Did 'GTA IV' deserve perfect scores?

This game is incredible. The designers at Rockstar took a classic game and recreated it making it better then I could have imagined. This game is by far going to be game of the year and is 1 of very few worth spending your money on.

I score it a 10 or 9.9. Fact is this is going to change gaming

I'm not a hardcore gamer...but after 4 hours of playing GTA4, I had done a lot more than just bowl and watch TV... I wonder if the writer of this knows you don't have to actually wait for the phone to ring to progress with game and the story? You can drive to locations on the map, or you can call your contacts to start a mission...but whatever, you always find that one critic that wants to question a game, kinda a like a movie that everyone loves, there always one to go against the grain in an attempt to be non conforming.

If you've played this game for 4 hours and all you've done is bowl and watch TV, you should think about picking up a strategy guide..you're doing something wrong.

9.5, camera could've been smoother, and pop-in (when graphics just pop-in or instantly appear in front of you) while running around could've been improved with more pre-loading onto the HDD. Otherwise, an awesome game...but those two things prevent it from getting a 10.

The game is amazing....Everytime I turn it on, I say to myself I'm only going to play a half hour, but it's always more. I will admit...it was frustrating that you had to complete levels in order to get into the "Manhattan" part of Liberty City, and that there are many buildings you cannot go into. But once, you get a helicopter, you just cant stop playing it.

They call it the "enthusiast press" for a reason. I've seen more than one reviewer describe himself in his GTA IV review as being a "fan of the GTA series." You'd never see that in a professional movie review. You'd never see Roger Ebert review Spiderman 3 and say "I'm a fan of the Spiderman series." You'd see him judge the movie on its own merits, nothing more. There is no analog to Roger Ebert with game reviewers - an educated professional who loves his medium but doesn't allow his viewpoint to be clouded by hype, buzz, anticipation, or his publication's marketing department.

I'll preface this by saying that I really like playing GTA IV. This is meant more as an indictment of the press than the game. The game is good, but gets away with flaws that no other game gets away with, and that doesn't sit well with me. GTA IV is a mostly fun, but frequently frustrating game in which a multitude of strange design decisions resulted in a game that wasn't all it could have been. (And if you don't think the design has mistakes and sloppiness in it, play the game right now and try to climb a ladder. Or go clothes shopping. Or just tell me which button the "cancel" button is.) To call it "revolutionary" is absurd - the game is little more than a polished GTA San Andreas with a new graphics engine and a cover system that's inferior to that of nearly any AAA game to use one in the last two years. Hence, to give the game a pass for being revolutionary is equally misguided.

It shouldn't get a pass based upon the merits of its story and characters, either. Nico Bellic is sometimes a conflicted, reluctant hired gun, and sometimes an all-out psychopath. His descriptions of the Serbian civil war are written clumsily - they sound more like something out of a textbook than the recollections of an actual war veteran. The game's first plot twist was predictable, and a weak choice. The American Dream theme is discussed repetitiously in a ham-fisted manner befitting an inexperienced writer. The secondary characters are the highlight, but some should've received more development. And it's not an argument to say that the game's story is good relative to other video game stories. It needs to stand up against stories of all media - we're rating how engaging and enjoyable it is as an experience, and a weak story is a detractor in films, books, and video games alike. Also, there are dozens of games with stronger stories than this one. Most of them are RPGs, which aren't everybody's cup of tea, but they're out there.

Giving the game a perfect score is only justifiable if the scoring scale being used has low granularity. 5/5 is optimistic for GTA IV, but borderline reasonable. If a movie reviewer gives a movie 5 stars (with half-stars as the base unit, meaning 11 possible ratings counting 0 stars), that means it's a rare film that's an awesome experience. A 10/10, if we want to think in terms of whole numbers. If a game reviewer like Gamespot who reviews on a 10-point scale (also using half-points as the basic unit, for a total of 21 possible ratings), giving a game a perfect 10 is doing so on a doubly nitpicky scale (it's effectively a 20/20), and excusing GTA's flaws on that kind of scale is where we start to see the blinders that the enthusiast press wears. (Not to mention the fact that Gamespot actually writes "Perfect" beneath the game's 10/10 rating.) I think if the gaming press wants to hand out perfect ratings to games that are merely among the best in a given year, they should move to a 4-star movie critic scale. But that's even beside the point. The gaming press needs to stop approaching games as fans and to start approaching them as professionals. When game developers cry out for the gaming press to "mature" they aren't saying "overlook a game's flaws if it is otherwise really good." They are asking for the press to stop being fans and to expand their vision - to not see a game as the sum of its graphics, sound, replay value and "fun factor," but as a pure experience, to be judged by the degree to which it engages, pushes boundaries, and provokes thought. And by those measures, GTA is solid, but by no means perfect.

I give it 8 out of 10. GTA III on my PS2 blew my mind but the new edition of the series is really just more (OK a lot more) of the same old tired scripted "jobs" to complete as you try to obtain some sort of vague ultimate goal. Same stuff in a fancier package. Its fun and a quality game which I will finish at some point in the distant future but not as fun as a game where you play against actual human intelligence like Halo 3. Not saying all or even most Halo 3 players are intelligent. Just some of them.

