The Stupid Gamer

I’ve said on numerous occasions off the blog that I feel that GTA IV just might go down in history as the most overrated (in regards to review scores) game of all time. Currently the Xbox 360 version of the game is the highest reviewed game ever, with an average review score of 97.632%. Now, I don’t ever have a problem with a game getting high praise, but I really need to feel that the game deserves it. I need to feel like the review process was thorough, objective, and free from tampering.

Does GTA IV deserve the title of “highest reviewed game of all time”?

When the GTA IV reviews starting rolling in (starting with the first exclusive handing out a 10/10), I figured reviewers were either caught up in a whirlwind of hype, or the game might really be that good. After playing it for 20+ hours, however, I’m baffled how even the most hype-driven reviewer could be handing down perfect scores. Well, Simon Parkin, a British journalist, offers a few ideas why early reviews for GTA IV were so overwhelmingly positive (including his own), despite the game’s obvious flaws. In his article, found at Gamasutra, many reasons are offered up. Here are a few choice snippets:

Judgments cast before they’d been adequately weighed; words sold before they’d been properly valued; shallow opinions that should have been presented as the first word in a conversation but were dropped with the clacking gavel pound of a conclusion. Yeah, every writer has regrets.

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 [speaking of his own review] 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.

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”.

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?

The piece goes on to offer some suggestions of what can be done with big title reviews, and it offers a little more detail into what went on with the GTA IV review process. Personally I feel that the writer hits home with several points. Here’s the link to the full story: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18761

My own review for GTA IV is still on its way. While I’m not completely down on the game, it’s safe to say that I’m not about to gush over it. I’ve spent careful time with the game, and I feel that I’m in a position to give an honest and straightforward opinion on the game. Look for the review later this week.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 11:26 pm and is filed under Editorials and Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.