GTA IV - The Game Behind the Hype

[admin]

After all the hype and "best game in a million years" talk, I just couldn't resist. This is the first GTA game I've played mostly because of timing. I was out of gaming for all of the other GTA games so I'm looking at this through "virgin" eyes. First of all "The Best Game Ever?" Um... No. No it isn't. So far it is cool and I'm enjoying it but it is far from the best game. The sheer size of it it staggering and the thought put in to all the characters is great but the best game... sorry.

Discuss "GTA IV - The Game Behind the Hype" here. Read the article.

 

[hifisyd01]

Agreed. This is the first time I've played any game in this franchise too, so I'm still going thru a learning curve, but so far, I'm not completely blown away. I guess after all the hype, I just thought it would be more fun. ...Maybe I just need to get more in touch with my inner gangster! I'll reserve final judgment until I can really spend some time with it. I'm sure it takes a bit to build up.

 

[MinusTheBear]

Best game of all time will forever be debated, however GTA IV is the best grand theft auto to date and IMO it is the best game this gen so far.

 

[abboudc]

For all the things GTA does right -- engaging story, characters, lots to do, attention to detail, it absolutely falls down on a critical element -- control. The control is loose just about everywhere: driving, trying to shoot the right person, even walking around with precision is tough.

I think people get caught up in *what* you're doing ("Wow, you can do that!?!") instead of the quality of that experience.

Judged as a whole experience though, cinematic, story, variety, etc it's still a pretty good package.

 

[Audigy]

I would agree that it is probably not the best game but I think the sheer size and gameplay of it is overwhelming and in a way makes it a tool for endless hours of fun. I personally enjoy the storyline much more San Andreas was bit of a drag, VC was much better. I think the next to improving this game is to take to a MMO level. Much more violent and drugged up version of Second Life, More realistic and true to life than WoW.

 

[MinusTheBear]

There has been a lot of quality games this gen but the majority of thes games have very short single player campaigns (Gears of War, Halo 3, COD4 etc) and rely heavily on the mulitplayer aspect. Even though the multiplayer is top notch on all these games, I still felt slighted a bit after the short campaigns even though COD4 is my favorite first person shooter campaign I have played. The trend this generation has been very short but high quality single player campaigns and outstanding multiplayer. I think Rockstar has finally broken that trend and has offered the best of both worlds in this game. With the multiple ways the story can go in single player you can spend over 100 hours alone. The fact the rockstar added multiplayer up to 16 players is outstanding. This is one game I have found that I actually felt I got my $$$ worth.

 

[Hi Ho]

Now they just need to release it on PC...

 

[Tom Andry]

The trend this generation has been very short but high quality single player campaigns and outstanding multiplayer.

I'd have to agree with that. GoW I thought was great all around but way too short. The open nature of GTA is just awesome and I really think this is what games should be. The control is a bit wonky and the graphics just aren't up to par but the cinematic feel and open ended nature should be a model that other games follow. Last night I was playing and after saving I walked over to the TV to check it out. I couldn't believe they had whole shows on there. Something that many players won't even bother to check out. The level of detail is amazing. Now if I could just drive that motorcycle...

 

[Dezoris]

You guys should have posted about how the game was released for PS3 broken.
Anyone who has an internet connection or attempts to play online has problems with the game locking up or not loading.

The media has little to no coverage on it, and no official word has been released on a fix for the issue.

Users are forced to disable the PS3 network connection to get the game to even load.

 

[MinusTheBear]

Now if I could just drive that motorcycle...

Yeah the motorcyles are tough to drive in general but you will get use to it with practice. I find it is always a pain trying to chase somone down and kill them on the motorcycle because I get close enough to shoot then I lose control of the bike and crash. When chasing somone, flooring the bike never works because you end up picking up way to much speed and eventually you will have a brutal crash. Going a moderate speed I find works best for these missions!

 

[hopjohn]

Not a 10

I keep seeing these 10 ratings for this game, and just don't see it. There's way too many obvious things wrong with the game for it to receive that type of rating. Whenever you have control issues, it's ever present. So it's not like you can some how avoid the problems and still enjoy the game.

Wonky controls. - four years and this is the best they could do?
Having to tap A to sprint full speed. - annoying
Shooting out of cover - broken.
Auto centering ( can't be turned off) - annoying as hell!!!!
Single player checkpoints - disturbingly poor to the point of not wanting to
play, easily the worst aspect of the game.
Inconsistent damage to worldly objects - lamp post titanium or balsa wood?
Climbing ladders - hope the cops aren't on your tail.
No bowling, darts, pool, chicks on poles in multiplayer.


