Well, to quote one of the things said:
"The first is that the game already has a tech tree. Now it has two, each with its own resource. If you want to streamline out Civics and Religion, duplicating a concept that's already in the game is a strange choice."
And the civics system in Civilization IV was, by that logic, duplicating the units, buildings, and wonders system. Units, buildings, and wonders became available as new technology was founded, just like the civics were, but nobody criticized that the civics system was too dependent on the tech tree then. A separate tree of progression for intellectual and societal life versus technological life would seem to be the logical step, because, historically, there was a difference, and, gameplay-wise, it allows the player to focus on different ways of gameplay in order to win.
Another thing is that the grading scale for 1up uses basically the histogram system. It puts the conclusions into bins of A, B, C, D, etc., but, versus, per say, IGN's system of numerical scoring from 1 to 10 of different, pertinent aspects of the game and then averaging all the numbers together for a total score, I frankly find that to be not only a more elaborate but a more accurate, per say, method of grading to get the reviewer's entire perspective and viewpoint out. The 1up review was limited in the way that it was much more arbitrary.