Ok, so I hear a lot of people comparing OoT to GTA4 in terms of "best game ever". Here is why I think GTA is far better then OoT.

First off, I think people really mean "Best game for its day" when they say "Best game ever". If OoT were released today, exactly as it is, and it was the first time you ever saw it, you would laugh it away as shovel ware.

There is no question it was a good game for its day, but hardware gets better, budgets get bigger, creative minds get more creative. Most games today, even middle of the road games, outshine OoT today.

So, let's talk about how good it was for its day. It came out in 1998, and was an action-adventure game on the N64. on the PC in 1998 , we had Baldur's Gate, Half Life, Quake II, Thief: Dark Project, Starcraft, Fallout (1997), fallout 2, Unreal, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Myth II, and Falcon 4.0.

Every one of those games, from a technical perspective, was years ahead of OoT. You could not compare PC games to Console games back then, as PC's cost a lot to make, and you just could not make a piece of consumer electronics that had enough horsepower for the price. Also, a lot of those games (Starcraft and Falcon 4.0 mainly), are played by hundreds of thousands of gamers. They are not played as nostalgia to a time when they were young, they are still the definitive game for those genres. 

Today is different. Spend any amount of money you want, and take any video/computer game you like, and there is nothing today that outshines GTA4. 

Let's hope in 10 years, someone (hopefully me :p), will make the same comparison with whatever is out compared to GTA4. This is a great time to be alive, and be a gamer! :) 

I'm actually going to write an editorial about this over the weekend.

To put it bluntly, my viewpoint will be polar opposite to yours.

This is a great time to be alive, and be a gamer! :)

That is the only part where I totally agree with you :).

 I look forward to seeing it. Especially since I'll probably agree. :)

I disagree, but I do not want to get in a discussing, I'm sick of GTA4 as it is, I can't really enjoy it any more, because I think it is so overrated and I will only see the bad things. good thing I finished it Saturday.

You claim GTAIV is better because if you launched OoT today it would pale? Mafoo, tell me this is a joke thread.

Sorry, you are not really thinking about what made OOT the highest rated game ever. It has nothing to do with new technology, graphics, and the like. It has to do with the enjoyment and experience given in the game. OOT is miles apart from previous Zelda titles and a massive win for the series. GTA4 is just GTA bigger. It is not in any way a pivotal series in the franchise.

This is the part of reasoning Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime are also in the top 5 rated games of all time. They are all very enjoyable games that greatly changed the way the franchised worked. GTA4 only adds more of the same content. Granted, it looks like a superb game and a lot of fun overall, but, not a '10' in my book and definitely not better than OOT or SMG.

Main problem here; quality is subjective.

Some people find it a must-have for the game to be a revolution, some think otherwise.

And a fun fact: OoT for VC recieved the same score as GTA IV did for X360/Ps3 on IGN.

Just bigger....

.....

The differences are enormous, some really have to play it....

Another consideration is how many similar games exist in that generation that are similar in quality ... By the end of this generation there will probably be over 10 similar crime-sandbox games that receive a score of 85% or higher.