What is the final consensus on GTAIV?
- Thread starter borghe
- Start date
What do you mean?
I loved it. One of my favorite games of this generation. I did like San Andreas better. I can understand how some found aspects of it tedious, but I don't think boring describes it accurately at all.
My .02 cents on the driving physics: Easily the best of any open world game that I've played, and actually better than a few racing games that I've played. This is with the hood view, I don't like playing the other views.
The on-foot controls do need to be improved for the GTA V, no argument from me there.
My .02 cents on the driving physics: Easily the best of any open world game that I've played, and actually better than a few racing games that I've played. This is with the hood view, I don't like playing the other views.
The on-foot controls do need to be improved for the GTA V, no argument from me there.
I finished the story, messed around a little bit, and then traded it in. It's not that fun.
- worst third person shooting in a successful game ever. With aim assist on you are not really playing the game. With it off it's ugly, oh so ugly.
- phone calls from friends. I had to rush to finish it because those needy fucks would not stop calling me. Bullshit you want to go bowling! Don't you have a fucking bank we can rob or something useful?
- "I am from Soviet and have no money!" Except for the half-mil up in the corner of the screen. The story lost all internal logic after a few hours.
- It's a paper-thin open world. It's a big driving sim with cardboard cutouts for buildings and other places. It felt hollow.
- Could you even get this game up to five and six stars? I tried a bunch of times. It didn't happen.
The only thing that didn't get boring was finding some open road to cruise with the radio going. No precision driving mind you, you're not going to get that. Just some atmophere rolling with a good beat.
- worst third person shooting in a successful game ever. With aim assist on you are not really playing the game. With it off it's ugly, oh so ugly.
- phone calls from friends. I had to rush to finish it because those needy fucks would not stop calling me. Bullshit you want to go bowling! Don't you have a fucking bank we can rob or something useful?
- "I am from Soviet and have no money!" Except for the half-mil up in the corner of the screen. The story lost all internal logic after a few hours.
- They drop the person you are looking for the entire game in front of you. He says nothing, he does nothing. Kill or don't kill. Why even bother?
- It's a paper-thin open world. It's a big driving sim with cardboard cutouts for buildings and other places. It felt hollow.
- Could you even get this game up to five and six stars? I tried a bunch of times. It didn't happen.
The only thing that didn't get boring was finding some open road to cruise with the radio going. No precision driving mind you, you're not going to get that. Just some atmophere rolling with a good beat.
EagleBurnn
Banned
Mess of a plot that goes on for far too long, Nico is a bad protaganist, the game itself is structed to not allow player creativity in missions nearly as much as previous games in the franchise, and the game is missing out on many cool rewards and cheats that further extended the shelf life of the other GTA games. Also within the main story lacked mission variety, took itself too seriously while at the same time having places like Tw@ and geenral GTA humor clashing hard with it, and had those fucking horrible phone annoyances.
So as a huge GTA fan, IV was not too good for me. Did I still have fun with it? Sure, but I don't hold it in high regard. I do actually really like the car handling which was controversial, and I still haven't played TLAD/Gay Tony yet but I'm getting to them before V.
So as a huge GTA fan, IV was not too good for me. Did I still have fun with it? Sure, but I don't hold it in high regard. I do actually really like the car handling which was controversial, and I still haven't played TLAD/Gay Tony yet but I'm getting to them before V.
bitoriginal
Member
I think that story wise GTAIV combined with the two episodes was fucking fantastic. Loved the way the story interweaved and seeing how shit went down. Overall I really enjoyed it, but Niko was a bit of a flat character after CJ. Gameplay was good but definitely lacking random activities and different/interesting ways of achieving objectives. I actually enjoyed the driving physics more than any other GTA game. Looking forward to more San Andreas type sandbox.
EYEL1NER
Member
My thoughts on it?
It was overrated and over-hyped, but by no means a "bad game."
