Exactly. The missions in GTA games have always been wretched and they’re still wretched, but they’re the gamer tax you have to work through to unlock the real game.
Tom’s review and the bug filled impressions that Bill has on Dubious Quality make me think the game is “half baked” in the sense of needing more time to work out all the bugs. I wonder if Take 2’s situation had anything to do with it.
What situation and what bugs?
It’s a very polished game and Tom just disagrees with some of Rockstars choices (like 200 songs that he doesn’t care for).
Kind of a half-assed solution for the lack of a player radio station, but doesn’t the 360 have a music player that can run during games by hitting the guide button or… Whatever the middle button is called? If you absolutely hate the in-game music, that would probably work well enough. Just need to pause it during cutscenes and such.
GTA4 is an overall good game and yet I still find myself disappointed by it for many of the same reasons as Tom. It just isn’t as good as I was expecting based on the reviews and the anticipation of it being the first GTA on now-current gen consoles.
In addition to Tom’s list of issues (and I think he went easy on some things, the minigames aren’t just meh, they are downright horrible. Completely unfun! Worse than a lot of shitty Flash implementions I’ve seen of the same games), one of the most surprising things about GTA4 to me is some of the things that have always existed in GTA games but they haven’t bothered to fix.
Example: When you come out of a building after a reload and there isn’t a goddamn single car or person in sight for miles for a while no matter the time of day. I suppose that happens for a reason that is semi-valid (need time to stream in the car/people geometry, etc) but there are many ways you can handle that situation that don’t involve the city being a ghost town for up to a minute.
Another example: Browsing clothes and other items at stores. Watching the same damn 10 second animation every time you try on a new pair of sunglasses is MUCH WORSE THAN REAL SHOPPING. And I hate real shopping!
Another example: Completely inconsistent breakability of things. When I went to collect the protection money in Vlad’s first mission it told me to break the window with something. I spent like 5 minutes trying to break the door (which is made of glass and through which I was speaking with the man inside) down with everything from a car to a knife to a gun, I ran around trying to pick up the stray boxes and trashcans in the area figuring maybe I was supposed to use those (turns out you can’t pick them up)). Eventually I try the window next to the door (made of glass, just like the door) and even my fist can break those… wait, so when they said WINDOW, they meant WINDOW, and not WINDOWED DOOR… AHHH!! how very 1990s adventure gamey!
Misc:
I like the car physics a lot less in this one than any of the previous ones, let alone other GTA-ish games. You can call me out all you want for not being good at driving in GTA4 and whip out your GTA4 driving e-peen, but driving was simply more fun in the older GTAs. Part of this is the car physics, part of this is simply that there doesn’t seem to be nearly as much world geometry that exists soley for the purpose of doing insane stunts off of it (another victim of making the game more ‘realistic’?). And the on-foot controls are just horrible. Nico moves way too slow by default and the button-mash sprint is so much worse than just holding down a sprint button, because it makes it difficult to sprint while doing anything else, which wasn’t a problem in the earlier games. Also the forced-slow-walk-when-talking thing was dumb in Gears of War, even dumber here. Why do I have to walk at 1mph when I’m talking on the cellphone?
So, yeah. GTA4 is a good game, but I just don’t understand the overwhelming praise it is getting.
Keep it up Tom! I need the strength of will to wait a few months in case of a PC announcement. Haha.
But, I really don’t see what’s so great about Saint’s Row. Admittedly I haven’t played it, but the trailer for Saint’s Row 2 makes it look so garish and a city that looks like it was artificially constructed rather developed over time.
I think I’ll miss some of the character customization of San Andreas, once I get around to actually playing it.
Why is this a problem in GTA4 and not the other games? I’ve seen this complaint before. I just finished San Andreas and the tapping to sprint is really effective because it adds urgency to on foot escapes by tying the characters endurance partially to my thumb tapping endurance. It’s just enough physicality to make it interesting, but not enough to be annoying (at least to me).
The movement speed in GTA4 is just across the board slower (well, to be fair, I haven’t measured it and haven’t played any of the GTA3 games in a while, but it FEELS a fuck-of-a-lot slower than I remember), so super sprint in GTA4 is like just basic sprint in the older games, you pretty much have to be slamming the button down while running to be moving fast enough for my liking (and I’m talking about just basic getting around speed, not running-from-a-flaming-wreck speed), whereas in the earlier games I almost never bothered with the tap-sprint and would just use the hold-button-down sprint and that was fast enough for most situations.
Ahh, gotcha. That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.
I wouldn’t call it disappointing, it does have the Stooges “I wanna be your dog”. I do have an issue with the Tuff Gong station though, all Marley? How about mixing it up a bit with some Tosh, Steel Pulse, Inner Circle, anything from “The Harder They Come” soundtrack by Jimmy Cliff or maybe even some Burning Spear. There’s more reggae music out there then just dreadlock rasta Marley.
-Tim
I love that station. It’s just so cool driving through the city at night (even better in the rain) listening to Bob Marley. Doesn’t make me want to punch people in the face and steal their cars but that’s OK. :)
Wendy
Don’t get me wrong, I like Marley as well :) I was just hoping for a more diverse selection. I also enjoy listening to the smoother jams at night, while in the day it’s all about rock/rap aggression and smashing people out of my way while I do my missions.
