GTA 6 Metacritic score: GTA 4's 98 is the series record

The series record on Metacritic has stood since 2008: Grand Theft Auto IV carries a Metascore of 98, drawn from 86 critic reviews. Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto III follow on 97, Vice City and San Andreas on 95. The Grand Theft Auto VI listing on the same site, checked on September 18, 2026, shows “tbd” where the Metascore goes, and the date “Nov 19, 2026” for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. That leaves 62 days to November 19, the date Take-Two put in writing on June 24, 2026.

Game	Metascore	Critic reviews
Grand Theft Auto IV	98	86
Grand Theft Auto III	97	56
Grand Theft Auto V	97	66
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas	95	80
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City	95	62

Checked September 18, 2026, from the ratingValue field of each listing’s markup.

That 98 puts Grand Theft Auto IV fourth on Metacritic’s all-time ranking, behind The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and its 99. Red Dead Redemption 2, released ten years after GTA 4, stops at 97 from 109 reviews.

Metacritic describes the number in two sentences: “We curate a diverse group of highly respected critics and assign scores to their reviews. The weighted average of those scores results in a single number and color, the Metascore.” A curated panel, then, and a weighted average of it. The weight given to each publication stays private.

OpenCritic ranks the same two games differently

On September 18, 2026, the Top Critic Average for Grand Theft Auto V is 92, from 140 reviews, with 92 percent of critics recommending it. Red Dead Redemption 2 reaches 95, from 223 reviews, with 93 percent recommending. Both sit in the “Mighty” tier, the highest of the four. Metacritic gives the pair the same 97 and makes them indistinguishable; OpenCritic separates them by 3 points.

Grand Theft Auto IV shows the limit of the exercise: the series high at Metacritic with its 86 reviews, it rests on 6 reviews at OpenCritic. The game shipped in 2008, and OpenCritic’s FAQ carries an entry titled “Why are there so many games missing before October 2015?” Older games are thinly covered there, and their averages read accordingly.

When the two listings fill up

Both Grand Theft Auto VI pages already exist, each dated November 19, 2026, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. They fill when the reviews run, and the two previous Rockstar Games launches give the hour: IGN published its Grand Theft Auto V review on September 16, 2013 at 14:00 UTC for a September 17 release, and its Red Dead Redemption 2 review on October 25, 2018 at 11:00 UTC for an October 26 release. Both sequences are laid out in the review embargo. What ran on August 27, 2026 was a different exercise, a hands-off press session covered in what the press previews revealed.

An average built in the first hours then moves a lot. Red Dead Redemption 2 settled on 109 reviews at Metacritic and 223 at OpenCritic, where only a handful land in the minute the embargo lifts. The figure on screen on the evening of November 18 and the figure a week later are two different numbers.