GTA 4 isn't doing much for me yet

Wolfpup

Wolfpup

CAGiversary!
Started GTA 4 yesterday, and I'm 9.77% done, and it's done nothing for me so far. I guess it's the best one yet, but the open world thing has worn off, graphically and control wise (and in terms of theme) for me it's a lot worse than countless other similar games.

I don't know...I guess I keep plugging away, but I keep thinking of other things I'd rather be doing/playing.
 
[quote name='Wolfpup']Started GTA 4 yesterday, and I'm 9.77% done, and it's done nothing for me so far. I guess it's the best one yet, but the open world thing has worn off, graphically and control wise (and in terms of theme) for me it's a lot worse than countless other similar games.

I don't know...I guess I keep plugging away, but I keep thinking of other things I'd rather be doing/playing.[/QUOTE]

So don't play it and play the other things I'd rather be doing/playing....
 
[quote name='Wolfpup']Started GTA 4 yesterday, and I'm 9.77% done, and it's done nothing for me so far. I guess it's the best one yet, but the open world thing has worn off, graphically and control wise (and in terms of theme) for me it's a lot worse than countless other similar games.

I don't know...I guess I keep plugging away, but I keep thinking of other things I'd rather be doing/playing.[/QUOTE]

What was the name of the last mission you completed?
 
[quote name='Wolfpup']Started GTA 4 yesterday, and I'm 9.77% done, and it's done nothing for me so far. I guess it's the best one yet, but the open world thing has worn off, graphically and control wise (and in terms of theme) for me it's a lot worse than countless other similar games.

I don't know...I guess I keep plugging away, but I keep thinking of other things I'd rather be doing/playing.[/QUOTE]



way to prejudge it. things don't pick up until around 9.86%.
 
[quote name='Wolfpup']I think I'm on "Final Destination" now. (Restarted it for the third time.)[/QUOTE]

I say give it a bit. It is different from the past GTAs--a little more on the "realistic" side. Some people had a problem with that--me personally, I didn't mind at all.
Saints Row 2 is worth checking out if you're not enjoying it--or even if you are :D
 
I second Saints Row 2. After a (short) while, things felt like chores in GTA and aside from that, everything seemed to happen really 'slow' motion wise. My disappointment was that I wanted San Andreas in a new setting with shinier graphics but they changed a lot of the core gameplay to be too realistic from the driving (almost half the game) to the fact that your friends annoy the hell out of you and blow up your phone until you respond.
 
I felt the same way, I tried hard to get into the game but it was just so boring. It got too serious and after playing Saint's Row II there was just no going back.
 
But the one thing that killed it for me was the constant harassment from your contacts inviting you to do crap over and over again.

Like GTA SA I avoided the girlfriends like the plauge cause it go boring having to keep their friend/love bar up.
 
I'm on my third restart too and feel the same way. The controls just feel wrong. In the past games the characters were looser, but in GTA4 Niko feels like you're steering him. And the tone feels too dark for me too, not to mention that I just don't find any of the characters like-able or relate-able. I miss the more light hearted, tongue-in-cheek GTA.
 
It definitely starts slow as fuck, and Niko is one of the most sluggish bastards you will ever control.

It does pick up, but it certainly has its faults all the way through.
 
Thanks for all the feedback. I'm annoyed by the girlfriends/friends thing too...I mean...dang, I want to play a game to get away from that boredom :lol: I'm sitting there checking my email while playing pool with this girl, and it's like this just isn't right (for me at least).

Sort of reminds me of Shenmue with all the extra random junk, except I actually liked the first Shenmue, at the time at least.

Control-I kind of feel like the cars are worse than what I remember (probably "more realistic"), but Niko's better than Liberty City Stories, which was better than Vice City or GTA 3...though still waaaaay below where games are now.