I sort of agree with this article, but I think I need to give it a second chance.

I just picked up my brand spanking new 360 last week and thought I'd get a couple games that others reviewed to be great. I picked up GTA IV, Gears of War, and Assassin's Creed. I started with GTA first because of the perfect 10 score, and like the reviewer, I was kinda bored after going bowling and wandering aimlessly around the city. Granted, I did not play any other GTA game before, so maybe I just don't "get" the basics of the game yet. But it definitely didn't just jump out and "grab" me like I was expecting.

However, Gears of War kicks freakin' @$$ and that game puts you in the action straight away and I was never bored. Assassin's Creed started off great, although after playing it for a while, you can see the repetitiveness of the missions. But even after almost completing the game, it's still fun to run around the city assassinating any guards that happen to get in my way. I think after I finish both those games, I'll go back to GTA and give it another try. I might even pick up a strategy guide like Zombieman mentions above.

But for a total newb to the series, it didn't just catch my attention right away like all the hype made it seem it ought to. So I actually won't rate it until I give it another try :P

I would give it an 8ish. I've played all of the games in the series from the beginning (except the GTA2 London game, but including the psp games). I'm currently about 7.5 hours in, and I've yet to have a "Wow" moment. It has been fun to watch the AI humans and cars go about their business, but I like to people watch in real life.
The driving (especially cornering) seems stuck in the last generation.
I've had MUCH more fun playing two very similar games - Burnout Paradise and Crackdown (hell, even through Bully in, b/c Rockstar at least made the story seem interesting).
This game, while technically very fine, is somewhat of a disapointment. A victim of HYPE! And I really have to question the gaming journalists b/c all of my favorite sites have reviewed it so glowingly. Seems like just a series of BS missions with out of wack save points. IT's not even fun to hand out beatdowns on the street anymore.

Thanks for writing your article - I was hoping that some media would speak up and say something.

GTAIV is in its good old GTA style. If you like doing odd jobs that you've done times and times again from the prior GTAs but with better graphics and story, then it deserves its perfect score.

My only complaint is how the online could have been better. It's hard to bring your party with you when you don't like a game that someone has set up. And what makes it worse is that no one knows how to make the online settings enjoyable. My biggest petpeeve are those games that start with the silly little 9mm pea shooter.

Do us a favor people, at least change the "weapons" settings!!!

I really enjoy GTA4. It's a lot of fun. But what's new about it? GTA3 did the whole 'free world' thing. Vice City had A, B, and C class actors doing the voice work. Ray Leotta? Dennis Hopper? What more did we get with GTA4? Also, the sound track left A LOT to be desired. Compared to Vice City, it was nothing. More Lazlo, and some stupid russian station no one would ever listen to.

8/10 After playing it though, I was impressed, but it seemed to lack some of what I enjoyed from the previous ones. First off, GTASA had a lot more character customization (haircuts, weight lifting, obesity from eating crap, etc.) which I thought added a lot to the game. I disliked having to juggle GTA IV's character's life and losing reputation with people for stupid reasons (If any of his thug friends call him to go bowling while he's being filled with lead by angry gunmen, I shouldn't get a reputation penalty when I'm forced to hang up... I mean, seriously...what kind of friends get mad at you for not bowling with them because your running for your life from gunmen?) Also, my sick GTA loving side of me kinda missed the ability to rob stores for the cash... and finally... no National Guard at six stars? How lame is that? No tank to risk your life to steal, nothing. That's my personal biggest disappointment. :-(

Overall, the game is fun, but I can't help but feel it's sub-par in a few ways to it's predecessors.

Someone please mention multiplayer.
Let's not sit here and pick apart the single player (Even though that's what a reviewer is supposed to be doing.) Instead, let's look at the other HALF of the game.
I haven't seen a review yet that mentions the multiplayer, and it was supposed to be one of the highlights of this GTA game.
Personally, I don't like it. Ranked games give the host (Which is chosen randomly) control over every setting. This means that your online rank, which is supposed to mean something to you, is at the mercy of whatever the host feels like playing.
How many of you have sat down for a nice match with 3 of your friends, ready to take the city by storm only to be thrown into a match held exclusively in the prison?
Or how about rolling deep with 3 of your pals, all decked out in body armor and sub machine guns, hanging out of the side of the car, ready to wreak some havoc; you turn a corner and there's one opponent with a glock standing in front of you. Since auto-aim is on, he goes ahead and shoots the driver first, right through the windshield. That leaves the rest of your party just fish in a barrel, or, perhaps a bunch of tools in slowly rolling SUV just waiting to be gunned down.

If this game's ratings were based solely on the single player, then yes, I would give this game a 9 out of 10. It's a very, very solid single player experience. I got into the story. I felt for the characters. I wish I had a friend like Brucie. But there is more to this game than just that.

