…have to go and gimp the attack chopper? No auto-aim minigun and no rockets, even though the attach choppers in both VC and San Andreas had them. Why? If they thought it would unbalance multiplayer, well, gimp the chopper for multiplayer.
And I still can’t figure out how to roll sideways while crouching. Hitting the X button on the 360 controller doesn’t work.
To roll, you have to be locked on to something - then x and a direction will do the job.
You’re asking why they cut out so many things from the series that made them fun? Nobody knows.
Rockets on the attack chopper would make many of my complaints about the game’s abundance of chase missions go away.
Possibly but that would be breaking the “script” so you would have to do it all over. Sometimes it’s like having a huge sandbox that the devs built you only to find out that they stuck your head in a hole and covered you up with sand so you couldn’t get out.
For the most part though, it’s a fun game and quite beautiful as well.
I’m sticking this observation in this thread because I don’t feel like starting another one, but I loaded up San Andreas yesterday to see how it stacked up against GTA IV, and I immediately noticed two things: San Andreas seriously looks like shit next to IV, and the car physics feel really, really wrong now.
The cars in San Andreas look like they are on a roller coaster track. When they turn corners they just snap around on a central axis.
A better question is why did they gimp the tank? That tank was always fun.
There’s a tank in GTAIV? That’s one of my pet peeves with the game. Where are the military vehicles? Why can’t I go on a vehicular rampage through the streets of Alqonquin?
Can you still fly the tank like you could in the old games? Flying the tank with the keyboard was a game in itself.
Why are the cheats so boring?
Sure, summoning stuff is fun, but what happened to ‘all cars fly’ and ‘all cars explode’ and ‘all peds have rocket launchers’?!
I think that’s more of a camera angle thing. I thought the car physics struck a great balance between realistic suspension and weight and arcade handling.
Yeah, the “general riot cheat” in the last three games was a blast. I remember scoring the invulnerable limo in GTA III and saving it in a garage of mine, then once in a while I’d hop into it, then type in the cheat and drive around watching the mayhem unfold.
There was an invulnerable Mercedes-like sedan that you could score in San Andreas, which I kept around for the same purpose.
The driving model is much better in IV than in the other games, though, no question.
There’s no tank at all, not yet anyway. I suppose (hope) they might add that back in with the DLC
No, there isn’t a tank. That was my point. Of all the stupid annoying nerfs in this games the attack helicopter would be near the bottom of my complaint list.
I’m sorry, I should’ve specified that this is when they are being driven by NPCs, not the player. So if you stand before an intersection and watch a car turn, it very briskly twists onto the other street.
It’s similar to how in some games running uphill doesn’t slow down your forward movement.
Yeah it was very weird how cars seemed to run in a strictly scripted fashion. It was very jarring too that you could kind of pop cars out if this mode by ramming them or shooting them, at which point the AI vehicles would start to behave more like the player’s car physics.
I think you probably have to chalk it up to the archaic engine at that point built for the less powerful hardware.
I’m replaying GTA:SA (PC) now, right after having finished IV (xbox) and several things are clear to me.
a) IV has much, much better technical gameplay in terms of driving and shooting. Yes, even shooting, as much as the camera seems to fight you and cover mechanic sometimes doesn’t do what you want… everything feels more realistic, grounded, weighty and dynamic. The AI and animation is vastly superior and makes combat and driving much more memorable. And this coming from a jaded PC gamer who can free aim with a mouse in SA.
b) IV may have more geometry/higher res textures, but technically looks like garbage compared to (PC) SA with draw distance maxed and HDR mod applied for bloom shaders. I feel the more basic models/environment of crystal clear SA in high resolution almost trump the more densely populated but muddy flickering mess of IV… which is kind of sad. Can’t speak for the ps2 version of course.
c) SA has vastly more memorable, entertaining and diverse characters, missions, and environments. From the vast countryside with little towns, farms, and country hicks, to the variety of vehicles (planes! bikes!), to the zany NPCs like the left wing loonies, FBI agents, Triad, and homies on Grove street to name a few, everything feels more colorful and filled with offbeat love. The architecture of the cities is much more memorable (from the ghetto of Los Santos to the bay windows of San Fierro), not mentioning the hundreds of unique structures like power plants, quarries, military bases, mills or country shacks. The missions, rather than simply boiling down to “kill these people or chase this car”, are much more creative in scope.
I did like the poignancy and care they put into grounding IV, but somehow lacked the spice of SA, which wins in every department for me but the controls.
Hear hear. I particularly liked the “burn the weed crop” and the “steal the [secret gov’t prototype]” missions. The mission variety in IV was lacking (although I played through the plot and am still playing toward 100%).
Damn, that makes GTA:SA look pretty damn good.