And the big thing is back with GTA3 I was completely blown away by the open world. I don't think I even did many/any missions, I just spent hours screwing around in it. I was blown away again by Liberty City Stories, playing a polished up version on a PORTABLE (STILL really something). Quit that one after I got sick of the tone.
(I'm slightly distributed that I'm no longer disturbed by GTA's tone :lol:)

But now...I haven't screwed around at all in the open world. I just feel like I've done that, and the world is so uninteresting compared to Mercs 2 or Crackdown or something, and I just want to get on with the story. I don't even care about the radio stations anymore (back with GTA 3 I sat for an hour listening to the talk radio station!)

My first impression of the graphics was pretty negative compared to even like Crackdown (which I loved) or Mercs 2 (which I liked, though it got too hard). It's kind of awesome in a subtle way though I guess, but first glance it's like "this is just a slightly better looking Liberty City Stories".

I guess maybe I've quit. Not actually enjoying it (or disliking it), and like I said, I restarted the current mission at least three times already. First time I get shot up instantly because I didn't know it was coming, and didn't have time to switch to my gun. Next time I go on this big long chase, and finally end up attracting the cops, which screws it up. Next time somehow the cops are randomly there right at the beginning where you have to shoot one of the guys, so I'm pretty much screwed before the chase actually starts (and of course they always ignore the guy I'm chasing, despite him doing the same illegal stuff).

I don't know...Crackdown's more my thing I guess. Weridly it's kind of by the original GTA people.
 
if you have it on the 360 id suggest playing the othet gta4 games like balad of gay tony. i have it on ps3 and the game was dissappointing shitty ending and the only thing that made it worth owning was mp.
 
Thanks for letting me know the ending sucks, since the only reason I'd be sticking around is for the story, which so far hasn't impressed me. (I find it funny how much supposedly inferior games like Mercs 2 and Crackdown have better stories and gameplay.)

I have the Playstation version since it's supposed to be better, but it doesn't matter in terms of the expansions since they're stand along on Xbox. But...I'm in no rush to try them. Might rent them if I ever get through the backlog.
 
I felt the same way. To me it didn't feel like a GTA game because of how realistic it was. I remember quitting towards the end because I couldn't start one of those time-of-day sensitive missions because I had the wrong shoes on. I mean wtf, you're not going to let me do this mission because you don't like my taste in shoes?! LOL
 
This game did absolutely nothing for me. The fact that both IGN and GameSpot gave it a 10 utterly baffles me. I can't believe a game with such a dated design was received so well.
 
I, personally, cannot understand the love for Saints Row 2. It was pretty mediocre, and there weren't too many memorable missions, etc. I guess I expected it to be a little bit crazier. San Andreas was much better..

As for GTA4, I do understand the dislike for it, but I don't agree. I think its amazing, and there are some very memorable missions and characters. However, it did make you miss the craziness of San Andreas at times. It was much more serious and not everyone's cup of tea, definitely, but the 10's have to do much more with the technological side of things, and the technology at the time of its release was unparelleled. Now, its starting to feel a little dated, but not so much so.
 
I'm not going to try Saints Row 2 personally, as I hated the demo for the first one. To me it seemed like GTA without the benefit of its dark humor. I'm kind of iffy on open world games in general, but I did think Mercs 2 is WAY better than people give it credit for (particularly after playing the supposedly great GTA4, which looks and runs worse, and has IMO much worse gameplay, etc....though Mercs 2 gets way too hard). Crackdown was just awesome though. I don't know...I feel like everyone laughs about it and goes "ho ho ho people just bought it for the Halo demo" (I didn't). It's not perfect either, but the control is 90x better, and I really enjoyed it and it's super-hero-y-ness.
 
[quote name='imac980']I felt the same way. To me it didn't feel like a GTA game because of how realistic it was. I remember quitting towards the end because I couldn't start one of those time-of-day sensitive missions because I had the wrong shoes on. I mean wtf, you're not going to let me do this mission because you don't like my taste in shoes?! LOL[/QUOTE]


yeah having to buy diff types of clothes to be able to do missions was damn annoying. overall the graphics and realism may have taken a leap up but compared to the fun and addictiveness of san andreas the game was a drop down across the board ive read good things about gay tony so hopefully it will end up on the ps3 but if not i hope the next gta is more like san andreas if not then ill just pick up the new true crime coming out.that game looks like it could be awesome.
 
