The 11th Hour: how Take Two made sure journalists gave GTA IV "overrated" reviews.
"Very interesting read on a reviewer's look back at his review for GTA IV, and why this game and others can be "overrated" simply because of the lack of time alloted by game publishers, and the window they have to publish their own reviews.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18761Some great segments:"
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Four weeks ago in this publication I referred to Grand Theft Auto IV’s depiction of immigrants as being more nuanced and sympathetic than that demonstrated by the exquisite Baltimore-set television drama, The Wire.
But what’s really nagged and irritated me over the following weeks is that, with a little distance and perspective, the bold proclamation was so obviously made, like so many from within our industry, with the aim of elevating video games to the respectability of more established media via bald association.
The opinion piece was written following a short weekend's playing of the game just prior to its release and, as I’ve played on through the rest of the story, the fault lines in that specific claim have become ever more apparent. While I adore the slow pacing of the first few hours, the way Nico starts off on the straight and narrow and is dragged into the shadows of the American Dream by forces of poverty and necessity, the game soon enough swings into full adolescent-posing-as-adult narrative fizz.
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In the weeks prior to GTA IV’s release, Rockstar made promises that print and online publications would receive early review code so that they might fully ingest and digest Liberty City in order to deliver mature and balanced opinions on its day of launch.
In reality, this was not the case, with precious few publications getting to spend prolonged time with the game ahead of release. The first review of the game came from the UK’s Official Xbox magazine bearing the worrying caveat “based on unfinished code”.
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At best then, by the time the game had been played, copy written and subbed ready for the Tuesday morning, most journalists (both in the UK and the US) had played for only a few hours, experiencing just a fraction of the game’s content, a situation testified to by various admissions in professional reviews.
Time Magazine dubbed their piece Grand Theft Auto IV: The 6.24% Review while the Associated Press reviewer, Lou Kesten, admitted to having spent only spent eight hours with the game.
Slate Magazine’s excellent Chris Baker admitted he only had chance to ‘scratch the surface of the game’ going on to say in a comment on N'Gai Croal’s Level Up blog: "I couldn't even attempt to be definitive…it was kinda liberating”.
The BBC noted the phenomenon saying: "Most reviewers were not sent advance copies of the game, and instead had to attend Rockstar offices or sit in booked hotel rooms to play the game,” where Rockstar could keep an eye and some pressure on them. While these few admitted the partial and necessarily subjective nature of their reviews, how many passed off their impressions as being definitive of the whole?
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For the reviewer it’s an inconvenience at best, at worst a pernicious and blatant attempt to colour their opinion in as short an amount of time as possible. Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii: all big name titles (in both size and stature) only supplied to many games reviewers a few days before their release.
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What’s interesting is the recent rise in a different approach to reviews, one that isn’t dependent on their being published on the day of a game’s launch and that doesn’t doesn’t come with a score attached. The staggering popularity of Ben ‘Yathzee’ Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation videos (which, according to Alexa.com have booted host site The Escapist’s profile up several internet leagues), are almost always focused on games that the viewers have already experienced first hand post-release.
It's hard to research if a game is worth your time when the media fail to do their jobs. The gaming media is such a joke. Never trusting this crap again. Guess I'm back to waiting for trusted players, and user reviews. Something like the old videogamereviews.com where normal people gave their opinions on what they played from finished games they bought at the store.
GTA4 was lesser of the past GTA3d's for what I play the GTA's for (having fun doing random things). It only topped GTA:SA in graphics, physics, and controls. Sure most would think that's awesome enough. They left out the good stuff that should have been a given in GTA4:
*Awesome and fun codes that are easy and quick to put in - This phone crap is a pain.
*Gangs, and people on the street that want you dead - We don't have all these weapons to kill innocent helpless pedestrians, and cops.
*Interaction with random pedestrians - It was done in GTA:SA, and bully. GTA4 was expected to have a lot of interactivity with any and everybody in the game. Heck a simple positive and negative answer like gta:sa would have been immersing enough. This game has a lot of stuff but it feel like you're not a part of it.
*No activities outside of watching tv - Going to plays, or comedy clubs, and playing dull games with the annoying in game friends that wont' stop calling. GTA:SA had more arcade games, horse race betting, casino games, and more. What happened here.
*Indoors - The game was announced to have a smaller area than SA but more buildings you can go in, and without loading. In the end it feels like it's the same amount of interiors and most are just long stare cases to the top of a roof.
*Good rewards - finding 5,000 pidgins and killing them get you one helicopter, and it removes the cap on your weapon ammo!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's right, with the lacking unlimited ammo code you get to find and kill a million small gray dots for this perk! Most of the rewards is money. Since you can't buy cool buildings, lavish condos, and super tricked out helicopters with neon lights on the blades this money reward for majority of the side quests is pretty stupid.
And none of this stuff was mentioned in a review. I would have definitely thought twice about getting this game or recommending it if I had this kind of information. This game is all missions, and very very very little free roaming with interesting things to do. The thing is, there are a lot more that this GTA left out that other GTA 3D's had. Swimming underwater for one. It's a pretty game but it just feel too much like leggo blocks and less like an erector set with battery powered motors, and the works.
Can you imagine a taxi, ambulance, fire truck missions mode in this game with these graphics? I liked having this crazy taxi stuff in GTA. And some people think I'm crazy for not feeling GTA4. It just seem like it try it's best to annoy me. For example, re entering the "remove wanted level" code in the phone each time a explosion chain trigger some other explosion. Then there's the times when wanted levels just keep coming back up based on some odd, stupid, and unknown reason causing me to spam it until it stops.
I never liked GTA for missions, and the missions in gta4 didn't really change that. They are a bit better due to the controls, and triggered events that I mistook as total random and possible outside of missions at first. GTA:SA beats it in mission variety to me. I really wanted this game to top gta:sa. It's sad that I still play that game, even after GTA4's launch.
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Darn the wait. 
If they ban GTA4... than they should ban violent movies like fk'ing... anything with gun violence... Why cant people realize we play VIDEO GAMES to do stuff we normally cant actually do, or know is wrong to do irl. Politics and parrents wanting to ban sertain game's piss me off so much...