Why do people say that GTA IV is overrated?

[Eipok Kruden]

Personally, I love GTA IV. It's a fantastic game in my opinion and Liberty City is just an amazingly detailed city. It's gotten even better with the release of The Lost and Damned, but there seem to be a ton of people that think it's the most overrated game of 2008. Why? What's so bad about it? Why doesn't it live up to the hype? Because it does for me.

 

[Pigeon_Grenade]

i ended up Getting it from My mom For a Birthday Present, i like the game, it does Exactly what i thought it whould

 

[RAWKSTAR]

Its alright.. just the other games were far better and I thought this one would live up to the zany standerd of them. But It was just to dull and meh.

In my opinion

 

[Avatar Roku]

It was great...for about two weeks. Then it started to get repetitive, for me at least.

 

[Eipok Kruden]

It was great...for about two weeks. Then it started to get repetitive, for me at least.

You didn't like multiplayer?

 

[lightingbird]

I love this game.

 

[Gormers1]

My biggest drawback in the storymode is that the game always tells you what to do (too detailed), often has repetitive mission design, and that there often is only one way to finish missions.

 

[TheTygerfire]

1. Roman and others calling you
2. Car controls


....and that's it, the game is completely awesome.

 

[mooncalf]

I've only played IV briefly on a friend's PS3, I didn't have to worry about derided tutorials or escort missions and I enjoyed myself like any GTA I've played (I have all the rest.)

GTA has historically been a game that is unconventional like a hero parade though (Remember GOURANGA?), so maybe 'gritty realism' has brought the game to an uncanny valley of sorts. A point where your sub-brain shouts "Hey, I may want to break every rule of law and decency and curb-stomp random pedestrians, but I don't want it to be for reals!"

 

[Axolotl]

Because it's the second highest rated game of all time.
That's alot to live up to and for many people it's flaws mean that it just isn't as good as it was hyped to be.

 

[maninahat]

My beef was that you were pestered to do relatively mundane things like go on the internet or play pool with friends. The minigames and socialising are far less prolific than in GTA San Andreas, but the fact that they are there at all (and occasionally require you to get involved with to complete missions) seems to take away from the exciting car chases and gun fights which the series is supposed to be about.

Also, the grey aesthetics (particularly obvious when flying over the city) makes the game ugly to look at.

 

[Zenn3k]

Hey Niko, its Roman, you want to go bowling?

Hey Niko, its Roman, want to go see a show?

Hey Niko, its 20 other people, want to go drinking?

Hey Niko, if you turn off your phone to ignore these, you can't progress through the story.

Its a good game, but that gets annoying.

Also, the driving physics suck and you honestly can't do ANYTHING in the game without the cops being on your ass instantly. Seriously, I've never seen ANY city with a 1/10 police to citizen ratio, they are literally EVERYWHERE.

 

[Eipok Kruden]

My beef was that you were pestered to do relatively mundane things like go on the internet or play pool with friends. The minigames and socialising are far less prolific than in GTA San Andreas, but the fact that they are there at all (and occasionally require you to get involved with to complete missions) seems to take away from the exciting car chases and gun fights which the series is supposed to be about.

Also, the grey aesthetics (particularly obvious when flying over the city) makes the game ugly to look at.

All that socializing is optional. I actually only did it a few times when it was actually required. I was able to get through the entire game without the helicopter access, gun truck, etc... The only favors I had were the taxi thing from Roman and the thing that cleared your wanted level by calling that bent cop.

 

[ultimatechance]

the game is awesome, but not as awesome as the critics praise it to be. When you have all those prefect scores pressuring the game to be as good to the gamers, its impossible to live up to that expectation. Its not a hated game, just overrated.

 

[FarleShadow]

GTA: IV is overrated, alot, because when you boil it down the game is only good. Slightly above average. It would have been alot better if it hadn't contained characters I wanted to drive off a fucking cliff everytime they rang me up to go and play fucking pool or look at tits. No, I'm not your mum, stop calling me.

I played about 40-50% through the game before my brain refused to continue, driving me to drive a taxi into a river. I play games for fun, GTA: IV reminded me about what most games of today are about, boring you with shit game mechanics until you quit them.

Except L4D's verses mode, oh lawd, that's halarious.

 

[maninahat]

The game is good but it was definitly over-rated. Reviewers were giving it 10 out of 10s, even though a 10 ratng would constitute 100% perfect in my book. There probably is no such thing as a perfect game, so reviews shouldn't be giving top marks. I think people have trouble rating stuff out of 10 accurately anyway. You'll get reviews who'll (for instance) complain that in Fallout 3, the brown environments, repetative layouts and ugly weapons give the game poor visuals, but will then rate the appearance 6/10. 6/10? 4/10 would be more accurate, based on the crticisms they make. When it comes to rating main stream games, reviewers give 6/10=bad, 7/10=ok, 8/10=good, 9/10=great, 10/10=over-optimistic. What the hell? And I thought a 5/10 meant average.

 

[Teh_Doomage]

I felt it missed the mark of what the genre is. GTA was all about over the top with small amounts of realism, San Andreas was a good mix of over the top and marginal realism.

With GTA IV, they took the over the top out and just left realism.

While the closest competitor, Saints Row 2, knew the over the top was what the genre was about.

 

[ButtonedDownParadox]

As someone who absolutely loved GTA IV (And I've actually been mulling around on an abstract review to post on here) I could see why people would dislike it.

One being backlash. It's THE highest rated game ever on Metacritic so there are people expecting the best game ever and somehow shocked when it's not.

Two being driving. Not everybody can figure out how to use a brake or that you won't be doing rally racing with a Toyota sedan. So they hate the driving.

Three being the story. The ending goes outside of the prototypical taking over the crime empire of games of it's ilk. I won't say it's a necessarily good ending or even the best ending they could have to serve the story. It just is.

Some things don't make sense either. What happened to Bulgarin? He's being Niko's nemesis throughout the game just to disappear along with his diamonds.

Spoiler:

What the hell is Dimitri Rascalov's problem? I don't know his motives so he's not really an inspired villian like Tenpenny in San Andreas...although to be fair Dimitri wasn't voiced by Samuel L. Jackson.

Four and this is probably the biggest one. The cell phone. Ringing all the time. For the most part I find that they leave you alone once you get their perk, Brucie aside, but it's a somewhat uninspired mechanic that nobody would have missed.

And finally five. Not much to do afterwards. Sure you can actually go and gun down all those pigeons for a *yawn* helicopter with machine guns on it. Now that I think of it this is probably the biggest caveat people have. Bring back some tanks and jetpacks and parachutes and you'll have the masses back on board with this series.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

For me it was just that I'd had so much more fun with San Andreas. It felt like that game did everthing right to appeal to me as a gamer. Lots of fun activities, lots of customization, a decent enough story with memorable actors voicing the roles, and a lot of unique gameplay elements that no one else had done.

Then enter GTA4. Next to no character customization, all the fun activities of SA are gone, all the cool little things I loved in SA like the eating to stay healthy and working out to get buff dynamics are history and I'm stuck playing a character I don't really relate to in a big empty city with nothing to do but wash my car and bowl with my whiney pal Dwayne.

Add in to the mix that Saints Row gave me an experience much closer to what I wanted from GTA4 and Saints Row 2 was closing in on release while I was dating cousin Roman and there you have it.

Honestly though, I didn't think a lot of people were saying GTA4 was overrated. I thought it was just me. Can you point me to the people who caused you to make this thread? We can all get together and complain about riding bikes in formation in "The Lost and the Bored".