While I have huge repect for you and your opinions, I have to disagree. What you're essentially saying is that games like Grand Theft Auto 4 get a free pass from criticism and inspection because of their gaming press. I can see how some people love the game and would give it a 10, but really there are lots others that disagree. A spade is a spade and the same can be said of opinion, but if you look at it objectivley enough the flaws seep through like the smell of three day old garbage. The game is high quality but didnt deserve the free pass it caught because of its namesake. The levels of corruption and buyoffs in this industry are ridiculous, and while I have no proof I suspect it had something to do with how critically acclaimed the game was. The AI is subpar, the missions are repititive, the driving mechanics are complete ass, the story takes way too long to go really nowhere, the minigames arent as fun and the taking friends out thing gets old after a few hours real fast. As far as Metal Gear goes you get to experience what seems like some stoners acid shrooming nightmare in place of a plot, the controls are over complicated and annoying, you get dozens upon dozens of weapons and items in the game but most of them are completly useless considering you get a tranq gun with unlimited ammo that pretty much one shots all the guards. Again just my opinions, but the sacred cow perfect game dosent exist.
GodModeEnabled
While I too respect your opinion, you lay out a laundry list of complaints that frankly, can be applied to just about any game and some of them, like your loathing of GTAIV's driving mechanics and your claim that MGS4 contains overly complicated controls, are a complete mystery to me personally.
And with all due respect, the whole "GTAIV bought its scores" is unsubstantiated crap. If we're going to engage in rampant speculation and conjecture, anybody can use these arguments against any game they don't happen to like.
Example:
"Mario Galaxy reviews were bought and paid for."
"RE4 reviews were bought and paid for."
"I don't trust critics and I think (Insert game here) is overrated."
I've play just about everything I can this year and MGS4 and GTAIV are easily the two best games I've played in terms of academic deconstruction and quality. Truth be told, that doesn't mean either game is my favorite personally, but I can recognize why GTAIV and MGS4 received so many accolades just as I can understand why No Country for Old Men won for Best Picture even though it wasn't my absolute favorite film of 2007.
This year, one of my favorite games has been Star Wars: TFU, and while I think it is vastly better than some critics have suggested, there is no way I'd claim it possesses the merits of something like GTAIV or MGS4.
My point is that quality should trump personal taste and calling something overrated is simplistic and unnecessary. Personally, I prefer to discuss underrated games, because I think there are a number of titles that haven't been given enough recognition. Unfortunately, people would rather focus on the negative and get angry because they didn't like a particular game and want to validate their personal opinion rather than merely move onto to something else.
Again, much of this boils down to intellectual maturity and to be fair, there have been plenty of times in the past when I've made ignorant statements because I let my personal biases cloud my objective intelligence.
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