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[Derek]

I only played a few hours this weekend with my roommate, but... damn, this game is good.  The attention to detail is astounding.  The graphics are amazing.  They've fixed or at least vastly improved upon pretty much all the annoying aspects of GTA III, namely:

- the combat
- the load times
- the dumb and frustrating missions (at least what I've seen so far)
- losing all your weapons every time you die/get caught (maybe not?)

People move and react so realistically, that I have to say, it's actually unnerving to shoot them.

Also, the writing and acting has improved considerably.  I'm actually really hooked on the characters and the story.

Who's playing?  Are you loving the game as much as I am?

[Xotes]

Sadly, I am too poor to afford a PS3 and too young to buy it.  IT MAKES ME... MAD AND ANGRY!

[FARTRON]

I bought a 360 for this. Game arrived today.

[Tanner]

Sadly, I am too poor to afford a PS3 and too young to buy it.  IT MAKES ME... MAD AND ANGRY!

Same.
 


My parents don't think I'm stable enough to play it or something.  

[mewse]

I've spent some time playing (though not enough to get to a point where I've actually had to shoot anybody), and it's not really working for me.  I'll play for a half hour, and then suddenly realise that I'd be having more fun if I was playing Mario Kart or was working on my own game, instead.


There's no question that the game has huge production values.  It's really impressive how much content they managed to fit onto the disc.. but.. I dunno.  It keeps turning me off.

The bits that really annoy me are the swervy control (everything, including the player, steers like a boat), and the laggy and awkward camera that's always looking in the wrong direction..

And I'll confess that I'm really, really tired of the "unrelentingly dark and gritty" thing, so that's not helping.  But that probably puts me well outside the GTA target audience, anyway.

Don't get me wrong;  I'm not saying that the game is bad.  It just does the particular things that annoy me.  Mass Effect did, too;  that's another highly rated (I'd say "over-rated") game that I had trouble playing due to basic control issues. 


I do find it really interesting that they've backed off a bit from the "go anywhere do anything" game structure of the GTA3 series, and have gone back to the more traditional design of pushing missions out to the player according to a static plot line.

[shinygerbil]

I'ma try not to rant, so I'll make the text small and friendly, but here goes:

I dislike the GTA series; I feel that it is tasteless, senseless and pointless, but above all, it is dull and severely lacking in fun.

I haven't played IV yet, so I'm trying to restrain myself from judging it before I see if it is as bad as I expect.

I think the main reason I dislike the game is of course the setting. A 'realistic' city, with 'realistic' people and a shitload of crime. I'm dumped in a random street, and the first thing I do is open some woman's car door and kick her out. Then I run some people over. With her car. One of those people is her.

Then I think, "Why the hell am I doing this?" and stop. I don't want to do this, it's not fun. That's pretty much how I was with the previous games, I see no reason to believe that IV is any different.

I love the sandbox idea, I love it, but the theme (i.e. LOLcrime, LOLguns, LOLsex, LOL<adult theme>) is tacky and tasteless. A cheap way to sell games disguised as satire.

In other words:

IT MAKES ME... MAD AND ANGRY!

Of course, having said all that, I might try the game and be blown away. Somehow I doubt it though. ;P

[lowpoly]

Loving it, but much like Vice City I make so little progress in the storyline because I have so much fun just driving around and committing the occasional crime. Seriously, if they took the entire shooting aspect out of the game, it would still be really fun as a driving/police chase game. The amount of havoc you can unleash by driving a Patriot way too fast through a busy intersection is incredible I spend entirely too much time throwing on the e-brake at full speed and fishtailing into the sidewalk, taking out the newspaper stands, parked cars, pedestrians and whatever else has the misfortune of being in my way.

[Xotes]

With ragdolls?

If so, awesome!  :D

And I got used as a quote in a rant-yet-not-a-rant thing. Cool.

[mewse]

I'ma try not to rant, so I'll make the text small and friendly, but here goes:

Your non-rant was very nicely put;  a lot better than I could have said it.

