How the hell did GTA IV get a 98 on Metacritic?

Just what the frick?

Bad on foot controls, even worse driving controls, input lag in shooting, run of the mill combat controls, phone calls during the most inconvenient moments possible(shoot outs), barren worlds, lackluster A.I, literally "delivery guy" the game, since it mostly relied on fetch quests. I would have enjoyed it better, if the driving controls were great, but those controls are horse shit. I remember people defending the controls by saying "well duh, its realistic control scheme" how? Thats not how my car handles. This to this day is still my biggest unsolved mystery, its like the Critics were smoking some good stuff at the time while playing it. sigh.

I havent touched GTA V at all -_-

@trollhunter2: I didn't get it either. I was mildly interested in the story and world for a bit, but it's just way overhyped

Money, money, money! GTAV i felt was a lot better.

@trollhunter2:

Because it kicked ass and was an entire world above the old GTA games. For me, it was the shock of how amazing it was! Walking, driving never felt so real! The story was great too and had a fascinating cast of characters that were very unique to the series. The missions kinda sucked though compared to GTA V.

Were the cars extra bouncy like gta 4, the cars in there could get so much air they almost fly

That is a good question. It bored me. I never got very far though. I'm having the same problem with GTA V. They really need to start their games off where it's more engaging. I really need to try to beat them both eventually though.

san andreas was the best

I've wondered this since the game was first released. I think it is unquestionably the worst 3D GTA game and most fans seem to agree that it is the worst yet it somehow scored better than any other GTA game by professional reviewers. I'm convinced that a lot of reviewers got paid off to give the game such great scores.

Same way Uncharted continues to get high scores, game critics are extremely bad at their jobs

The game was basically more than 70% driving, drive to this place, kill this guy, car chase scene etc. rinse and repeat. Lack of variety whatsoever. Rockstar had balls, basing most of the game on the boat.... ooops I mean car controls

Good question... its got to be one of the most overrated games ever in my eyes. GTA V isn't far behind either to be honest.

LMAO that awful driving and those mannequin movements? That game is awful.

As for OP. Hype and marketing. GTA games by default have a 90 score on Metacritic. Add a point for every 10 million unit sold.

San Andreas, Vice City and III were tons of fun.

IV tried to be gritty and tell a compelling story and failed miserably at that. Not to mention they dropped the over-the-top missions in favor of chase sequences and boring shootouts. Throw in the bad characters and boring world and you got yourself the worst GTA in the series.

V went back to its roots but the missions are too short and the story is even more forgettable.

Its a good game, but not 98 good...

Because the majority of reviewers are either brain damaged or paid off by Rockstar.

There are more stupid people than sensible ones

@Juub1990: "IV tried to be gritty and tell a compelling story and failed miserably at that."

Alot of people/critics praised it's story and that's how you get high scores in modern games. =(

Game reviewers aren't actually critics. They're just like any other gamer who gets swept up in hype or negativity. They're just like any other gamer who writes up an opinion piece and slaps a number on it.

Only difference is that they have a platform to speak from. If said platform is well known, then their number gets averaged in with the others.

Hopefully some day gamers will realize how stupid all of this is and by extension realize that Metacritic is the apex of said stupidity.

i remember they gave gta IV a 10/10

"I'm gonna emigrate to the United States and have a new life devoid of crime and bloodshed"

*Proceeds to kill rob and kidnap, exactly like he used to.*

Don't know who praised that god awful story. At least GTA San Andreas was a satire. IV took itself too seriously.

I personally gave GTA IV a 92 on my blog so I know how you feel

@Juub1990:

4 sucked. It's was for long time the reason I still don't have 5.

I still plan on getting 5 though.

V has better missions sadly they are way too short. It's far more entertaining than IV and went back to the silliness that were Vice City and San Andreas. Very solid game. I'd recommend it. Doesn't have all the faults that its predecessor does.

What? Are you waiting for an overall consensus? GTA V launched in 2013!

Either way, guess that makes it 70,000,000 and 1.

I honestly will never know ether.

It didn't deserve 10's across the board, but it was a solid 9 in it's time. "Realistic" games tend to not age well, especially console versions. Of course the game did have issues with optimization on PC, and the console versions were choppy as hell. I'd say that deserved at least a 1 or 2 point penalty. But in terms of "open world" games, it was pretty much the best game in it's time. If the console versions weren't running at like 22 FPS I'd say it even deserved it's 10.

GTA V was a massive improvement BTW in the gameplay department (as was Red Dead Redemption, but GTA V really took the polish up another level). I can't wait for RDR 2.

The bowling.

Gaming journalism is a joke especially when they get promotion and stuff from companies. I think youtube has some of the more reliable reviewers as oppose to larger media outlet.

@R3FURBISHED: @Juub1990:

If there was one bright spot with GTA 4 was online which I found OK but extremely flawed.

How is 5?

@PSP107: Better online by far. That's why R* have been lazy with making DLC's.

I still think its a ton better than V. The euphoria engine, the story, and the characters were awesome. There was an awesome attention to detail. GTA V stripped way too much away from IV's engine. Simplifying the melee to make it worth nothing, a downgrade in quality of the little stranger missions, a much shorter story depsite having 3 different characters to explore, and the lack of realism between the way the player character interacts with the people around them. In V, it's hostile, that is it. I loved just walking around picking fights in IV, because people would act in many different ways. In V? Shit, they just run away and scream, EVERY TIME.