We as gamers with the gall to post our feelings, thoughts, and concerns for the world to see need to correct these mistakes that reviews are making. If we're going to review and discuss a game, let's talk about the entire game.

Not cool! You need to put "SPOILER ALERT" in the headline - so that those of us that don't know the details of the backstory don't have it ruined for us!

This debate is so empty; a "100" score is the same thing as A+. From a critic, both of them mean, "highest possible recommendation." That's all there is to it. You seldom see numeric scores awarded by movie, music and book critics; you often see them awarded by game critics. The tendency of game critics to rate games with numbers instead of letters--possibly an artifact of the digital medium in which video games are built--is the only reason why this issue keeps coming up. Game reviews are not the same as test scores.

By the way, I know somebody said it before, but if you are bored four hours into GTA IV, I just don't think that your tastes are aligned very well with those of most people who play video games; you're certainly out of sync with the people who enjoy sandbox games. Personally, I find sports games intensely boring; I would be uninterested in the highest-rated football game of all time. But shouldn't such a game appeal equally to all people? **No, of course not.**

Non-interactive, set-piece city only serves as a backdrop for mundane 3rd person shooting/driving action. The story itself is a mere series of fetchquests with no meaty goals to accomplish: drive here, shoot this, drive there, blow this up - oh, I forgot you can walk, or ride a cab.

Ancillary diversions add precisely zero to the gameplay, and if I wanna surf the web, I'll do it on my real PC. B-o-r-i-n-g-g-g-g-g.

The "persistent" open world aspect is mired in inconsistent reality. Cops pull me over if I'm drunk, but ignore me if I smash up 30 cars on the thru-way, blow through red lights, etc... this is distracting, considering the effort put into making normal citizens react more appropriately.

Technologically, the game isn't smooth, and Niko feels sluggish, along with all his other locomotion abilities: like jumping, shooting, walking down stairs in cloned apartment buildings, yada yada...

I'm actually looking forward to more consistent open world games, that don't play at reality unsuccessfully.

No way I'd score GTA IV more than a 7. It's all been done before, and the new physics engine adds nothing to the gameplay other than momentarily amusing results.

"I'm tired of bowling, watching TV and waiting for people to call me."

As in real-life, if you're tired of doing something, stop doing it. The story does not progress by bowling, watching TV and waiting for calls. These are simply different aspects of the game and have no bearing on the actual storylines.

Is it too much to ask to find a gaming critic that actually has some common sense?

Personally, I feel this game is not quite ground-breaking. It does many things the prequels did, but better. It also got rid of some aspects of the other games that I felt were tedious. It's an amazing game, definitely game of the year unless Gears of War 2 can beat it.

The humour is spot on. Just like many popular comedies, there are several "levels" to it. While a 15 year old may find the bad language and strip clubs entertaining, there's much more to it than that. Many people will find this game hilarious, but I'm sure all for very different reasons.

9 out of 10 would be fair.

Game stunk...7/10...I played about 10 hours and traded it for COD 4....it's no more interesting than GTA on XBox...repetitive junk, waiting for people to call...it just didn't do anything for me.

I will try to not make this derogatory... but to be perfectly honest if you really did get "bored" 4 hours into your GTA4 experience - i really think you need to ebay off your game system. To tell you the honest truth, i totally stopped reading at that point - perhaps the article made some insightful points after that, i dont know. But this article was again obviously not written by anyone even resembling a gamer.. so i totally dont respect it nor consider it valid. Is it valid to other people who dont play games so much..perhaps dont get the concept of playability or sandbox? I dont know, maybe so. In terms of freedom of speech this is of course another persons opinion thats free to be out there - but like many others i find it somewhat dubious that a few weeks into release we suddenly have these "negative reviews" popping up all over the place (after the initial one got so much attention). Maybe tonight i will blog a negative review myself just so i can get 1000s of hits overnight? No? Then again i have some dignity and respect - not for the CEOS or anything of rockstar who are probably lapping up their $ and could care less.. but for the lowly paid coders and testers who no doubt based on end product put blood sweat and tears into it. I think its funny that the moment anything gets a "perfect score" 10/10 or whatever a lot of people get so defensive - "nothing can get a perfect score" -really? Then whats the purpose of a rating scale in the first place? PS next time you get "bored" - pull up your cell phone and come online - myself and others will certainly have some things to do to pass your time.

I have to admit I hated the early GTA games, but with all the hype, I decided to give GTA4 a try on my 360, at first, another flop. But, I stuck with it for a couple of days of casual playing, and quickly my opinion changed. Lots of stuff to do, you can play it how you want, I actually feel like I got more bang for my 60 bucks than with many of the other console games I have. Even games I like much better than GTA4 still haven't provided the value.

I still find myself playing GTA4 after completing it, mainly to rack up the achievements, but I do honestly enjoy playing it at this point, and that should be worth some credit to rockstar.

Perfect, I don't think I would go that far.
Bloody Good, sure, it is worth a big fat Bloody Good.