I have to say, I sort of agree. I do like GTAIV, but I don't really understand all the 10/10 stuff. The graphics still look a bit last-gen, and the story and missions are the same kind of stuff. I can play it for about an hour before I start wanting to go back to Burnout: Paradise or my second run through of Mass Effect.

ehh the game is just a victim of the hype machine

There was a journalist at IGN that resigned recently - I remember he spoke up against reviewers accepting buy offs from big publishers to rate their game higher.

He resigned about a month before GTA's release - he was oriental I remember that much but he was laughed at by many of the core public and black balled by alot of people for being an elitist amungst game journalists.

He claimed that IGN would never do such a thing as to accept buy outs... hmm O.o

 Try disabling your PS3's internet connection. That worked for me and I had the exact same problem, something to do with you getting logged onto PSN messing up the load.

As for GTA IV, meh. I'm feel pretty much the same as Dark Knight, Vice City was the best in the series for me. San Andreas was a convoluted mess, but at least it had crazy fun shit to keep me entertained like skydiving or drive-by shootings in a jetpack. IV feels like an upgraded III with a new storyline and a switch from crazy fun to serious business. 

Ummm. It's on MSNBC, as in Microsoft NBC? that IS what the MS is for there. I don't think that there's a conspiracy. They are running a report that shows their own company's product in a bad light. Where's the conspiracy?

And what she says about GTA is totally true. It DOES take a few hours for it to really get going.

My experience was more or less the same, but I had a blockbuster $10 gift card so I just rented it. I kept it the extra 7 days (this blockbuster participates in the life after late fees program, so there was no penalty), I so made a point of playing it extra even though MK: Wii is freakin' awesome online.

I think I spent much more time on it, though, as I spent quite a bit of time beating missions and flying helicopters on the last island. The missions started out better, but ended up getting really repetitive, and the technical issues with the game would start getting irritating.

In order to complete some of the more pain in the ass missions, you'd have to drive across town (you can't take a cab because you needed that car), then you'd have to do a shootout, often a long shootout, with their shitty implementation of a cover system, then you'd have to evade the police. Most of the time, the game would fail to spawn cars, as it often does when there is a lot going on, or it would spawn ten of the same model car because only loads a couple of different models at a time, so you'd end up having to settle for some shitty car for your escape. And if your escape failed for some reason, you'd have to redo the entire mission including a mundane drive across town.

The game can became more of a chore than fun. I always avoided driving, because it wasn't particularly good and you spent a ton of time driving past buildings that were nothing more than cardboard faces -- you couldn't go in them, or on them, or do anything with them. Doors just didn't open. There are only a few buildings you can entire in the entire city. As far a being a city goes, it's really a barren wasteland of empty and unusable buildings.

The story itself is okay, although it starts running in circles when they decided they needed more content and didn't have enough real story to satify it. The characters, (especially Brucy who you meet early on), can be hilarious.

Honestly, I think I would have enjoyed it more if I could have dropped it and quit playing for a few weeks, then put some more time into it. It's, by no means, one of the top games I've played this year. But it can be fun in a random and short-spurt kind of way.

The online multiplayer can be quite a bit of fun too because of the randomness, but the Xbox Live community is unbelivably terrible (fail to communicate, don't know what the mission is, disorganized, more interested in repeating the word faggot as quickly as possible than playing the game, etc).

 Heyyyyyyyyyy Genius! Falcon doesn't fix the problem, it just makes it less of a problem.

True, I've seen a lot of units on Craigslist that were Falcon RROD survivors when I was looking to buy mine xbox (a lot of people got an Xbox for Christmas that RROD'd already). I ended up getting mine new and purchasing no warranty, because the Microsoft warranty is $65 or so, and if I need a to pay for repairs it's $99.

A lot of people in the somethingawful forums with Falcon units had RRODs. In fact, a couple of weeks ago there were four reported RRODs in a row all from Falcon models. Falcon hasn't even been around that long.

The good news is that MS is replacing units very quickly right now compared to before, with many people reporting a 1.5 week turn around time.   The bad news is that some of those replacements come back and break kind of quickly.  Many fewer than around Christmas time, though.

Xenon and Zephyr 30+% RRoD (so far...)
Falcon 12~15% RRoD (so far...)

OT: reviews are useless, good, bad, they're all flawed!