Gamespot should seriously reconsider their review, or at least put someone else on the job.
The armours can sometimes make you go: "Wow". And the weapons can make you say: "Woaah". It takes a while before you get strong armour but it sure is worth it. I've played it for over 24 hours now and i'm not even close to slaying real dragons. Well, 've so far slain 3 type's of dragons, over and over and over again, it's really addictive to see that massive wyvern lying dead on the ground with the feeling: "Mwhuhaha, i killed it!" Customizing your avatar isn't something like Oblivion's Character Customisation but it's still great, Give your character a name, Gender, Hair, Hair color (you can do lots, and lots of colour combinations), Voice (One of the small thing which make a game like MHF complete, choose which "Hah!" and "Hay!" your character does XD).
The sound is great, when fighting wyverns, some scream or roar... SWEET ^_^ That's all i'm gonna say.
Gameplay: It takes a while to learn the controls (it takes a good 2 hours to get used to your weapon and start handling it better), but one of the thing which can be very irritating is combining, there is a combining guide here on Gamespot but it's still difficult to find good combo combinations.
Well, i can keep going like this and make this review 2 pages long but i think that would only scare people away.
Gamespot is so terribly wrong about Monster Hunter, it doesn't needs a friggin targeting system, that's for noobs ^^