs.
Gears of War 3 deserved the 9, no question about it. Amongst its contemporaries if you disagree that it wasn't excellence, you're just insane. Hell, it's Horde Mode alone (of which I've clocked considerable time) proves that you don't really have to innovate, if you simply do everything at the top-tier of quality.
As for this Dark Souls crap, I don't know about anyone else, but Trial and Error is not proper game design, and that's all Demon's Souls was (And likely Dark Souls as well), and the real problem with that is, it's not even because someone "svcks", but that the game is simply designed to kill you repeatedly almost like a coin-op game hungering for moar munies.
All that said, the writer is entitled to his opinion. If he likes Dark Souls more than Skyrim is his prerogative.