"Not as good as San Andreas" doesn't mean "=shit" in my book, especially when San Andreas set the bar so high.
I bought it on PS3 at launch and didn't play it much, then picked it up on 360 some time later and blew through it to get the Liberty City Minute achievement and had a lot of fun. The game looked good, had a bit of that GTA humor and charm, an okay story, and a nice take on a real-life world with real locations.
It did have terrible driving and controls in general, more than a couple boring or bad characters and missions, the GTA humor and charm was toned-down, and could be all-around boring at times when you just wanted to go crazy and fuck around in-game. That last one is the reason I enjoyed Saint's Row 2 and Sleeping Dogs a lot more than GTA IV.
I think it is a solid 8.5 out of 10 (and not an 8.5 on the "7 and 8 mean worst game ever, 9 and 10 mean best game ever" scale a lot of places use). It was a triple-AAA experience and it showed and impressed at times. It was definitely above a mediocre or average game, but had a few bad design elements (STOP FUCKING CALLING ME, ROMAN!!!) that kept it from being one of the great games this gen.
It was overrated and over-hyped, but by no means a "bad game."
"Not as good as San Andreas" doesn't mean "=shit" in my book, especially when San Andreas set the bar so high.
I bought it on PS3 at launch and didn't play it much, then picked it up on 360 some time later and blew through it to get the Liberty City Minute achievement and had a lot of fun. The game looked good, had a bit of that GTA humor and charm, an okay story, and a nice take on a real-life world with real locations.
It did have terrible driving and controls in general, more than a couple boring or bad characters and missions, the GTA humor and charm was toned-down, and could be all-around boring at times when you just wanted to go crazy and fuck around in-game. That last one is the reason I enjoyed Saint's Row 2 and Sleeping Dogs a lot more than GTA IV.
I think it is a solid 8.5 out of 10 (and not an 8.5 on the "7 and 8 mean worst game ever, 9 and 10 mean best game ever" scale a lot of places use). It was a triple-AAA experience and it showed and impressed at times. It was definitely above a mediocre or average game, but had a few bad design elements (STOP FUCKING CALLING ME, ROMAN!!!) that kept it from being one of the great games this gen.
R_thanatos
Member
I know it's LAME thinking ..But the multiplayer alone made the game "proper" .. the player themselves made cool things with it.
And when you've finished the single player missions , there is Still plenty of things to do. it's not "fun" for everyone , but it's still stuff.
EagleBurnn
Banned
I understand that there's still a MP side to it and it's not bad by any means, but being the next full game after San Andreas, it was very disappointing. Story rocked though. I'm glad R* is using the bank heist mission as a layout for many others in GTA V as well, excited about that. I'm just worried about the replayability.
Well done, you found a video that shows some guy turning off the in game animations ( enabling the ragdoll) mid air, not something that actually happens.
Plus the collisions for most of the stuff was actually pretty real looking, like going into the NPC= NPC to also fall out, when niko gets up to move he trips over him, running and jumping over the hot dog thing resulted in NIKO doing a bit of a flip/failing as the momentum of him running into it resulted in him falling as you see many times in the hundreds of "Fail" videos on youtube.
Shoot a running pedestrian in the leg in game with a gun in IV, then do it in ANY other game and you will see exactly what I mean.
Also, I am talking about the euphoria engine,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoES90f-0pk.
Yes, this all DOES happen in IV.
Same city as 3, different alternate reality.
I think the multiplayer is pretty fun also. Many people try to dismiss it, but it was a good addition to the series and is still surprisingly popular to this day.
Extra Sauce
Member
Driving actually feels like driving, which makes it more immersive and satisfying.
Can't say the same for GTA clones in general.
Same name is the only thing you should really mention.
It was redone A LOT and looks very different to the one in 3.
