Part of the reason is backlash. What do you expect to happen with a slew of perfect scores and fanboys stinking up forums about how it's the best game ever when it's not?

GTA4 is going to get whipped for years to come.

People like to insult these games, like how people love to hate on Halo 3 (incidentally I thought that was a distinctly average SP game) but also it is because the game was sooooooooooo heavily hyped, it was never fully going to reach those expectations, but I still think it is the best game of the generation

GTA IV was a sub-par game, and was over-rated. That being said, it is a pretty awesome game. And IGNs review of it was fine, and I did enjoy the game, but like most people, I had no drive to finish it.

I don't hate it. I just thought it was boring.

^this

Fact: The moon is a space station controlled by pink elephants

Whenever I play it, I always end up driving around and just killing police, stealing there weapons and having shootouts. I don't think I've ever finished one mission yet. The whole mafioso thing really doesn't interest me that much either. There's really nothing that makes me want to play the story of this game. I would rather be playing a hand drawn knight dude chopping people up in castles.

This whole idea of wanting to make a game as close to real life as possible doesn't cut it sometimes. They spend so much time in trying to make it so real that they forget about simple fun.

That's why I like companies like Treasure and The Behemoth. Their games are simple and fun.

I like the game,great multiplayer,and can`t wait to download episode 1.

The only problem for me was that it was too short.

Ooh... Agreed.

The game was good,but it didn't deserve all the perfect scores that it got.
That's a reason why I think some people bash it.