Starting to Feel the GTA 4 Hunger Pangs: UK OXM Gives a "10"

With little over 2 weeks remaining until the release date of Grand Theft Auto 4 I started to steep myself in GTA hype today. After being destroyed again in Ikaruga, I fired up the 4th "Move Up Ladies" trailer on my Xbox for the 50th time. I then skipped on over to the official website which has seen massive updates in the last couple months. There I watched the video character vignettes, downloaded desktop wallpapers and generally could not help myself from feeling like the giddy, anti-social gaming dork that I am likely to become once April 29th rolls around.

Earlier tonight I knew I needed to scratch my open-world crime spree itch and picked up Saints Row on the cheap. How cheap? How does $20 Canadian sound to you? This was during my dinner break at work. I'm naughty. I also can't wait to get home and play the poor man's current-gen GTA...

Back at my desk, the obsessing continued unchecked when I wandered over to Xbox 360 Fanboy and found their story about OXM UK's exclusive review of GTA 4. A "10" is a rather lofty score and can be looked upon with some suspicion. After all, critics heaped "10"s at Halo 3 like the world was coming to an end. The review, while glowing, describes some faults that obviously could not dimish the overall quality of the game. My biggest reservation lies with the aiming system. The GTA series has always been famous for serving up "a bit of everything", mashing up genres and integrating wacky mini-games into the core game play. In this latest installment, they seem to be trying to make inroads into the shooter genre. I'm curious to see how the cover system pans out, however, from what I've already read in the previews, the aiming system sounds positively unintuitive. You're essentially depressing the left trigger button partway in order to free aim and depressing it completely for the classic lock-on targetting. It makes me wonder who is going to bother using free-aim unless there is some design decision that will penalize players for over-using lock-on aiming. Bizarre.