First Grand Theft Auto IV review, perfect 10

@ Mr Khan

Trust me. I know. I say those words with a bit of sarcasm. It annoys the hell out of me to see a 10 out of 10, yet the review lists flaws(however minor). I would reserve a 10 for absolute perfection, and there has NEVER been a perfect game before.

I wish games could be reviewed like movies, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 stars. Terrible, Bad, Mediocre, Good, Great. Some sites of do it like that, but it doesn't work unless everyone does, because a 4 star game, is like an 8.0, which it considered mediocre by many.

Something smells fishy. And it's not the mackeral spray in my hair.

I believe it was on page 3 of this magazine's review, one of the screens shows the HUD. It's kinda ugly but small and gets the job done IMO.

No it doesn't.Simply there aren't any perfect games.

well why have a ratings system that goes to 10 then and not 1-9?

Having a review system with an unreachable score as the maximum is plain RETARDED. If you think 10 means absolutely perfect, you're wrong, no game will ever be absolutely perfect. 10 simply means that a game is among the best of the best of games.

yeah that's what i really meant. I don't think there's anyone out there who really thinks 10 means flawless perfection, just as high as it can go on the given scale.

My last description was kinda retarded looking at it now. Reminded me of the famous scene in Spinal Tap.

Sure magazines could do that, but you'd have to wait more than a month after the damn thing came out to see the review. Are you waiting that long to get GTA 4? Cause I can assure you most people won't. They get review copies like a month before the game comes out so they can keep on par with the internet.

Actually, this is the OXM UK version, which gave Halo 3 a 9/10. So they are a bit more trustworthy in my opinion.

Infrogrames simply owns Atari, I think...

That's not the point. It seems lately that hype influences scores, and that's just not fair. I'm a huge Nintendo fanboy, and even I know Brawl isn't a 10. I don't understand why everyone gives GTA a free pass.

I guess my point is that it doesn't matter for GTA IV. Even if hype does influence it's scores, most everyone will buy it anyway. It's why marketing works.

However, I do agree that where it might matter is in the less-hyped smaller game releases. A really good game might only get 7s or 8s because hype wasn't driving the score higher, and that game might get overlooked by cherry pickers who only play 9s or higher. This could hurt sales for smaller publishers that don't have the moolah to throw behind a massive marketing campaign. But that's why we have wonderful market-fillers like GameFly and Blockbuster, that allow you to rent those 7s and 8s that you might not be too sure about. Once you realize they're just as good as that overhyped 10, you'll buy that game. The market finds a way to get your money somehow.

I personally am not a score watcher. I try to find out as much about a game as I can before it's release, then read the reviews (not the scores) after it comes out. If everything I've heard/read makes me think I'd like to play that game, I'll find a way to play it. Often that ends up meaning I'm playing some 7s, even a 6 now and then. But so be it - I have fun and that's the point. Know thyself (see http://preview.tinyurl.com/3roqmq) and scores don't really matter one bit.

Excellent rebuttal. It's hard to find a poster that can have a civil and fair argument on Joystiq with the recent surge in troll activity.
Too bad 9's like Psychonauts in your avatar there didn't spur sales. It's hard to find a link between scores and sales because sometimes they just don't match up. Crap games like Carnival Games sell a shit load and great games like the aforementioned Psychonauts, Beyond Good and Evil, and Okami were doomed to bargain bins, despite glowing reviews. It certainly does point the finger at media hype.

Thanks and the same. Was Carnival Games really hyped though? Some games sell because they are targeted at people who buy stuff - or their parents. Those games are score proof because they exist in a limited market. A parent only has so many options for games that their 8 year old can play. And those games are heavily marketed, if not hyped, to those 8 year olds through commercials during cartoons, etc.

Okami will be interesting. The Wii version is getting quite a bit of hype. I'm wondering how it will score and sell on that system versus how it did on the PS2.

I will say this though - I was listening to the Three Red Lights podcast from 4/9 and became really worried. Hillary and Dan (I think that was the other guy) were obviously blown away by their MP preview. The MP preview was attended by R* marketing folks and others who have a pretty large stake in how the game is perceived by the press. This in itself would be fine - let those guys have a sneak peek and blab about it to the fanboys. What is disturbing, however, is that those same two guys are doing the IGN review of the game. I do not see any way in hell that they can go into that review completely neutral as to the game and give it a professional review. Maybe they are superhuman, but they seemingly have to be affected by their previous experiences with the game and the R* marketing machine.

Now since I said scores don't matter much to me, I'm not focusing my concern on what score they might give the game. Instead I'm focusing on the actual written review. If I'm basing my gameplay decisions on the words they write (in part), and those words have so deeply been influenced by the hype machine, that's worrisome. I haven't seen that on too many games, but GTA IV and MGS 4 appear to be victims of this. As someone that hopes gaming journalism can someday achieve the general acceptance that other pop culture journalism has, this appearance of foul play is a concern, and I hope the smart folks in charge of sites like 1UP and IGN, and mags like OXM, OPM, or EGM, figure out a way to move past this sense of impropriety and toward legitimacy.

Reasoned discourse? I'll agree with what I'd seen Nigeria post previously, in that commenting and the threads lately have been pretty low brow what with the trolling.

I hear what you're saying about not being a 'score-watcher' however I have begun to find metacritic useful in that it provides a variety of opinions from which to search through. At the same time it's pretty pathetic that a number of folks on here seem to resort to using metacritic figures to prove something, whether it be a console, or games supposed superiority.

I think a few good examples were raised. I played through Okami on the PS2, great game. I've noticed on a # of reviews that the general opinion of the motion controlled brush is pretty wonky, yet Cassamassina on IGN praised it. Dude loves N, obviously, but in my honest opinion the brush was pretty simple with the PS2 controller once you were used to it, and I understand how the Wiimote could muck it up needlessly. That being said, it's the Wii, what're they going to do? I'm sure once you're used to it, it's fine.

And Carnival Games? Clearly with the sales #s being what they are, there are a large amount of people enjoying the game. I mean WiiSports is by no means one of the greatest games ever, but the game singlehandedly had 2 of my roommates who never touch videogames playing it, and loving it.

Impossible to say at this point, but I think GTAIV likely deserves a 9 or 10 (or A, yuk yuk yuk) across the board. Like Mass Effect, I expect this will be a game that is absolutely enthralling aside from some pestering issues.

To hype the game? Also, there are people, like yours truly, that don't look at the score and mainly just read the review themselves to see if it's the kind of game that I'll play. One of the reasons why I got No More Heroes even though some magazines panned it.

No More Heroes is a great example of a game where you shouldn't pay attention to scores.

Did you do that on purpose, or inadvertantly? Great example. OoT a perfect game? Much of the time when I see that game mentioned, people reference how awful, lame, terrible, and stupid the water temple was. To me, 10/10 is basically equal to 9/10, in that it's in A-list game, and deserves your attention despite the fact that it's not perfect and has some issues.

anyone that bitches about the water temple just sucked at it, there was nothing wrong in its design, its just the water temple is usually harder in most zelda games.

87/100 is very, very generous.

Hey, look! It's a highly-trained space marine who runs... excuse me... SPRINTS at 0.5MPH and exhausts himself to tears in less than 10 seconds! Hey, look! Another rusty corridor with a skeleton... excuse me... IMP in the closet!

Oh yeah, and for being a bunch of coding geniuses, the id guys decided to write files directly into the root of the C:/ drive. WTF?

60/100 if you ask me.