[Himuro]

The game has been out for a month, most of us have beaten it or at least, stopped playing it. What are your final thoughts?

It's no secret that I am a big GTA fan. Ever since GTAIII it has become one of my favorite, most replayable series. I have played GTAIII three times from beginning to end in the past year ever since the first GTAIV trailer. GTAIV was one of, if not the most anticipated game period for me.

I really enjoyed the story for the most part. Niko Bellic is no Tommy Vercetti, but he's a decent lead character. He's funny, witty, interesting, and he gets the job done. I enjoyed the side cast of characters a lot, and while it wasn't GTAIII or Vice City calibur, they were still a fun group of characters. I enjoyed working for gangsters again, I enjoyed working for higher up people in the food chain like government officials or crooked cops. I liked how you could decide to kill someone or let them live, and what's more, I loved the fact you could choose between groups of characters who should be the one to be offed. I really didn't want to kill some characters because they, for the most part, didn't do anything wrong and I sympathized. I would tear my hair out dreading who I should kill. I liked that, it was the first time a GTA game actually brought player emotions into the story and it was unique.

While Niko is a walking contradiction, I felt that made him feel more human, if that makes any sense. But as usual, I'm not too big on the sympathetic GTA main character role. They come off as forced because their emotions contradict with what the player does in game. Overall, I liked the cast. The theme of someone being new to America and seeing the difference between the America publicized as the land of the free around the world, and the America he sees - which is an overly commercialized, arrogant, and self centered country is pretty interesting. GTA has always been good at satire, and while this game doesn't have the best satire the series has gone for - GTAIII and VC hold that crown - it's still pretty good.

The radio stations, as subjective as this is, were the best the series has to offer in my opinion. Not only was the trademark series talk radio station humor back after the disappointing talk radio in San Andreas, we had three talk radio stations. Aside from that, the radio hits all marks, all genres: reggae, electronic, jazz, fusion jazz, oldschool hip hop, modern (good) hip hop, funk/afrobeat, even disco, and some decent rock stations. The radio was mostly lined up with under the radar or underground artists, and if you have narrow taste in music there may not be much for you because there's hardly any well known pop mainstream classics like in Vice City. I, however, enjoyed the stations immensely. I was amazed I was playing a game that had Fela Kuti, Gil Scott-Heron, Nas' debut with Live at the Barbeque, or even disco on it. Definitely a soundtrack that requires open tastes to be appreciated.

However, the djs don't have a wealth of personality they had in earlier titles, similarly to San Andreas. Some are cool, but they don't have wacky personalities or keep me interested. That said, Journey's dj is a TALKING ROBOT. You can't beat that.

The game fixed a lot of issues that has plagued it since going 3d, mainly the aiming system. It was actually fun shooting people in GTAIV, and the gun play is mostly top notch. Being able to shoot anywhere while in your car was a bonus too, thank God for Saints Row instilling that ability in GTAIV. The controls were excellent to me. While it took a while to get used to the driving controls, I eventually came to prefer the controls in IV to past games mostly due to the inclusion of trigger controls.

This helps the gameplay in GTAIV. A lot. The action can be intense, fun, and brutal. The action is mostly polished, in fact, the majority of the game is. The polish is to be praised because other GTA games were never this polished in terms of mechanics, graphics, whatever. What helps top the polish are the physics, every single object in the game world has weight; push a pedestrian down some stairs, and giggle with excitement as he or she rolls down in agony. Shooting enemies in the knee cap while they're on high ground can cause them to fall off their platform, dropping to a terrible death. The physics are in a word, amazing and should be implemented in future open ended games.

The attention to detail is staggering. No city block looks the same. Very rarely do you come across npc's that are duplicates, and it feels like an actual city. While I don't feel the game is as detailed as Shenmue - which still stands as the most immersive, impressively detailed world I've ever played in a game, it's quite close. But because GTAIV isn't nearly as personal as Shenmue, and it has a bigger environment it can kind of suffer.

The difficulty is excellent. It's probably the hardest GTA since III. In IV, if you arouse the cops nearly enough to 3 or even 4 stars, they will KILL YOU, and managing to get away from them is a joy because it's so hard doing it. What's more, I died a couple of times on missions, which rarely happened in San Andreas.

The game is good.

But...there was something missing.

The game was good, no doubt, but it entirely forgot about its roots. Grand Theft Auto is a sandbox game and that sandbox is pretty damn weak. It entirely forgets a certain group of people in favor for people who only care about story. People like me who appreciate both the story and the vast amount of things to do. There is little fucking around in GTAIV, it's mostly all serious business. The problem with GTAIV isn't that it's "back to basics", because that's false - GTAIII has more content and things to do than GTAIV. It's just a step back in general, lacking the creativity, variety that made the past 3d GTA's memorable.