You are right though, I think after V it will most likely be Vice city, would prefer a whole new map created but I think Rockstar want to make a map that is basically all 3 cities together in one game ( said in the game informer interview)
Honestly as long as the cities are remade to the level LC was in IV, it would be fine.
breakfuss
Member
Didn't see this earlier. Haha, what?! You're really using these points, in relation to GTAIV, as reasons you disliked Sleeping Dogs? ALL ABOARD THE IRONY TRAIN!!!!
its an ok game at best for me. the biggest fault with the game that i have is the game does not want you to be creative in missions. for instance theres a mission where you need to take out a guy at a bar. why not
blow up his car so he has no escape? he has a car magically appear when he goes out the back door. why not park your car blocking the rear exit of the bar? your car magically disappears. in this particular mission
you have to follow the script exactly how it is set out for you. when your chasing him you cant even catch up to him early and ram him off the road. its for "cinematic reasons" and its complete horseshit. theres
more like this too, but i cant remember right now. why have an open world if you cant be creative. its worthless. plus the cars handle like garbage, they're not arcade fun and they dont feel realistic either, worst of
both worlds.
blow up his car so he has no escape? he has a car magically appear when he goes out the back door. why not park your car blocking the rear exit of the bar? your car magically disappears. in this particular mission
you have to follow the script exactly how it is set out for you. when your chasing him you cant even catch up to him early and ram him off the road. its for "cinematic reasons" and its complete horseshit. theres
more like this too, but i cant remember right now. why have an open world if you cant be creative. its worthless. plus the cars handle like garbage, they're not arcade fun and they dont feel realistic either, worst of
both worlds.
I couldn't agree more with his post. Sleeping Dogs was very forgettable.
Ploid 3.0
Member
Realism got in the way of fun. Even with mods it's too annoying to play, the best option for a better controlled walking system makes the character walk too fast with the physics in tact causing him to slide all over the place. It looks like a bugs bunny cartoon. Without the mod it feel like you're walking in mud. It's probably easier to not notice if GTA4 was the only third person game you play, but after playing better controlled games it's very noticeable.
He has the poor driving part correct, the twitchy and straight up ps2 level driving is horrible. No depth at all.
City has some great looking places but still has that feeling of the devs said " meh, its ok as it is" instead of going all out like they should have. I got bored of the city quicker than IV ( IV city was quite poor too, so that is saying something)
Police interaction for a cop game ( even if undercover) was poor.
Story was good though.
breakfuss
Member
Forgettable is one thing. You won't find anyone ruminating over it years from now the way we seem to do with GTA entries. Still, it was FUN. Fun, fun, fun. Something GTAIV was not. Suppose it doesn't matter, though, since it's "remembered".
The driving in IV alone was a lot more fun than every other feature of SD, SR and JC2 to me.
Not mentioning things like the MP.
Not trying to say my opinion is fact, SD will probably be remembered fondly by some people. Just personally, I agree with Sethos.
And I did have a lot of fun with GTA IV. Still do when I play multiplayer every once in a while.
rahulkadukar
Member
What are the abbreviations in the OP
That's nice I guess, but fun doesn't care about that "advanced technological stuff". And I didn't find any of it in IV.
Did Saints Row 3 have those technological advancements? I don't know, I guess not, but why should I care - I laughed my ass off playing that game and that's what's important to me.
Rockstar, just give me GTA 3/VC/SA in a HD collection. I don't care about graphics or your ragdoll physics stuff, I just want to have a good time with Claude, Tommy and Carl.
Sigismundo
Member
I think it's quite telling that Rockstar with GTA 5 seem to be fixing problems that the general public had with GTA 4 and ignoring the press who showered it with lavish praise.
As for GTA 4, ehhhhhhhh.
As for GTA 4, ehhhhhhhh.
The Euphoria physics add more to a game in terms of fun and enjoyment more so than half assed activities that you do like 3 times and forget...
To me anyway.
Agree about graphics, kinda.
