I give the game an 8-8.5. Th jump fom previous versions wasn't that big and the technical problems and short comings should have been worked out.

Probably best review of the game I seen so far. The score could have been raised a little higher. However, unlike most reviews, it hadn't looked over the many flaws the game had.

I haven't played gta4 yet because I don't have a ps3 (yet) or a 360 and I don't know anyone that does, but is the voice acting actually good, or is it good for a gta game. Because lets face it, the voice acting in the ps2 versions of the game was horribly bad (like early resident evil bad at times).

One of the things which is really dumbed down in this game is the difficulty of escaping the police... As long as you can drive well enough to go moderately fast on a wide road, you'll easily escape them almost every time. Even if there's no wide road nearby, a few curves and you'll be free from the cops in less than a minute.

All in all, this game definitely doesn't deserve a 10. I also find it hilarious that almost everyone decreased Mario Kart Wii's review score for dumbed-down OMGCASUALS gameplay (for false reasons btw), while giving GTA4 a pass for it.

Shin Shoryuken.

Sorry, just had to call out this one:

"- Most missions are dull, repetitive and sheer filler (True but have you ever played GTA? Mission are always repetitve and mostly dull)"

Just because something has always been flawed doesn't mean it isn't still a flaw when it isn't fixed.

GTAIV is by far the best game in history, i just cant compare it...

I agree with their complaints, and I think the game deserves a 7/10 at best. Even that may be generous.

It's at least a 95/100? That's not really being objective. I would say it's at most a 95/100. It sounds better and makes me more credible. Anyway, my review was 9.5. I opted for 9.5 over a 9 even because I liked the story so much. After much soul searching, I think I over-rated the game because of the hype and my enjoyment of it at the time. After that has subsided a bit, I'd drop that down to a 9, which is still a AAA title.

On topic, the review has a few things completely wrong, imo. Mainly, calling the decreased difficulty a bad thing. Even at its current difficulty, the game is frusterating at several points. If it would have been any harder, I probably wouldn't have finished it and ranked it somewhere in the 8/10 range. I think the difficulty was the perfect balance, if not a little unfair towards the end of the game. Calling it too easy seems like an excuse to lower the score to me.

....and no, lol, it's not even close to the best game in history. Mario Brothers 3, Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, VII, and VIII, Ocarina of Time, and even Resident Evil 4 are marginally to extensively better than GTAIV. We want the game to rank up there with those because it's really the first HD game this generation in that ballpark(besides perhaps Bioshock). When we've been feeding off scraps with the occasional Bioshock, for so long, we just don't know how to act when a really great game comes along.

However, not ever amazing game is the best game ever, and this one surely isn't. I know because I beat it twice, and sold it back within 2 weeks, and I never want to play it again. I still play Mario Brothers 3, FFVII, Chrono Trigger and A Link to the Past. GTAIV is just not as good....imo that is.

I can't blame new gamers for thinking this is the best game ever, though. When you have reviewers shoving 9.7's down your throat for average/mediocre games like Gears of War and Halo 3, when you actually play a 9ish game, you think, "Well, it's so much better than those other "AAA" games that it must be the best game of all time." That's just not the case though, as most games get over-rated off hype and excitement of recent playthroughs, which makes our gamerankings review system as falliable as Famitsu's, but at least they are honest about it.