http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24633115/

Very ballsy of MS to allow this to be published online! Realistically, though: they didn't know it was going up, until after it did. Totally.

Quote:

Do a quick scan of Metacritic, a Web site that averages professional reviews for entertainment media, and you’ll see that "GTA IV" earns a near perfect score. Many sites, such as GameSpot, IGN, 1UP.com, the Edge – all gave the game 100 percent. That’s gotta juice a game’s sales, right?

I’m about four hours into the game, and I’m bored. The city is awesome — no doubt about it. But I’m impatient for things to get going. I’m tired of bowling, watching TV and waiting for people to call me.

I know, I know. Apparently, I need to devote a good 10 hours to "GTA IV" before I start to "get it." My Xbox 360 got the dreaded Red Ring of Death hardware failure over the weekend, so that’s stopped my progress for now. (Msnbc.com is a joint Microsoft - NBC Universal venture.)

But still, shouldn’t the magic of a "perfect" game be apparent to me after four hours?

/End quote

Seriously, to me, the fun little fiction of game review scores has been shattered by GTAIV's ridiculous and suspicious reviews. I'm back to the good old days of wanting to play a game for a while to see if I like it, rather than caring about review scores any more. About the only thing I want to see from reviews now are reports of bugs and things that wouldnt' be apparent to me from seeing or playing the game for a short time. Scores are deader than Reagan.

Oh the RROD strikes again haha. The consumer 0, MS 2 million. When will the destruction end.

I'm shocked that MSNBC ccouldn't afford to run out and get a 360 with the Falcon chipset. You think MS would comp that considering thats a big review for it's console.

And the conspiracy theories keep on coming...She must have been pretty mad about getting the RROD.

Well, you gotta admit that the theory that GTA IV deserved mostly 10s from big review sites is shit.

It could have just been herd mentality/idol worship rather than a payoff or whatever, granted.

It's not even close to a 10/10 game. Not close at all. GTA 4 is mediocre by any measure.  It's a giant gimmick.  Pretend like you're free to do whatever you want, but, really, you'll be fed what to do on our time line and you've got about 8 buildings you can actually enter.  But there's plenty of open, empty space to drive around in.  There's cardboard buildings, but you can't enter those either.

If the game can't do a decent job at being a shooter, when almost all of the mid and late game missions are shooting missions or delivery missions, then it doesn't deserve to be a 8/10 or 9/10.

Go here, get money, shoot these people.

Go there, get those drugs, shoot those people.

Go here, murder this person.

Go through shooting gamut of people over and over and over.

The game does not deserve top scores.

To pile it on, the "friend maintenance" is annoying, at best. I, personally, never did any of the activities with people after the first two or three times. They were just boring as well, repetitive, and served no purpose. If I'm going to play a game like that, i'm going to play it for fun, not because i need to keep these people happy by doing busy work so I can get some inconsequential perk.

I think a lot of gamers were starved for something good since this was the first big game of the year on the PS3 and 360, and now my 360 is just collecting dust as my Wii gets all of the play time again. Mario Kart is much more fun than GTA 4.

Don't get me started about the technical issues with the game. It needed another 6 months of polish, at least. I don't understand why so many gamers are willing to accept mediocrity, and not only accept it, but praise it.

Good rant!

msnbc sucks, too liberal.

So, it's karma.

But seriously, she doesn't deserve to review a good game if she doesn't "get it" I mean, if it's a genre you don't like as much as the others, then don't play it. (also, couldn't the friggin' people buy another 360 and write it off as a "business expense"?) If it was so important?

actually, I think I just told myself off....... I guess I'll have to erase my 7.0 or lower score for Zelda: TP?

I haven't played Grand theft auto 4 yet but an odd thing I have noticed is that GTA 4 is universally acclaimed by reviewers, and yet has fairly mixed reviews from people I actually know and trust ...

Now, I'm not claiming that there is any type of conspiracy but I am starting to wonder if videogame reviewers are becomming more and more like the elitest record store clerks who mock people for liking music they disapprove of.

Not assuming you trust me, but here's my history with GTA IV so far:

Played it a bit the day I got it in the mail (one or two days after launch). Didn't find it great, the missions weren't interesting at all. I liked the atmosphere of the game though.

For a few days after that, I was too addicted to MK:Wii to play anything else.

Then I played GTA IV for an afternoon. The missions were getting more fun, but the minigames and social interaction are fucking boring.

Since then, I haven't played it again. It seems I'll finish this game in sporadic playing sessions.