I'm playing Grand Theft Auto 4 at the moment and I'm enjoying it, but I'm struggling to grasp why it snapped up the crown of one of Gamespot's top rated titles? Don't get me wrong, I like the game a lot, but I wouldn't say that it's surpassed my open world game playing experiences of the past. The characters are fantastic, and the cinematic snippets are really fun to watch and these in themselves are frequent and strong enough to warrant a heartily good time. And living in the game is also pretty good. I like being called by my degenerate friends, Roman and Brucie, to arrange jobs and nights out- it helps sink me into the skanky world of Liberty City. But I find the game play in itself a little shallow. The missions are incredibly similar and don't offer much excitement; just a bunch of very small errands of similar velocity making for a fairly tame time. But maybe this is the point? A hell of a lot of content, but not a massive amount of excitement. The detail to life is great, but a lot of the missions feel slack- A little half baked- It's a bit like tucking into an all you can eat buffet with food stacked high- enough to give you the love sweats; and then finding out that it all tastes like chicken. I get why people enjoy this game, but for me, I don't know if it really does anything tremendously special.