In less than 2 hours people were writing "reviews" and scoring the game a perfect 10.

What the hell? If you haven't completed a majority of the game or put at least 10 hours into it, you shouldn't be levying a score. It's that friggin simple. Anything less and you can't claim to have a clue worth sharing.

And a perfect 10, no less? Come on.

I pre-ordered this for my best friend as a Christmas present and went over there to check it out after work last night. It IS extremely good. It is an improvement in every way from its predecessors. But it is nowhere near perfect. The character graphics, particularly on cutscenes, seemed lacking in what could have been done. This is likely a tradeoff, since tight views and closeups of the people are much less of a focus of the game than the environment and vehicles, which look brilliant. The police are still clunky. I love the better handling of wanted level and avoidance as well as the lack of police just conveniently spawning around me... but I had to run into 5 cruisers before 1 even reacted to me only to have another spot me punching a guy on the sidewalk from over two blocks away... in his rearview mirror. These are just two very small things that are easy to ignore amidst the bevy of awesome features, but they ARE flaws.

Flawed != Perfect.

With 3 hours last night I had as much, if not more, exposure than the majority of the reviewers did before handing out their OMG!!PERFECT!!!10++!! scores. Either they were drunk or stupid. At least Gamespot's score of 10 has an excuse... they got paid. I don't know why the hype is so infectious that people can't just play a game and decide what they like or don't like without having to have someone else tell them.

I'm not sure if I want to run out to pick it up or not. It will definately be worth the price just playing it through once, let alone trying to find/do everything and the replay entertainment of just driving around to enjoy what appears to be a well-constructed artificial world. We'll see. If I do, you can bet you will see a review from me only after I've had a few weeks to be assured of my opinion.