It is a bit easier if you analyze the text. The writer is talking about an "immense 3d world" as if it was something special. This gives away that it is an older game. But the point is to make us think its GTA, when it is in fact a game that is being compared to GTAIV a lot lately. I guess the experiment is meant to show how peoples expectations change and how videogames evolve, and maybe at the same time stay the same? Lol, I guess we'll find out in a little while. Nice thread, OP.

 Crap.  I guess I'm just gonna have to shoot myself.  Thanks.

Ocarina of Time. It's pretty obvious.

Also, I think this thread backfired. :P

Yeah I recognized the words from IGN's review.

 Yeah, it kind of did backfire. I expected more people to guess GTA IV, or Shenmue, or something else that is not Ocarina of Time. Basically, the point was to show that I think Ocarina of Time and GTA IV got such good reviews because they each have an immense world that you have a lot of control in. I think people are naturally attracted to this, and when a new game comes out that has an even larger world and that allows even greater control, it will sit among the best rated games. Does anyone else agree?

Ocarina isn't exactly an "open-world" game, though the game-world is indeed vast. The dungeons are the star of the show; the rest of the game just exists to carry you between the dungeons.

 I'd guess LoZ OoT.  Sounds like a familiar quote to me.

well i was thinking of an elder scrolls game until I read the answer :P I knew it wasn’t gonna be gta 4 because that would be the obvious answer, I didnt think far enough back though :( Last night actually I was thinking about the time I saw and played ocarina of time for the first time and it was truely amazing! never before had I seen a game like that! But I agree it is aging now. I way playing some of my old N64 games last night and marveling at the simplicity that was video gaming. Reminds me of good times! when video games were humble and consisted of simple but quality game play. :D

I disagree. I think GTA4 got such great reviews because GTA 3 was the first game that popularized sandbox play. As such many of it's flaws got overlooked, so when rockstar fixed some of the flaws and made the gameplay better in some areas they had relatlivly no place to go.

When you have a game a lot of people like that looks really ugly and has technical flaws all over the place and you give it a 94-96... you really don't have much room to go up when you are grading a sequel that has improved a lot of things.

OoT got it's high reviews because it was really the first game like that as well, that were huge wide expansive areas. This game however didn't have massive flaws to fix, and subsequent games kept the gameplay very similar, so the grading of course degraded for Zelda games even though they were "technically" more impressive.

In short. 

GTA4 is rated better because GTA3 was groundbreaking but flawed.

Games like TP are rated worse because OoT was groundbreaking and didn't have any huge flaws.

That's my theory anyway.