Other things:

Why not at least show something rewarding when you go to bed with your girl. The outside of the apartment every single time? huh? C'mon how about some creativity...I know the warm coffee got rockstar in trouble, but why punish us?

Improvement ideas:

Why not have a garage or something to store more than a few cars?
Car customization maybe?
How about a place to store some guns & ammo?
Could we maybe steal from armored trucks or at least the ice cream from the ice cream trucks?
Could we maybe have a reticle or some type of aim for the gun on the helicopter? ...or at least use our own gun while flying it?

Seems like this is an adventure game that wants to be a shooter. And there are better games in both genres.

Sorry..NOT a 10!

 

[MinusTheBear]

I keep seeing these 10 ratings for this game, and just don't see it. There's way too many obvious things wrong with the game for it to receive that type of rating. Whenever you have control issues, it's ever present. So it's not like you can some how avoid the problems and still enjoy the game.

Wonky controls. - four years and this is the best they could do?
Having to tap A to sprint full speed. - annoying
Shooting out of cover - broken.
Auto centering ( can't be turned off) - annoying as hell!!!!
Single player checkpoints - disturbingly poor to the point of not wanting to
play, easily the worst aspect of the game.
Inconsistent damage to worldly objects - lamp post titanium or balsa wood?
Climbing ladders - hope the cops aren't on your tail.
No bowling, darts, pool, chicks on poles in multiplayer.


Other things:

Why not at least show something rewarding when you go to bed with your girl. The outside of the apartment every single time? huh? C'mon how about some creativity...I know the warm coffee got rockstar in trouble, but why punish us?

Improvement ideas:

Why not have a garage or something to store more than a few cars?
Car customization maybe?
How about a place to store some guns & ammo?
Could we maybe steal from armored trucks or at least the ice cream from the ice cream trucks?
Could we maybe have a reticle or some type of aim for the gun on the helicopter? ...or at least use our own gun while flying it?

Seems like this is an adventure game that wants to be a shooter. And there are better games in both genres.

Sorry..NOT a 10!

I do not have a big problem with controls but they are far from perfect and take getting use to especially for people who are new to this series. I actually love the tap A to sprint. I do not know what you mean by single player checkpoints but having the auto save feature on so the game saves after each mission is one of the best additions to this series. I do however wish there was some customization for cars and my biggest thing is having a choice to drive manual or automatic. I wish rockstar would impliment a manual transmission option for the cars...I would take that over customization.

 

[Wayde Robson]

Great review Tom, keep 'em coming.

I really liked the game for its story. The controlls were a bit wonky. I know it's not supposed to be FPS action game but they could have tidied it up a bit. The whole targetting and attack is cool but needs to be smoothed out with the grenade toss. I found it basically unusable. I actually blew myself up once because I was behind something taking cover and threw a grenade into what I was taking cover behind. I had a guy way back targetted but I guess Nico thought he could throw through a table.

 

[NeverSeen]

You guys should have posted about how the game was released for PS3 broken.
Anyone who has an internet connection or attempts to play online has problems with the game locking up or not loading.

The media has little to no coverage on it, and no official word has been released on a fix for the issue.

Users are forced to disable the PS3 network connection to get the game to even load.

I had to turn off my autosign in to play. it dies everytime it tries to sign in. Glad its not just me!!

Also... $500,000,000 in sales the first week and expecting $1,000,000,000 within a year

 

[armaraas]

Glad to see that I'm not the only one wondering why this game is being rated a 10. It's been fun, I think the story and characters are great, but I tend to have the same control frustrations. Hand to hand combat seems clumsy, the driving for me has taken some getting used to as I always want the camera angle a little higher from behind the car. However, after a few more hours I have learned to adjust to these quibbles I have.

Another thing that always frustrated me was when failing the mission you had trek back across the city to start again, then trek back to where ever it directs you for the mission, then do the hard part, if you fail start back over. It can get tedious after the first couple of times, but maybe I just suck at it. Anyway, I thought there was supposed to be a change to simplify this process, maybe I missed it if there was. I should probably read the manual to make sure.

The game saving and loading seems inconsistent for me. Sometimes I'll do a manual save and when it auto loads it loads the auto save, even if it isn't the most current save.

Otherwise this GTA has been the one I like the most so far. The others I got bored of fairly quick and stopped playing.

hopjohn, have you played Saints Row? That's a similar style game, but I actually enjoyed it a lot more than the earlier GTA's. You had a large garage for storing cars, you had shops to customize the paint, rims, effects, etc. Even if you abandoned the car it would reappear in the garage later which was nice. You could hit the armored cars in town for a big payday if you caught one. I really enjoyed the side quests to go racing, demo derby, or just blowing stuff up with grenade launchers for a time period. With some of the updates to GTA IV, I'm actually looking forward to Saints Row 2 even more to see what else they have improved on or come up with.