[quote name='Wolfpup']I'm not going to try Saints Row 2 personally, as I hated the demo for the first one. To me it seemed like GTA without the benefit of its dark humor. I'm kind of iffy on open world games in general, but I did think Mercs 2 is WAY better than people give it credit for (particularly after playing the supposedly great GTA4, which looks and runs worse, and has IMO much worse gameplay, etc....though Mercs 2 gets way too hard). Crackdown was just awesome though. I don't know...I feel like everyone laughs about it and goes "ho ho ho people just bought it for the Halo demo" (I didn't). It's not perfect either, but the control is 90x better, and I really enjoyed it and it's super-hero-y-ness.[/QUOTE]

I honestly enjoyed the Crackdown demo more than the full game of GTA4.
 
[quote name='Wolfpup']I'm not going to try Saints Row 2 personally, as I hated the demo for the first one. To me it seemed like GTA without the benefit of its dark humor. I'm kind of iffy on open world games in general, but I did think Mercs 2 is WAY better than people give it credit for (particularly after playing the supposedly great GTA4, which looks and runs worse, and has IMO much worse gameplay, etc....though Mercs 2 gets way too hard). Crackdown was just awesome though. I don't know...I feel like everyone laughs about it and goes "ho ho ho people just bought it for the Halo demo" (I didn't). It's not perfect either, but the control is 90x better, and I really enjoyed it and it's super-hero-y-ness.[/QUOTE]


saints row 2 is a fun game but its damn buggy and unbalanced. tons of fun side missions and some funny stuff but it can be annoying how you die due to cheap attacks. like this one mission i tried beating the other day every few minutes a car full of bad guys comes out of nowehere at top speed and slams into you.

you kill one of them and while you turn your back to take care of what you need to another one comes out of nowhere. i died damn near 20 pulss times due to being run over or cars exploding and me catching on fire.

fun game but its got its flaws both gta4 and saints row 2 have good stuff in them where ones weak the other is stronger.
 
[quote name='ProggleRock']This game did absolutely nothing for me. The fact that both IGN and GameSpot gave it a 10 utterly baffles me. I can't believe a game with such a dated design was received so well.[/QUOTE]

Follow the money. :cry:
 
Ugh, I hated when that girl goes "don't you have any other clothes?" Like I hate clothes and shopping for clothes in real life, and I'm going to spend my gaming time shopping for clothes? :lol:
 
The thing with GTA is that it's been great since the beginning of the series. GTA III was a big evolutionary step and the follow ups of VC and SA were also just as brilliant. GTA IV was a huge technical achievement on so many levels (fly around in the helicopter for a while and consider what is actually going on around you in-game for a moment if you disagree). It had a lot of small touches that added to the experience (ragdoll pedestrian physics, calling 911 only to steal their vehicle, etc) I feel like they improved on a lot of things but something was lost in the end because they tried to pack so much in to it. I still can't quite put my finger on it, but it just didn't feel as fun as the predecessors for a bunch of small reasons. In hindsight, I don't understand the near perfect review scores either. I won't call it a piece of crap or anything, but a 9.0/10 feels a lot better than 9.9.

I had a pretty good time with Crackdown and Mercs 2 as well, and I never had Saints Row 1 to compare it to the sequel, but I spent a damn lot of time with that game. And considering the stack of unplayed games I have waiting, along with my irish wang sized attention span when it comes to gaming anymore, I still put over 20 hours into it and had a riot. I'd quit shilling for it so much but you can run up to Best Buy and grab a PS3 copy for $5 (there's a $20 off RZ coupon) right now and that's just too damn good of an offer to pass. Even if you hate it, there's sure to be a handful of CAGs willing to take it off your hands if they couldn't get in on the deal.
 
I played through and beat GTA 4 and I enjoyed it.

I haven't played Vice City/San Andreas in a long time, so my memory may be fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure that San Andreas had more stuff to do than GTA 4. It at least had more minigames/character stats.

All in all, I think that Saints Row 2 was a better overall sandbox game, sans the technical issues (crashing). GTA4 had a more cohesive, engaging story, though.