Although I'm not convinced that they're trying to disguise themselves as satire.  To me, it feels a lot more like they're just pandering to the power-fantasies of stereotyped early-teenage males.


Look, scantily-clad low-polygon buxom women who will dance for you!  I give this game 10 out of 10!   

[december]

Of course, having said all that, I might try the game and be blown away. Somehow I doubt it though. ;P

It's like the triple decker super fudge sundae of of free roaming murder simulation games.  If you're not into the ice cream to begin with the dazzling array of syrups, whipped cream and cherries isn't goign to make you like it.

[Sar]

Then I think, "Why the hell am I doing this?" and stop. I don't want to do this, it's not fun. That's pretty much how I was with the previous games, I see no reason to believe that IV is any different.

I love the sandbox idea, I love it, but the theme (i.e. LOLcrime, LOLguns, LOLsex, LOL<adult theme>) is tacky and tasteless. A cheap way to sell games disguised as satire.

To be honest? I said more or less the exact same thing to a coworker a week or so back. I played one of the really early ones (1 or 2, I forget which - before they turned into proper-3D) and enjoyed the crazy arcade driving model, but didn't really get into the rest of the game. On the pestering of work colleagues, I bought Vice City, but the thing I liked the most about it was the soundtrack. I played a fair way through, 'cause there were moments of genius, but I never finished it and wasn't really bothered by that. One reason why? I hated the protagonist; he was a shit. No morals, no compunction, little character other than - as you say here - "LOL crime".

I really wasn't hyped at all about GTA4; I'd been ignoring the incessant stream of news articles and previews, failing totally to pre-order or even remember when the release date was. I'd not bothered with San Anreas, either. People I knew started playing it and telling me that it was an improvement, and that I should try it; I found myself in town on Thursday last week and there were a stack of copies sitting in Game, so what the hell, I thought, I'd give it a go.

I'm kind of glad I gave it a chance. It's still not Jesus in a little plastic box, but it's a huge improvement over Vice City in every respect but soundtrack. There's actually some measure of story and - gasp - character development, and stuff mostly seems to happen for a reason rather than just being a string of senseless violence. But the best part for me is that I can actually sympathise with the protagonist for a change. He's hardly the perfect renaissance man, but he has morals of a kind and a history, and there's something there which wasn't in previous games I'd tried. Sometimes I get missions "because that's the right thing to do" rather than "because shooting people is fun"; the one really gratitous murder I've come across so far was a guy who the game spent a while building up as a real arsehole.

Now, I still totally expect this to change before the end of the game, and to end up doing ridiculous steal-cars-to-flesh-out-showroom missions a la previous games and get bored. And the plot's still totally shallow and leagues behind games for which story is a primary rather than tertiary concern, but - well, it's an important step in the right direction for the series.



Also, seriously, nobody in this damn game can drive. I have been rammed while driving around obeying the laws of the road and stop signals and so on more times than I can count, and I'm still in the first area.

And I don't know what Derek's on about in the opening post; the cops totally stole my whole hard-earned arsenal when I got arrested for the horrific crime of not stopping quickly enough at a toll booth 'cause my brakes were shot.

[Türbo Bröther]

Honestly I couldn't really give two shits about Grand Theft Auto IV at this time but I'm sure I'll check it out when it eventually comes to PC. Provided it requires less than 14GB of HDD space to install.

[___]

Honestly I couldn't really give two shits about Grand Theft Auto IV at this time but I'm sure I'll check it out when it eventually comes to PC. Provided it requires less than 14GB of HDD space to install.

I share these thoughts.

[Smithy]

Meh.

I've never really been into the whole GTA thing. In fact, the only two I've played were the first two, and that was only because they were free.

I am, therefore, indier than all the other people here who are decrying the GTA series.

Take THAT!

[Melly]

I had played a bit of III, and much like many people the unlikeable protagonist, 2D-thin plot, controls and a lack of any direction made the game quite a chore to play.