-Tim
Bill’s impressions don’t sound like a polished game to me. He specifically cites throwing a brick through a window and having the collision detection fail. He talks about missions where things just stall as the game waits for the play to trip the next cutscene. Just read his piece. And it’s not like the impression threads here on QT3 are free of bug reports and other issues. Not game breakers, necessarily, but minor things that you’d expect a polished game to have resolved.
A lot of these expectations have come from reviews. What I’ve read from most of the gaming press has only furthered my mistrust of the reviewers and the websites and magazines they write from. I can understand some of the differences in gameplay, Rockstar made a decision, and I can understand the graphical glitches, Rockstar released an imperfect game. What gets to me is that these haven’t been reported, and in the few cases where they have they’ve been massively downplayed. Except for now, where the post launch opinions are coming out. Are the press so disconnected from what the players think?
After the first evening, I absolutely adore the city design - the view from the first bridge at night is just amazing - and a lot of the extras, like the phone and dating system, but the missions have been really, really boring. I get that they’re mostly tutorials for various things, but it doesn’t bode well to feel like it’s snapping right back to original GTA3 every time one of them starts. What? I can’t refuse Vlad’s latest stupid shit? I have to drive THIS car to get to THIS place on THIS route? Oh god! The graphics seems really, really blurry on my TV as well - even the close-up stuff makes my eyes water a little.
The funniest thing I’ve found so far is that despite Roman not being able to go for more than five seconds without mentioning breasts, his idea of a truly awesome evening is to go slather his guts out at a Bikini Bar. I know the situation is a bit different in the US, but this is really, really silly over here in Europeland. Either do nudity or don’t bother doing stripclubs. Oh, Mallorie. You’re far too good for him…
Please show me one game that has no minor bugs.
Yah expectations are not met so far with me, as a GTA game, (VERY HIGH EXPECTATIONS) but its still good to have Rockstar making a game… I’m more enamored with the ‘watching TV’ aspect… the little details in the GTA series have always did it for me. But so far there’s a more ‘on the rails’ feel to the game so far. Saint’s Row didn’t feel that way and was VERY open right from the start. Still I’m only about 15 missions in…but the missions are nothing compared to the first obligatory intro missions from the first three 3d gta’s.
I’m not writing this game off yet. It still definitely is worth the 60 bux I paid. The only highlight compared to other GTA’s is the dating simulator… which can be funner i suppose.
And yah, so far the radio stations kinda generic GTA, was expecting more ‘new’ stuff… like some neo emo station… it is 2008. Couldn’t they have put a few extra millions and got some songs from some newer semi popular bands? Rock Star did! oh well.
overall though, I like it so far… a 4/5 type rating. its GTAIV, looks polished, and does still have that feel that only GTA has… so even if it isn’t as OMFG awesome as I expected from the get go… it still delivers. I like the immigrant aspect and the main chars somewhat shady Chechnyan/Russian? military type past.
etc
I’ve just found the Sisters Dominion/Mother Russia is on the GTA4 soundtrack. Since Sisters was the soundtrack of the most GTA-esque moments of recent times, I can only approve.
KG
I think its just that they have some sort of inner GTA fanboy willing to neglect all the flaws exist, or thinking a control problem is an issue with them, not the game, cause after all “ITS GTA BITCHES.” Also the fact that it was reviewed in one of those review junkets or whatever the hell those are called, which I’m sure effects a score.
I think the soundtrack in GTA3 was decidedly superior, which is the one I’d compare it to since the other two are mostly just period compilations, and didn’t have a ton of widely-known tracks. Much of the time in 4, I’m flipping through the stations trying to find something decent.
I’d definitely agree with those not seeing this as a 10/10 or whatever game. Through 10 or 11 hours of playing/watching other people play, the missions have yet to really pick up steam. They still feel like tutorials 20 missions in, often telling you how to perform actions that you long ago picked up through the course of play. The police chases also don’t feel as intense to me, certainly not at 3 stars which is really the max you’re going to get without camping out somewhere and consciously massacring cops. Even at 6 stars after venturing into the off-limits boroughs, it seems like the cops just kind of lose track of me(I’ve already picked up the ‘One Man Army’ achievement, though about half of that time was cruising around the subway).
Most of the new stuff they added(aiming, cell phone, simple fighting system) works really well and addressed major problems with the older games. The social system seems pretty half-baked though. So far it consist of doing random, mostly boring side missions, basically just driving people to places under no opposition, until you unlock whatever abilities that character has. On that note, do the girlfriends ever unlock anything? I can’t see what else I can do with Michelle and I can’t really see keeping up with her since the dates are so repetitive. They seem to be a vehicle for delivering dialogue/backstory and those bits are pretty cool, but I think I’d rather just have a cell phone conversation or something at this point
It’s still fun to tear around the city on a motorcycle looking for stuff to jump off of and causing random mayhem. There’s definitely a ton of stuff and the production values are sky high. It’s just that the core designed game isn’t that hot at first blush, and even the freeform stuff is starting to look a bit soft in the face of stuff like Crackdown(or even last-gen stuff like Mercenaries). Of course, the GTA games were considered really awesome last gen, and if you take that and fix all of the major mechanical problems then I can see how you’d get universal high praise. So it’s probably more that I didn’t consider the GTA games, though pretty good, to be the cream and read the gushing as this one being different rather then adding some more good stuff to what everyone already loved
That was the first song playing on the radio upon arrival at Roman’s apartment for me. As a huge Sisters fan, I also endorse this choice.