Just bought GTA4 again to my pc. Greenman gaming had a pretty good sale on GTA4 and it's dlc for like $10. I used to have it on my 360 but sold it to gamestop for like 4 years ago cuz of money issues.
The story is much better then previous games. I feel more involved in whats going on. Unlike the other games where you just walk up to someone and it's "pick up this" "do that" "drive here" "kill him/her" with no reason why or very little back story. I feel like there is more drama and stuff going on in the story this time. I also actually care about the characters.
The driving however...why does everybody says that it's realistic? I don't know what kind of car you drive but it doesn't fell like i'm driving on ice when i'm on asphalt a sunny day. And whats up with the terrible, terrible brakes?
Although i think it's nice that the cars handle differently....
But the biggest issue with this game is the end game. There is none. Once you finished the main story, there's nothing else to do. And this is just so weird for me...all the older games you could keep playing for days after you finished them. Rampage mission, side mission, the motocross, the police mission, firetruck,ambulance, collecting packages etc.
Haven't tried the L.A.D and B.O.G.T yet but will do..
The story is much better then previous games. I feel more involved in whats going on. Unlike the other games where you just walk up to someone and it's "pick up this" "do that" "drive here" "kill him/her" with no reason why or very little back story. I feel like there is more drama and stuff going on in the story this time. I also actually care about the characters.
The driving however...why does everybody says that it's realistic? I don't know what kind of car you drive but it doesn't fell like i'm driving on ice when i'm on asphalt a sunny day. And whats up with the terrible, terrible brakes?
Although i think it's nice that the cars handle differently....
But the biggest issue with this game is the end game. There is none. Once you finished the main story, there's nothing else to do. And this is just so weird for me...all the older games you could keep playing for days after you finished them. Rampage mission, side mission, the motocross, the police mission, firetruck,ambulance, collecting packages etc.
Haven't tried the L.A.D and B.O.G.T yet but will do..
R_thanatos
Member
Sleeping dogs had nice locales .. but they were just a few of them.SD had plenty of cool ideas but they came after GTA4 and some of them are indeed forgettable ( busting drug deal with a camera ? cool idea in theory , but badly done in practise).
When you compare GTA4 had a much more cohesive world structure , and many more unique landmarks.
That doesn't mean that GTA4 doesn't have ideas that were badly used ...it had a lot of them too ( especially in the mission structure ) BUT GTA had more stuff , more content and a bigger map to explore.
16 hours i've 100% SD .. 16 hours i'm in the second island in GTA4 and still having some stuff to play (or to watch)
And i say this as someone who loved "Both games" ( 100% solo both ), in term of content , GTA4 is just far far above many others.
rosaceadude2112
Member
No it doesn't.
Flakster99
Member
Fucking boring. Though I have to admit, fantastic looking game with the proper graphical upgraded mods for the PC.
About the driving, why I like them/ call them kinda realistic:
You can't go full speed or even fast around a corner with any car, you have to slow down and prepare for the corner in a way. Have to have the right speed when cornering. Judge your speed.
Breaking is nice because if you are going fast and break hard, you tyres lock up, resulting in you skidding which is obviously bad as it will be harder to control the car, to deal with this you need to gently use the breaks ( so don't pull the trigger all the way down, like 70% down), this will result in good breaking without the tyre lock, also you need to make sure you break in advance, if you need to turn a corner don't treat it like any other game and break exactly as you are cornering, break a good few metres ahead and when adjusting the speed ( too fast, break more or too slow accelerate more) you can make a turn effectively.
When you are actually about to turn if you accelerate you will crash because you will be going to fast, like you do in racing sims you accelerate just when you leave the corner/ car is about to go straight to get that nice lead.
Don't accelerate and turn at the same time, even when overtaking most of the time.
Since you have a lot of control over the steering and the controls are not twitchy *cough, every other driving physics in open world games besides mafia 2* you can control how much you turn easily and have better control of a car.
