GTA 6 review scores: Metacritic, OpenCritic and every major review
There are no GTA 6 reviews yet, and any score you see before the embargo lifts is fake. This is the page that will collect them, and what to know until it does.
As of 21 October there are no published reviews of Grand Theft Auto 6, no Metacritic score and no OpenCritic score. Rockstar has not announced when the review embargo lifts.
This page will list every major review and its score as they go up, with the aggregate at the top. Until then, here is what is known, and how to read what arrives.
When reviews are expected
Reports say review copies go out before the end of October, which would give critics about three weeks. Rockstar's own history points to an embargo the day before launch: GTA 5 reviews went up on 16 September 2013 for a 17 September release, and Red Dead Redemption 2 reviews on 25 October 2018 for the 26th. Our embargo piece goes through every report and how reliable it is.
If that pattern holds, expect a wave of reviews on 18 November, the day before the game unlocks.
Any score before then is fake
A game this size attracts invented reviews. Screenshots of a Metacritic page with a number on it, a leaked magazine page, a score in a YouTube thumbnail. Until the embargo lifts, none of them is real. The tell is simple: a genuine review is published by the outlet itself, on its own site, at the same hour as everyone else's.
The bar it is being measured against
Three of Rockstar's open-world games sit among the highest-rated games ever made on the aggregators.
- Grand Theft Auto IV (2008): 98 on Metacritic.
- Grand Theft Auto V (2013): 97.
- Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018): 97.
That is the comparison every review of GTA 6 will be making, whether it says so or not. Anything below the mid-90s will be reported as a disappointment, which says more about the bar than about the game.
How Metacritic and OpenCritic differ
Metacritic weights its critics, and it does not publish the weights. OpenCritic shows a plain average of the reviews it counts, a Top Critic average, and the percentage of critics who recommend the game. When the two disagree by a point or two, that is usually why. OpenCritic's recommend percentage is the more useful number for deciding whether to buy, because it is not dragged around by one harsh outlier.
What to read the reviews for
You probably already know whether you are buying it. The reviews are still worth reading for the things trailers cannot tell you.
- How it runs on a base PS5 and on Xbox Series S. Rockstar captured the launch trailer on a base PS5, and Digital Foundry found compromises there in August. Technical reviews usually land alongside the critics.
- How long the story is, and how much of Leonida it opens up early.
- What there is to do without GTA Online, since there is no online mode at launch.
- Bugs, which on a game this size are a question of how many, not whether.
What is not known
The embargo date and hour, whether technical outlets get the same date as critics, and whether every outlet gets code at the same time. This page will be updated the moment the first review is live.
Sources
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