I will agree that GTA4 started off a bit slow, but it got really good about an hour or two in.
 
I haven't played GTA 4 since May, I want to finish the game but just never feel like it. And that is coming from someone who play through GTA 3 twice, Vice City once, San Andreas twice, Liberty City Stories and Vice City stories once each. I wish they would make a San Andreas Stories game for the PSP.
 
GTA4 was my first ps3 game along with cod 5. I thought i would love gta since i have been playing it alot at a friends house but once i got it..i dunno what happened, the luster was all gone. I suppose the controls need work but all in all the missions were pretty much the same. shoot em and run or chase em and shoot em.

its a bit weird now since when my friend comes over he insists on playing GTA (his fav. game along with tenchu series). And Im just like,"yea, we could play that..." *sigh* GTA ruined my friendship! lol
 
I wasted 21 hours trying to get into it before finally shelving it and ditching it on Goozex. Shouldn't have bothered in the first place as I didn't like GTA3 either (and didn't play the other GTAs in between), but the hype got me to try it.

If you're not getting into it, just scrap it and move on to the next one. Too little time, and too many good games (and other things) to be doing with free time to waste it trying to get into a game you're not liking after giving it a few hours to grow on you.
 
If you're not getting into it, just scrap it and move on to the next one. Too little time, and too many good games (and other things) to be doing with free time to waste it trying to get into a game you're not liking after giving it a few hours to grow on you.
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haha I gotta say dmaul, you sure do spend alot of time on a game site talking about how you don't play games

Personally I don't see how people put the past GTA games on such a pedestal... I enjoy San Andreas immensely, but I also remember alot of time pissed away running through the countryside or swimming through some ravine because my car crashed and the closest road is 5 minutes away. I wasn't completely swayed by the activities either, some things like the vehicle tests were great, others like maintaining your character's shape however were farmville-esque grinds. I'd take GTAIV's shooting mechanics over GTA3's "stand still absorbing bullets and scroll through autotargets as quickly as possible" style of play.

I think it's the spontaneous nature of the game that I enjoy most with GTAIV. Running across an intersection to escape the cops is a frusterating but exciting gamble when the cars don't just automatically skid to a halt when they come in close proximity. Shootouts are more fun when you have to improvise your cover instead of just taking a hostage and blasting away all carefree like you can in SR2. Perhaps this is where my opinion differs from many, I enjoy playing with a game's world more than playing games in the game world. I've had fun with many of the activities in saints row 2 like car surfing, but I find myself having even more fun in GTAIV playing with the stuff that's "just there". I can spend my whole playsession just free-running on the tops of buildings or pushing people until or off of things.
 
[quote name='eastshore4']haha I gotta say dmaul, you sure do spend alot of time on a game site talking about how you don't play games
[/QUOTE]

Very true! Result of being at a PC a lot working (and procrastinating!) and being a forum junky. The Off Topic, Vs. and Blu Ray deals forum keep me coming back to CAG, and I end up checking the general gaming forum while here.

But yeah, it is sad, a lot of weeks I probably spend more time on CAG than I do playing games!

One of my new year's resolutions will definitely be to get over this burn out with work, and be more efficient and spend less time procrastinating by goofing online.
 
Glad to hear the ending's bad. So what happens? So far Niko's randomly killed a dude for no particular reason to keep the story going.
 
Which 'dude' are you talking about that he whacked? You can PM it if you don't wanna spoil it for some who may not have played through the storyline 100% as of yet.

I hated the girlfriend and stats bullshit in San Andreas and I hated how much these idiotic 'friends' in GTAIV kept calling bugging me to do stuff with them.

I really wish they would've made the game much more open ended, where if you got annoyed/bored with a friend/girlfriend you could whack 'em and they would disappear forever from the game.

Both of the endings for this game sucked though, especially since on my playthrough I never really tried to be too chummy with either person who bit it in the end, yet Niko was clearly emo over their untimely demise in both endings.

I kind of wish you could have like 5-6 endings to one of these games: a 'good', a 'bad', a 'neutral' and a couple variations of the good n bad ones.