Heritage.

Hyper aggressive and best enjoyed in a closed match with friends. A lot of GTA Online is fending off the assholes that play GTAO

Because it was and still is a good game. Millennials these days don't even know what's good game lol

Would you say it's one of the best games of all time?

For those who live and breathe scores, a 7 is a good game, even in the lulzy manner in which this industry uses the scale.

Right now, GTAIV is sitting in 3rd place at Metacritic. A 98. That means excellent, amazing, masterpiece, prime, etc.. not just "good" lol.

Its boring just like any other GTA game. the series in general is mediocre, bad driving and shooting combine with boring point A to point B missions.

Loved bowling with my cousin.

I picked this game up at midnight in 2008, and to many of us back then (friends back then) the game was an absolute 10/10.. from SA to GTA IV was a massive jump in the physics engine.

Hitting pedestrians didn't just do the same animation over the hood of your car, shooting people in the streets would not always kill them, they would crawl, curl up, ect.

The game had a fantastic physics engine for 2008, and it introduced the cell phone (iphones were still new)

People underestimate the pop culture back then too, the game was fantastic.

For many years now the gaming industry has relied on misleading game journalism and an over-flowing ruse of hype to sell games. Mix that with blind popularity of the franchise and you have Rockstar being very rich. I'm not saying the games are bad, because V is a very worthy game of the praise imo, and the older titles are great games as well, but IV was just over rated to the ends of the earth.

Yeah 4 sucked but 5 was back on track IMO. Nothing beats Vice City still to me.

Because GTA is one of the most overhyped/overrated series. They are not even close to bad games, but they carry a rep where people see R* + GTA and the floodgates of instant 10/10s follow.

And I feel V >> IV.

I actually really enjoyed IV but it fell short compared to San Andreas. The physics engine, open world graphics, and story made up for that.

Simple my dear OP, Niko Bellic and his cousin Roman Bellic were, and still are, the best duo there ever was. Why? You can go bowling with them. Beat that world!

It has aged poorly, but it was an incredible experience at the time.

It was one of the best open world games at the time. Now whether or not the 98 score is accurate, I wouldn't recommend dwelling on that aspect. Looking back at it now, in hindsight, I couldn't really tell you....but at the time it was quite the game, for me anyways. The other thing is we are not measuring the temperature outside....i.e: review scores are not an exact science so I would just take this as "the game was very well received at launch".

I have no idea. In my books the game is a 7 ( at least Nico and his cousin are more interesting characters than previous GTA games but thats all it got compare to them ) and a disappointment from both Vice city and San Andreas

Because the game is amazing

It was good in its time, a big step up from Xbox/PS2 era GTA games. Though, its controls easily got dated when modern conventions in game mechanics started to solidify. Though, the game map size is much more suited for a game like GTA IV than GTA V's map is just to vast with very little to do in most of it. And at least GTA IV got two meaty expansions, GTA V really needed that and we never got that.

Anyhow, I remember when it released that everyone was saying the PS3 version was better. Went to a friend's place who had the PS3 version and pretty much the game/system shit the bed anytime I got a 3 star wanted level firefight with police, talking like couple frames a second bad. I had the Xbox 360 version and shit like this just didn't happen like it was on the PS3. I'm baffled on how unquestionably accepted it was that the PS3 version was better than the Xbox 360 version.

Video games take a long time to complete and longer to understand how the inner-workings of a video game; its mechanics, the level design and the successes of the game loop hold up over time.

I think the structure of journalistic reviews don't hold up over time and are of greater benefit to consumers in unearthing glaring or surface level flaws in a video game like technical issues, poor pacing or otherwise boring game-play upon initial release of a game. Perhaps I am wrong but top gaming sites write reviews quickly. Although review copies are sent out early, a journalist needs to see as much as possible to write a review of a video game in time for the consumer release.

I think that is why certain games that review greatly upon their initial release may not hold the test of time. Game mechanics that seemed cool and novel at the time, don't exactly make for fun additions down the road for the average players' experience (looking at you GTA IV buddy system).

Games with glaring issues such as No Man's Sky or Star Fox Zero are easier for game reviewers to dissect because the flaws are more blatant than a video game who's flaws may not be apparent until the game is played over a long stretch of time and under conditions that match the average player. Games that undergo this process of disenchantment usually don't contain control or technical flaws. It's usually something more deeply rooted.

That isn't to say that I think games like GTA IV are bad or don't deserve to be adored by people but that the potential flaws that might gripe one player aren't carefully rooted out by the reviewer. Likely because they didn't have the time to unearth them. Journalistic reviews move damn swiftly.

Even at the time I couldn't get behind the gameplay, but holy shit that open world was beyond impressive. The missions were a drag, but I got my moneys worth from taking in the open world and screwing around doing random shit.

I remember picking up GTA4 thinking "Ok, this is the game that will tide me over until the greatness that is MGS4 arrives".

In hindsight, I think I enjoyed GTA4 more lol.

I honestly think it was because the critics rallied to 'save' Take 2, who were under threat of a buyout from EA at the time. GTA4 is vapid, and nothing else explains the inexplicably glowing praise it got- even series fans hate that game.