I recently finished GTA 4 and wrote a review about it. The review can be found here foxhound.metalgearsolidus.com.

Here is an excerpt from the review:

Final thoughts/gripes: While it took me four months and a total of about 47 hours of gameplay. When you see the ending and get your money, you ask yourself thats it? The game itself has it’s problems. The cover system is not as responsive as it should be and the shootouts in the game are not that difficult if you know how to use this cover system. Hey, Rockstar!!! For the next GTA could you come up with more missions that don’t include chasing. I swear almost every mission in the game is chasing someone down to kill them. My favorite missions in the game where the pick-up missions. What made these mission great was you’d pick up something only to be chased and have to escape from the cops or enemies or sometimes both. It gave the game a thrill that was different then the you chase someone down and kill them. That is my biggest gripe with this game is the repetitive missions. Once you get towards the middle of the game and fail a mission two or three times you start questioning should I continue? I say continue but just remember the ending is not rewarding.

My grade: B (people playing GTA for the first time) or C (long time GTA players).

To read the entire review use the link above.

I never finishied it.

I thought it was really good and i own all GTA games but the first

It may be a repetitive game but it is no way near as repetitive and boring as Assassins Creed.
BTW: I give GTA 4 an 8.5 out of 10

So why is this game rated so highly on review aggregate websites. Its bullshit, no way is it up there with Zelda and Mario.

^hype.

i'd have to say its because of the overwhelming hype of launch.. when the first two 10/10 reviews came out, other media outlets probably felt a sense of necessity to also give it a 10/10 even when they mentioned several faults to go along with it.. including some things that shouldn't have been considered acceptable at all (pop-ins).

Also, they were paid

EDIT: forgot to reply to the topic itself

Nice little write up, i'm yet to play the game as i am waiting for the pc version, but everytime i read something like this, it is one step closer to me not spending my money.. so i guess thankyou for the advance warnings

i played it for 10 hours and then gave up......

I thought it was the best GTA game ever and I own every single GTA game there has been.