First off, there's a general lack of game content. Rockstar omitted fan favorite activities like taxi driving, firetruck, ambulance, pimping, pizza delivery, and school missions among other things. A lot of it makes no sense, and the result is a watered down Grand Theft Auto. Sure, there's Brucie's Grand Theft Auto missions, but there's no reward. Sure, Roman's got taxi missions, but they're watered down pieces of shit that aren't in the same vein as the old Crazy Taxi-esque ones, you don't even get a reward for completing them. Sure, you can go bowling...but bowling gets boring, and darts and pool suck ass. Sure you can go to Cabaret, or the Comedy Club, or go on a date, but that's not nearly on the same level as the cool activities you could do in GTAIII, VC, or San Andreas, even GTA2 is better in that respect due to the Respect system. Vigilante missions are back, and they've been greatly expanded, in fact, they're my favorite missions in the game next to the just as awesome Assassination missions. But what happens when you finish the Assassination, Vigilante, Package pushing, Grand Theft Auto side missions? Turismo missions aren't nearly as fun as in the past due to the physics engine (being thrown from you vehicle gets old), they aren't even challenging any more for some reason. There's nothing to do! Rockstar has dropped the damn ball and lost their minds.

GTAIV is a sandbox game that really isn't a sandbox game. They've scaled back all the way back to Grand Theft Auto fucking 1. There's side things to do, but the rewards are mostly awful. Remember how in III and VC you got rewards for EVERYTHING you did? In Vice City, if you finish firetruck missions you become fireproof. If you finish the taxi missions in III you get your OWN specialized taxi. Every 10 hidden packages or tiki's in III and VC, you get something cool; whether it be a weapon, armor drop, whatever at your safe house..for free.

So, if the side missions mostly suck or are non-existent, what about the main missions? The main missions in IV are idiotic, linear, and are entirely too samey to continue stay interesting throughout the game. I think all of us have complained about the shitty chases in IV. You can't shoot and kill the people while on chases, and it's retarded. Remember when you used to be able to plan out missions and complete them in your own style? Gone. Omitted. Remember when we all used to trade stories that went like this? "Hey, what'd you do on this mission? I did this? What? You can do that? NO WAY!" Remember how non linear Sayonara Salvatore was? I sometimes snipe him from a roof top. Sometimes, when I feeling up to the task, I barricade the alley that goes into Luigi's back door with a bunch of cars; when he comes out I'll throw a grenade for a tour de explosion. Sometimes I just like to let him get inside the car and take him out on his way home; it's more challenging. So...what happened? Scripted missions have always been in 3d GTA's, but they rarely popped up and were mostly used for big events, like taking over the Diez's mansion in Vice City, or the mission in San Andreas where they're ambushed and drive the car through a giant advertisement board. In IV, the majority of the missions ARE scripted missions.

Not only are IV's missions linear, they lack the variety of III's trilogy missions. I don't see burning any weed fields in IV, does anyone else? They're mostly "go here, kill this guy or groups of people". Now someone may want to raise a point that GTA missions used to be nothing but this in the past but they'd be wrong. Just using III as an example, there's a mission called Expresso 2 Go where you have to kill 9 targets across the entire game map. This mission is the ultimate test of GTAIII playing, because it tests everything you've learned up to that point with no tutorial, no bullshit, it's just you and your strategy. You have 8 minutes to go across the entire game map, and kill all the targets. This missions required that you know the game's map by heart, it required you to know every single side road that acted as a short cut. There's nothing like this in IV. That's the thing that made the trilogy so special; missions may have been about the same goal or means to an end, but the way you got there was almost always different. I certainly don't remember killing suicide bombers in GTAIV. Or littering the streets with porn ads. Or raising lights on a building to make it look like a pair of tits. Or going to Driving School, getting the highest score on all the missions and winning my own suped up car.

And then there's the exploration. I was one of the people who complained that San Andreas was too big, but guess what? I was able to memorize pretty much the entire game map. I know all the exits to get on the freeway, or feeder. I know all the ways to leave the cities and get to the next town, or city, or whatever. I know all the shortcuts. I know that game like the back of my own hand. Yet IV, which has a supposedly smaller game world is impossible to memorize. One reason is because you can't do R3 missions, which were arguably the best way to learn the streets, the shortcuts, everything. Another reason could be because we aren't required to remember the locations of pay and spray or all the police bribes laid out throughout the city. The city is just too big. III's Liberty City and Vice City were the perfect size. They were big, with things to do around every corner but weren't TOO big and they required you to memorize the city layout for some of the more advanced missions. In IV, I just used a taxi once I got tired of dealing with traffic, getting lost, and getting thrown from my car, and the fact that traveling take entirely too long. Taking a taxi is preferable to driving in a game called Grand Theft Auto. That's pathetic. Furthermore, there's not even any gangs or gang cars, and for some reason, the immersion level has taken a step back in this installment despite looking better.