However, the things I hear about this one from friends makes me want to give it a shot. Maybe I'll be surprised and get something a bit like Mafia (but hopefully without the incredibly cumbersome control scheme or racing-on-ice missions holy fucking shit) with open-endedness (which was an illusion in that game, since all the time limits rarely let you deviate from the objectives).

[Derek]

I've always enjoyed gritty, over-the-top sex/violence and pulp fiction (and Pulp Fiction!), so this game pleases me.  I personally never tire of watching The Godfather, Goodfellas, Tarantino flicks, etc., and I probably won't tire of GTA while they're still improving it and trying some new things.

So I have to disagree with the "LOL<adult theme>" sentiment... I mean, I don't know what Martin Scorsese thinks of GTA (maybe he dislikes it with a passion), but I definitely think the series has done an admirable job of capturing the feeling of the gangster flick.  The latest installment has gotten even closer.

Case in point, there's an early mission where you are asked to take out this guy Lenny a subway station.  I keep thinking about how that one went down for my roommate Chris when I was watching him play.  It just summed up why this game is so fun to play.

So, when characters run down stairs in GTA, they actually change their animation so that it looks like they're going down stairs, hitting each step with their foot... like they're being careful not to fall over, even though they're in a rush.  It's a really brilliant detail that makes chasing bad guys down stairs AWESOME.  After we took down Lenny's cohort on the subway platform, we chased Lenny just like that (but with more pistols popping), and it felt grand - very much like it might go down in a movie.  (Sidenote: We emptied our uzi on Lenny's friend and Nico threw it aside as we chased after Lenny - another nice detail.)

Lenny jumps in a car and peels out.  Chris hotwires a parked car and peels out after him.  The ensuing chase (with Chris side-swiping Lenny and taking shots out the window) eventually gets the attention of the cops, who join in.  It ends up being this insane destruction derby, with the cops trying to hit Chris, Chris trying to find Lenny, and Lenny scrambling for his life.

It finally ends when Chris is swerving the car after Lenny and pulls the luckiest shot of his life out his driver's side window: it goes through the back windshield and hits Lenny in the head.  Lenny slumps over (ragdoll physics for the win) and the vehicle slowly drifts off the street and into a wall, where it sits, smoking.  Chris gets out of the car and we marvel at the blood-stained bullet hole in the back windshield for a good minute or so before ambling off for more mischief.  (Keep in mind that in previous GTA's, cars were essentially tanks with windows cut out of diamond.)

So yeah, it's totally a power-fantasy for me, but I don't know that I should necessarily feel that it's immature or that it's a bad thing.

But at the same time, I wouldn't hold it against you if you found GTA tiring.  Just give IV a chance if the problems I mentioned in my initial post were what held you back.  This one does a lot better in those areas.  The characters, storyline, and ensuing moral dilemmas are are especially deeper in this edition of the series.

And I don't know what Derek's on about in the opening post; the cops totally stole my whole hard-earned arsenal when I got arrested for the horrific crime of not stopping quickly enough at a toll booth 'cause my brakes were shot.

You could be right.  I'm not sure how it works now, actually!  I definitely kept my weapons at least a few times.  Maybe only when I got shot, and not arrested.

[moi]

I'm so indie I play mafia instead 

[fish]

euphoria makes a world of difference.

best murder simulator yet.

[Smithy]

I'm indier than fish.

(I know that's off topic, but it's been welling up inside of me for a long time and I'm not going to hold it in any longer, dammit!)

[jstckr]

You could be right.  I'm not sure how it works now, actually!  I definitely kept my weapons at least a few times.  Maybe only when I got shot, and not arrested.

When you die, they take some cash and don't touch your gear, if you get arrested, stuff and money is gone.

And yes, euphoria is such a great thing. But don't forget the cars' damage model, which seems to be dynamically bending the metal on crashes, which is extra awesome.