Score didn't bother me at all. It is a very fair score. 9/10 should be celebrated for a series that has stretched three full generations yet still finds ways to be relevant and fresh. I'm just tired of the political correctness movement that has been invading gamer culture recently so much so that now games are being rated on it. Gamespot isn't the first to do it either. We saw something similar with Dragon's Crown at Polygon. I don't doubt that there are those out there who feel anything less than a 10/10 for GTAV is unacceptable but that shouldn't be the primary issue here.
The issue is that we are seeing reviews, previews, etc... involving this culture push towards political correctness from a very vocal portion of the gaming industry ranging from developers to game journalists. I would go so far as to say that this push originates from Kotaku and the Gawker Network. The criticisms are almost all petty "find something offensive and miss the point" crusades that ignore context, culture, and well pretty much everything else. Then on top of that when we do see a game come out that treats everyone fairly with say Gears of War 3 we get these exact same people saying "Should you really allow women to get chainsawed in this game?" Or here with GTAV where everyone and everything is fair game already.
Maybe the industry needs to go through this to finally be treated like a real entertainment medium but we're giving megaphones to the wrong people here (on both sides of the spectrum). Political Correctness is an awful, evil thing and shouldn't be used as measuring stick for games same as all other mediums but we should also try to not be an exclusive "Boys Only" culture as well.
Wanted to add a few more comments so it doesn't sound like I'm just whining:
It feel like no longer are game reviews about the gameplay or the graphics or the sound or even the story. They are being judged by how politically incorrect they are. To top it all off here, a series that has made its money being politically incorrect is now being judged negatively for being politically incorrect. The ravenous pursuit of equality in games is ignoring context, it is ignoring "the point." Will I buy GTAV? Absolutely. Will this stuff bother me? Not one bit. I mean are we going to negatively review games for being shockingly violent? Or profane?
Judge games by their technical accomplishments not by them failing to abide by your world view.
@unwell-7 The HD re-release of ZOE can be seen as Konami testing the waters to see if there even is enough interest to make a new game. Remember the ZOE3 concept was shown back in May but they stressed that the game has not gone into actual production yet. Strong sales of this HD release (relatively speaking of course) could potentially greenlight the project for full on production.
@Killthesheep I would say no. What we're seeing here is where "survival horror" titles needed to go years ago. Where there is real brutality and real survival. I think this is all shocking because it is coming from the house that Crash and Jak built but it is really something to behold. I think everything that was seen really drives home the point that you are just trying to survive day to day and that you can't trust anyone to the point that simply letting them live might doom you seconds or minutes later.
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