It's like GTAIV does away with all the things I loved about GTA: the exploration, the mastery of the game world, the side missions. It has a decent story, but who cares when the story missions are mostly the same thing and aren't memorable. The best missions in the game the game are actually the most simple, wacky missions that you'd see in a past GTA, like the one where you go on the internet and ask that gay guy out, go on a date with him, and kill him. Classic GTA right there.

I'm not saying GTAIV is a bad game, because it isn't to me. It's still fun, when it wants to be. It's just that one minute the game is fun, and the next minute it's beyond tedious. I don't want to micromanage 20 people on my cell phone, I want to do FUN things. What the bloody hell happened to fun? You know, the thing that was driving this series from the get go? Does fun equate to watching tv in the game world now? Does fun equate to going on repetitive dates to the same places OVER AND OVER? Not only did Rockstar forget a specific audience who likes their games, they dumbed down the series, and made a linear game out of what is supposed to be a SANDBOX, and that is the very thing that keeps GTAIV from maintaining great game status. Even the dating missions which GTAIV took from San Andreas and turned it into the main feature of the game, is dumbed down from San Andreas!

It is quite hilarious that the press hated on Assassin's Creed for being too repetitive when GTAIV is probably just as repetitive, if not more. It is also about twice, maybe three times as long and much more padded. This is why the gaming press should not be taken seriously, they make double standards like no tomorrow. GTAIV, is a good game; the polish seals that. Its problem, however, is that it is treated like a third person shooter that happens to take place in a big, open world. This isn't Resident Evil 4. This isn't Gears of War. This is Grand Theft Auto. Treat it like such.

I really hope that Rockstar learns from Saints Row 2, because *that* looks like the GTA I know and love. The Saints Row 2 vs GTAIV video is a perfect summation of what is wrong with Grand Theft Auto IV. Realism does not mean a better game. Better gunplay does not mean a better game. Better driving controls does not make a better game. It's all about the content, the heart. GTAIV lacks this. What could have been seemingly GREAT game ended up being merely good. Omitting content, and aborting a lot of things that drove this series up until now is pretty inexcusable. If other game series did the same thing, they'd get lambasted by the press, and it's a shame that Rockstar is allowed to get away with this without repercussion.

I'm split. On one hand I think GTAIV really feels like a step up and truly next gen experience. On the other hand...I just don't know.

Summary: Sandbox game this is not. GTAIV, while doing a lot right entirely forgets its genre roots in the name of "realism" and because certain things were "out of Niko's character" as publicized by Rockstar Games. I dearly hope this is not the direction they plan to take the series in, or I'm going to have to stop playing one of my favorite series and pick up another open-ended series.

Score: 7.5

For those of you haven't seen it, this is the Saints Row vs GTAIV trailer. It's right in a lot of ways. Hopefully the game delivers.

It seems the general opinion for GTAIV at gaf is that it wasted potential, that it took itself entirely too seriously, that the story turned into a laughing stock, and that the game was a general step back from past GTA games. While I don't share the opinion with all of these statements, it's how the majority in this thread feels.

Choice quotes from this very thread:

And like everyone else said once you finish it's just missing stuff to do. I want to rob homes, sell cars, gamble, customize my car, buy houses, fly planes, skydive. So many little things were taken out in the name of realism. I can't even ride bicycles, or dive underwater anymore. I also liked customizing my character. Haircuts, making him buff, skinnny, fat, whatever. But hey I get to play crappy mini games and shoot pigeons? Yay? Something as small as riding a bicycle may not seem like a big deal, but when I started up SA and hopped on that bike for the first time there was such a big stupid grin on my face. I think I'd give it a 7/10 counting the multi which is amazing at times but mostly a clusterfuck. GTA is one of my favorite series but if this is the path they're going, making everything more linear and restrictive for whatever reason I'll probably go elsewhere for my open world gaming fix.

Its one thing to model your game after a city. Hell, driving around Liberty city with friends from new york was really awesome. They were naming streets and stuff, and good times ensued. Unlike New York, there isn't a god damned thing to do in Liberty City. I'm not going to rant, but GtaIV is like the equivalent of some hot women rubbing her exposed vagina on your crotch, and then laughing in your face as she walks away with your money. They took away everything that made the series fun and left us with a shallow, hollowed, faux realistic, and boring game that takes itself way to seriously. It was my fault for getting real hyped, and in the end I have nobody to blame but myself. But fuck if I run out and get the next one if they keep this direction going the way it is.

The graphics and physics are incredible, but it's simply a bore to ogle at the sights after you realize that there's little substance behind the flash.

I think GTA4 is an example of what happens when you've got a huge established series and you don't cater it toward the people that made it that huge established series. It very much seems to me like a game Rockstar designed to bring in new players, which is why you see so many people who didn't like the previous games but love GTA4.