ercles on 21/10/2009 at 09:45
I'm a strong believer that one of the main reasons I didn't really like this game was because it was GTA. If this had been a new endeavor entirely from Rockstar I think think I would have been a lot more accepting of it. As it was I did buy the game expecting to punch in a cheat, and roll around in a tank or a jumpjet taking on armies, or jumping sportscars off of buildings.
Although I always found a lot of the satire elements of the GTA series interesting, they were always games where I spent much more time fucking around than actually completing the missions, which are largely repetitive (especially in GTA IV where the lack of insanity seemed to reduce the game to drive, kill, drive home). But GTA IV feels like a game designed specifically not to be fucked around with, the lack of tanks and planes, along with dearth of cheats, and the tight highly populated streets meant that I didn't really stray beyond the path of the storyline much.
Although the game mechanics themselves were a huge step forward in all respects (bar taking friends out on playdates), and the game world was fascinatingly well designed, I just spent a lot of the time yearning for the space of San Andreas, where it felt like there was a lot more to be discovered.
SubJeff on 21/10/2009 at 11:03
Quote Posted by CCCToad
With games like No More Heroes, Assassin's Creed, Baldur's Gate, Bioshock, Deus Ex, Thief, Portal, Metal Gear, and all those other games that manage to tell interesting stories in interesting ways, I don't think I should cut it some slack.
I think the difference here is all of these games have fantasy settings whereas GTA4 is much more set in reality. Sure, its a larger than life reality (or is it?) but it's not total fantasy like all of those (yes MGS and Deus Ex included). And come on Portal's "story" is tiny.
I can identify with Niko in some respects because of this, because I feel he could be a real person.
And BioShock doesn't tell an interesting story btw, it's a carbon copy of SS2 done badly :p
Aerothorn on 21/10/2009 at 11:09
Hated the script (including web pages), and the social system quickly grew annoying. Thought the gameplay was significantly improved from previous titles, with pretty good driving mechanics and at least passable shooting mechanics, as well as lots of nice little touches.
Manwe on 21/10/2009 at 12:46
I personally found it to be a huge disappointment. Especially with all the hype surrounding it (and the fact that SA came before it). I mean graphically it wasn't anything like the trailers. Yeah I know that's my fault for being so gullible, but at that time I was new to the 360 and I really thought it was capable of much more (especially after playing assassin's creed). The game wasn't really ugly, it was just extremely blurry, with lots of aliasing and low rez shadows and a bad framerate.
The perfect controls and cover system advertised in the reviews were nowhere to be seen. What I found instead was a really slow and unresponsive character walking by default, thus forcing me to hold the running button permanently even during gunfights. And a horribly dated lock-on system, a remain from the last generation of consoles. You could choose to aim manually but it was just way too slow and the game was clearly not designed for it.
Then there was the story and the missions. The story is the usual GTA story, except here they tried to make it more serious and make us care about the characters, so you get cutscenes telling you how the main character really isn't such a bad guy deep down inside, it's just that life wasn't very nice to him. But then you take control of said main character and you go an a killing spree in the city, cause that's what you do in GTA. You drive over the sidewalk, run over pedestrians, either killing them or getting them stuck in your bumper and drag them over a few hundred meters till they hit a wall. Or you use them as a punching ball, you beat them to death with either your feet or a baseball bat, or you use them as target practice...
There's just a really huge gap between the seriousness of the cutscenes and the ridiculously over the top gameplay of an open-world game. It's like EvaUnit said there's a segregation between the gameplay and the story, and it's just weird. I guess you could argue that you don't have to be violent or anything, but even the most skilled player will still end up killing a shitload of pedestrians while driving.
The missions themselves range from really awesome to fairly bad with most of them being in the bad category. I found most of the chase missions really tedious due to the "realistic" physics, which made driving a pain in the ass (especially with motorcycles). The missions on foot were a little better IMO but not so much.
The problem is that they are very linear, but they take place in a non-linear world. So sometimes it's not always obvious what the game expects you to do, because there's only one way to accomplish your objective, and the game is expecting you to take a very specific path to reach it so it can trigger some really cool cutscenes along the way, in order to make the game really cinematic and all.
Sometimes it works because you'll naturally take the path intended by the game and everything will play out as it should, but sometimes you'll try to be clever and find an alternate solution and you'll realize just how contrived it all is. For example whenever you're chasing someone whether on foot or by car, you can never ever kill him (no matter what you do) before the game expects you to.
I'm personally not a big fan of that kind of design philosophy in an open-world game. Of course it was probably already there in the previous GTA games but I never found it as annoying as in this one.