 

[MinusTheBear]

Another thing that always frustrated me was when failing the mission you had trek back across the city to start again, then trek back to where ever it directs you for the mission, then do the hard part, if you fail start back over. It can get tedious after the first couple of times, but maybe I just suck at it. Anyway, I thought there was supposed to be a change to simplify this process, maybe I missed it if there was. I should probably read the manual to make sure.

If you fail a mission and it is far away use the cab features in the game, it is much quicker to go around the city because you can skip the driving from one area to another. There are 2 ways to do this, first you can call Roman and use the car service feature, Roman will bring you a cab and when it comes, go up to the cab and hold y, then set your destination. Once you are in the cab then you have a feature to skip to your destination by pressing A. This option is free by the way. The 2nd way is to hail a cab (yellow car, yellow vans), when you are near a cab press LB and the cab will pull over. Follow the exact process above, however this option will cost you money and it varies on how long the cabbie drives you. I use both all the time and it saves me a lot of time especially when i am feeling lazy.

 

[aberkowitz]

Another thing that always frustrated me was when failing the mission you had trek back across the city to start again, then trek back to where ever it directs you for the mission, then do the hard part, if you fail start back over. It can get tedious after the first couple of times, but maybe I just suck at it. Anyway, I thought there was supposed to be a change to simplify this process, maybe I missed it if there was. I should probably read the manual to make sure.

As Minus said, the usage of cabs and car service in this game is MUCH better than previous GTAs. It used to be that if you died you not only were taken to a hospital that was far away, but you had to go back to the original mission assignment place (where the cut scene took place) and then restart the mission. At least now you accept the text message and just hop in a cab. You also don't lose all of your guns when you die as in previous games.

Regarding comments on the controls- As a veteran of almost every GTA made to this point, the key to being successful at GTA in the past was always using moderate speeds. Rockstar has always made it relatively hard to drive at high speed and stay in control- which I actually think is more true to real-life than if you were able to drive at 120 mph, weaving in and out of traffic, and shooting cars with pinpoint precision. I will agree with the comment that motorcycles should be a bit easier to drive (at least I thought they were in SA), but I actually think the problem is related to "horsepower". I think they gave the bikes a bit too much "oomph" in IV- it's way too easy to get up to top speed really quickly.

HopJohn- I never would have described GTA as a FPS- and I don't think it's trying to be an FPS. You go through whole missions and tasks where your guns stay in your pockets. I don't think it's possible to classify GTA into any specific genre- they've pretty much created their own. To address a couple of your other points:

Garages- They had these in VC & SA, where you were allowed to buy properties. I agree that it would be nice to have more vehicle storage space in IV.

Car Customization- Existed in SA, and was pretty much just a waste of time and game money. Once you got the car out on the road there's a 99% chance that somebody crashes into it.

Gun & Ammo Storage- I don't think it's really needed. It's easy and cheap enough to go to a weapons shop and reload.

Stealing from Armored trucks- I actually really like that idea- if you played the Godfather Game they allowed you to hijack payoff vans.


Bottom line- I would agree with Minus that this is hands-down the best and most complete single player game that's been released this generation. I don't think it will necessarily compete with GOW, COD4, and any of the Ubisoft Clancy titles for multi-player domination, but I don't think that's a big deal.

 

[Wayde Robson]

One thing that is inexcusable in games these days is the lack of a 'save' feature no matter where you are in the game.

It's simply inexcusable that we can lose a telescope in space but we can't even save a video game beforesome obscure checkpoint where the developer says it's okay to save!

 

[MinusTheBear]

One thing that is inexcusable in games these days is the lack of a 'save' feature no matter where you are in the game.

It's simply inexcusable that we can lose a telescope in space but we can't even save a video game beforesome obscure checkpoint where the developer says it's okay to save!

I find the save feature not that bad at all for GTA IV...I found playing Halo 3 on legendary and RSV on realistic very frustrating with regards to its auto save checkpoint system. Atleast you can manual save in GTA.

 

[aberkowitz]

One thing that is inexcusable in games these days is the lack of a 'save' feature no matter where you are in the game.

It's simply inexcusable that we can lose a telescope in space but we can't even save a video game beforesome obscure checkpoint where the developer says it's okay to save!

That's actually one of the innovations that I loved on MLB 2008 the Show. You can actually save a game at any point in an active baseball game and pick it up later. I remember when I was teenager having to leave Madden 94 on for hours while I had to go eat dinner or do homework!