You are not cool if you don't love this game!
In my opinion, I think the game fails as it tries to do too much. They should focus on the core fun in GTA, rather than adding a lot of semi-inspired junk around it. Like the "friends" concept. Continuously having to drag people to play dull mini-games just to pump up my friends stats with them is tedious. And why would I want to dress up my "bad guy"? If I want that kind of &^%#, I would just buy a barbie doll and play with it.
Graphics is great, however what's up with the super black "black"? I continuously tried to adjust my TV, as the black areas of the graphics just seems too black like the TV set has too high contrast settings or something, quite hard on my eyes. The cut scenes has good audio, but the facial expressions of the characters are a bit dated, and cannot even stand up against the now aging Half Life 2.
The gameplay is stretched out over too many mini-games, and although this is supposed to give you freedom, it instead forces you to play a lot of casual games that are plainly tedious. I also feel its too weak as a FPS to be a good shooter, its just too hard to aim and control your character well enough like in a well balanced pure blood FPS. The third person view also makes you lose control of the situation quickly when in a firefight.
So, whats left? The most polished and well functioning part of the game is the driving. Crashing through pedestrians and stealing cars is a lot of naughty fun, but I kind of had my share of that in the numerous previous installments, and in similar games like Saints Row.
For a game that scores 10/10 here on Gamespot, I must say I am quite disappointed. **10**? That should be a PERFECT game, I just cant get that to make sense. I think someone got carried away by the hype here... Perhaps the reviewer was scared to not like it a lot, as he would be picked on by the other gamers. If he likes it most of all, he must be coolest of all and perhaps people will respect me again, he thought...
I guess if you're a die hard GTA fan, nothing can ever convince you that your taste is biased and it is in fact a game with a lot of boring parts. But, that is the reality IMHO.
This is another game I will shelf and never finish unless I truly find some empty and boring points in my life where I'm desperate to have something, anything, to pass time. Or I may just find some bubble wrap and pop it.