And Wolfpup, as others have said Saint's Row 2 is $5 this week after Reward Zone Gamer's Club coupon at Best Buy and it's well worth the $5.

As for Mercenaries 2 being 'hard', it wasn't the difficulty that made me give up on it, it was the fuckin' glitches. The one mission involved defending a building as tanks and troops are trying to annihilate it. Halfway through the mission, the building is in ruins, but the timer is still ticking down to :00 as the rubble is smoldering behind my merc I chose to use.

Plus, for a game that focused on the destructibility part of the enviro, it sure took ALOT of shelling from a tank to bring down a single building. That's all I used to do in Mercs 1 once I finished it, was order up a tank n keep having them airlift me shells for it and blowing up whole blocks. LOL
 
People are still bellyaching about this game? It's a good game, but it did take me about a year to beat because I also did find it not that great at first. I then went back and finished it and I'm glad I did because when I did I saw the game in a different light and enjoyed it a lot more than I initially did.
 
Well I only just started it last Saturday, I think. It's in my Gamestop trade in pile now though.
 
I didn't enjoy GTA IV very much. What bothered me most about the game, was the driving. The cars feel too floaty, its like they're all hovercrafts.
 
I really disliked GTAIV as well. I recognize that it's a "good" game, and I've tried several times to play it all the way through, but I just don't have much fun with it.

I think ultimately the problem was that I loved San Andreas so much that IV just let me down and felt like a step backwards. Yes, its far more polished, but there is just so much less that you can do. I actually thought Saints Row 2 was a superior game.

I really hope the next installment opens things up again.
 
I thought San Andreas was a mess(don't get me started on the fucking pilot license and the final mission). My favorite was probably GTA IV(though I loved Ray Liotta voicing the main character in Vice City) because the targeting is so much better than the previous 3(the ending was meh but so was GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas). The targeting in the previous 3 made a buddy of mine break multiple ps2 controllers in frustration(if you hit it on a table just right it will snap in two).
 
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[quote name='Thomas96']I didn't enjoy GTA IV very much. What bothered me most about the game, was the driving. The cars feel too floaty, its like they're all hovercrafts.[/QUOTE]

I felt that too about the cars, but I've been messing around in a LOT of Free Mode games(usually private ones with no public slots at all)and I've managed to figure out how to powerslide in most vehicles now when I'm going around corners.

I still lose control at times, but not as often as before.
 
I played into GTA IV until I just reached Alderney, but then injured my hand (unrelated incident). Ever since then, I just had no desire to go back. I later picked up Saint's Row 2 and had the most fun in a long time. That is easily one of my favorite games this generation. I actually played all the side activities in the game. Something I never do. You know why? It let you do what you want with so much freedom too. I mean, what kind of GTA-type game lets you fly a UFO? A fucking UFO!
 
It boggles the mind that so many of you prefer Saint's Row 2 to GTA4. SR2 was one of the corniest pieces of shit I have ever played. That was so bad it hurt my brain. I guess it stands to reason that people prefer corny garbage to good games just like they love their Michael Bay movies and shit on quality work.

Also anyone shitting on the cars is crazy. Just because they all have different attributes and the game doesn't play like your favorite arcade racer doesn't mean the driving aspect wasn't really solid. Just because they have realism factored in doesn't mean that any vehicle in the game was flawed in a bad way.
 
[quote name='CaseyRyback']It boggles the mind that so many of you prefer Saint's Row 2 to GTA4. SR2 was one of the corniest pieces of shit I have ever played. That was so bad it hurt my brain. I guess it stands to reason that people prefer corny garbage to good games just like they love their Michael Bay movies and shit on quality work.[/QUOTE]

While SR2's story wasn't very memorable (Hell, I don't even remember it). It was still fun. There are a lot of games I play, but then halfway through it just gets repetitive and I just want to reach the end. But Saint's Row 2 was different. Don't get me wrong, I still love good games like Bioshock and Braid, but Saint's Row 2 is that kind of game where you can just relax and just have some mindless fun.
 
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