But the biggest disappointment came from the rest of the game which strangely enough wasn't there... Where were the airplanes, the parachutes, the jetpack, the bycicles and the tank ? Where were the burglary, taxi, ambulance and fire fighting side-missions ? What about the clothes shops, car shops, car tuning, tattoo parlors, houses for sale and so on to spend my money on or to customize my character ? Once you did the bank robbing mission you would end up with 100 000 dollars and nothing to spend it on except rocket launcher ammo...
It just felt so empty. The main storyline itself was very short, and there wasn't anything on the side to keep you occupied.
Another thing I didn't like was how the whole game was a huge tutorial. Instead of teaching you all the basic controls at the beginning and re-using those same controls throughout the game, there was a different control scheme for every little sequence. And the game would teach you how to play that sequence on the fly, making it very hard to actually enjoy it (that was actually present in the previous titles as well).
Anyway I'm mostly focusing on the negative here but I don't really think it was a bad game or anything. I mean it did a lot of things right and was fairly entertaining all in all. It just wasn't really what I expected and thus was a big disappointment. But then again they did set the bar very high with SA and there was no way they could top it. So it's understandable that they went in a different direction altogether instead of trying to do more or better than the previous game. I just didn't like that particular direction.
Also there's the multiplayer which I can't really comment on since I don't have an xbox live gold account. I did try a 48 hour trial once and I have to admit, I had a blast. And I can see how that would have taken away some resources from the development of the single player portion of the game.
Taffer36 on 21/10/2009 at 17:49
It's an amazing game. You just have to accept what it was going for. They wanted to give the city a different feel for the main story. They wanted that "gritty" dark atmosphere, and I think it was the right choice in removing some of the absurdities to achieve this.
Remember that Rockstar have planned this as a three-parter from the very beginning. The first game is the gritty foreign view on New York, the second game (first "episode") is that oldschool homely gang view, and the third and final one is where they go balls to the wall extravagant (parachutes and tanks return).
And the storyline/writing were phenomenal. It's so frustrating when it loses major focus in the last act and kind of slowly deflates, but the dialogue is still ace. I'll be purchasing Episodes from Liberty City when it comes out soon, and I'm interested to see if they've tightened up the focus in their stories or not.
Quote Posted by Manwe
Another thing I didn't like was how the whole game was a huge tutorial. Instead of teaching you all the basic controls at the beginning and re-using those same controls throughout the game, there was a different control scheme for every little sequence. And the game would teach you how to play that sequence on the fly, making it very hard to actually enjoy it (that was actually present in the previous titles as well).
I've heard this point brought up before, but honestly I thought this was the best thing the game had going for it. The first three-quarters are so good because they keep you on your toes. You never sink into the bore that is repetition, because they keep on giving the basic gameplay a neat little twist each time. It's also why the last quarter of the game suffers so much, because they refuse to introduce anything new and throw the same basic structure at you.
I do wish that they would focus on building interiors much more, though. Hell, I'd go for a smaller city if it meant that the buildings were accessible. Holding up convenience stores, robbing apartments, etc. When the game did throw interiors at you, they were quite disappointing. When I entered the hospital and saw all of the signs leading to different areas, I was ecstatic... only to find out that every door was painted on and there was only one path.
SubJeff on 21/10/2009 at 17:57
Funny how some people find the story and writing immature and weak and others love it, eh?
The Alchemist on 21/10/2009 at 17:59
Quote Posted by Manwe
Then there was the story and the missions. The story is the usual GTA story, except here they tried to make it more serious and make us care about the characters, so you get cutscenes telling you how the main character really isn't such a bad guy deep down inside, it's just that life wasn't very nice to him. But then you take control of said main character and you go an a killing spree in the city, cause that's what you do in GTA. You drive over the sidewalk, run over pedestrians, either killing them or getting them stuck in your bumper and drag them over a few hundred meters till they hit a wall. Or you use them as a punching ball, you beat them to death with either your feet or a baseball bat, or you use them as target practice...
You play as you decide to. Because the way you played was completely different than the story being presented is not a fault of the game.
But I guess I am one of those rare players that tried to keep some realism in the gameplay itself.
Mr.Duck on 21/10/2009 at 19:12
I loved it.
I do miss -all- the stuff (not to mention size...) of San Andreas.
I do miss the sillyness and parody of Vice City.
But what GTA IV had to offer, and the episodes, I loved it. Shortcomings and all.
Cheers :)
Iroquois on 21/10/2009 at 21:28
The writing is a mixed bag. The plot is shit, as usual, but Niko is as deep as GTA can go and he's likeable. And the humour, where present (i.e. radio stations) works. I still want to beat Brucie to a fucking pulp, though.
SD on 22/10/2009 at 12:54
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Funny how some people find the story and writing immature and weak and others love it, eh?
Pastiche and parody are lost on some people. Those people should probably leave GTA games alone and go play Super Mario XXXXVII or something.
