If you've been living on Mars for the past few weeks, GTA IV is  out and it is good....damn good.  Despite a FEW flaws in the game, MANY reviewers still found it worthy of a perfect 10.  IGN dished out its first 10 of the 21st century, gamespot gave out its first 10 in 5 years.  Now I think most of us agree on this site, the game is great, but is not perfect, thus not deserving of the illusive  perfect 10 score.

   People are already hailing it as GOTY, however the year is far from over and I still believe there are two more games coming out this year that seriously could be better than GTA IV.  Those games are (in case you were wondering): Metal Gear Solid IV and Fable 2.  Now what happens if those games come out and they truly are better than GTA IV?  I feel like IGN or Gamespot are going to be quite reluctant on handing out another 10, only a few months after they gave their first 10s in years.  On these websites it is always going to appear that GTA IV was the better game, even if its not.  Even if these sites do give out another 10, all these games can do, even if they are better, is stand equal to GTA IV, even though they might be better.  The reviewers really dropped the ball on GTA IV (or were paid some money by R*), anybody else find themselves giving out less credibility to all these reviewers that dished out perfect scores?  because they not only gave an biased, not deserving score to a game, but they also sealed the fact that other games this gen, that truly could be better, will be equal or less to GTA IV forever on their review scales.

It's for this reason that I don't trust review scores. I prefer to read the context of their review or play the damn game myself.

Review scores have become so skewed the past decade anyway. A 5 should mean medium...not a good game but not a bad game either but in the review world, it doesn't. 7 has replaced the 5 as the medium.

yeah, i don't think they should ever hand out tens personally. 9.7's or 9.8's would have been better.

Ditto.

That's why I prefer a 5 point scale (no decimals) to a 10 point one.   Most reviewers don't know what to do with all the points.

You are right if another game comes out this year that is better then GTAIV it wont receive 10 (and no other game for several years). That is why you I'm against giving games 100%.

I'm starting to prefer EGM's letter grading myself. It spells out vey easily where average is because we are all familiar with how a lettering system works.

As for GTAIV and other games, you really shouldn't think of all games being comparable. When a reviewer is reviewing Fable 2, it should be in comparison to other WRPGs and not an action adventure game like GTA IV. Even if GTA IV ended up with the better score in the end, it doesn't matter because it would mean GTA was the pinnacle of action adventure, and Fable 2 was the king of WRPGs. In the end though, this really shouldn't matter all that much. So what if GTA IV becomes the greatest reviewed game of all time and never loses the position? It doesn't mean one has to think the same way. I myself felt both Soul Calibur and Ocarina of Time were not 10s to me, but I understand how a reviewer could come to the conclusion they were worth it, and I undestand how they can come to it in GTA IV also.  

Hey even if their being genre specific Assassins Creed still had better graphics, but that's neither here nor there, they should just revert to giving each individual aspect of the game a grade then get the ratio.

If they do that it's easy to tell.

Needless to say you can't go: "This is amazing it like boom fwap! but it kinda messed up there... oh well it's still like fwap so 10!"

That's as retarded as some blogs, or at least do another review 1 year later to see how it stood out for it's time.

MGS4 better get the same treatment. :|

Some reviewers have played through near complete builds and have pegged it as one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time. If they're going to start dishing out scores based on hype, MGS4 better benefit from it as well.

I think reviewers should add a section in their review score breakdown called hype with an 80% weight...

 agreed 100% and MGS IV is the main concern of this post.  I feel like MGS IV maybe the one that is truly the perfect 10, however, since a site just dished out a 10 for GTA IV, they will nitpick way worse than any other game @ MGS IV and give it a 9.5 or something.  They'll say something like there was some low res textures, so graphically its only a 9.8/10, while they let all the graphical errors in GTA slide. MGS IV I feel like is going to get screwed in the ratings department over GTA. Then people will say things like MGS didn't get the scores like GTA did, so its not as good of a game.