Car acceleration ( 0-60 mph) is pretty good and fits each car very well, turning too fast does result in the cars weight shifting, personal experience and making it harder so better to control you speed)
It's not sim like, it has a great mixture of arcade and realism, has GREAT depth to it ( which is what people fail at, so complain about it being hard) and it's not as simple as "hold full speed, turn left or right" like pretty much every other driving game.
It might seem like a lot to take in but it's very simple and I got used to it within 10 hours of playing ( I did complain about the driving at first, then I did something unique now a days, I adjusted and learnt how to do it effectively) and now I love it and find it to be very important in open world games with cars, sadly other games have ps2 era physics.
Mushroomer25
Member
It's a fantastic open-world crime story, but it's not a great GTA game. I'd still rate it as one of the generation's best though.
DryvBy
Member
Not as good as San Andreas in terms of what I could do, but I still enjoyed the mess out of it. Red Dead Redemption I think mastered what GTA 4 was trying to do: be realistic but have a lot of goofy stuff to do.
I do not want GTA to turn into Saints Row at all, but I would like if the series lightening up a bit.
I do not want GTA to turn into Saints Row at all, but I would like if the series lightening up a bit.
Magicpaint
Member
breakfuss
Member
Whether it's "as good as SA" or Vice City is irrelevant because as someone already brilliantly posted, the enchantment we experienced with those can never be recaptured. I went into IV with reasonable expectations, only to be met with an immigration simulator. Oh, and what vehicle in the real world handles like that? Felt like I was sloshing through a tub of jell-o. And Niko walked like he had multiple hernias. Just, blah. It was a chore to play. By any standard. Perhaps calling it horrible is a bit hyperbolic, though.
The Albatross
Member
With the exception of a few things (one or two radio hosts or some small easter eggs), the universe in GTAIV is a separate universe from that of GTA3 -> VC -> SA. As if the events of those games did not actually happen. Disappointed by that too.
JetSetRadio
Banned
Driving is way better than most wanted nfs or grid or dirt etc.
That is what really matters to me playing GT Auto.
It felt like Driver ps1 but even better.
I can't enjoy just cause, sleeping dogs or saints row either because of the simplified controls without that wonderfull physics engine.
That is what really matters to me playing GT Auto.
It felt like Driver ps1 but even better.
I can't enjoy just cause, sleeping dogs or saints row either because of the simplified controls without that wonderfull physics engine.
It's not forgettable, it's one of the best games of last year.
It's just not as good as GTA 4.
Loved it, it could have been improved in many ways, no jets etc. but I still really enjoyed it, Red dead is the best game this gen though.
Once you get used to the driving in IV it's a notable imporvment to the series, people don't like it because it slower compared to ps2 era GTAs
Once you get used to the driving in IV it's a notable imporvment to the series, people don't like it because it slower compared to ps2 era GTAs
How so? those games were set in 2003 and before, IV is set around 2008-2010. Makes sense for them to be apart.
Also if the driving in V is dumbed down to the level of games like JC/SD/SR then I would be massively disappointed, regardless of how good the map, characters, story, gameplay or graphics are, hope they don't listen to those who cant be bothered to actually learn the physics ( and once you do, I bet you would love them ), improvements can be made, just hope they actually make improvements and not go backwards...
The Albatross
Member
I'm also in the group that thought that GTA4 was an improvement with cars. I liked that sports cars and clunkers actually felt different in this game, instead of all of them feeling mostly the same... with the exception of some topped out speed like in GTA:SA and VC.
Did not like the bike physics though... pretty much major motorcycles useless in the main story. You could tell that they realized they goofed and made up for it with the Lost and the Damned, giving some excuse that 'An immigrant might not be an expert at handling a bike but these guys are.' Seemed lame, but I was glad they "Fixed" it.
Did not like the bike physics though... pretty much major motorcycles useless in the main story. You could tell that they realized they goofed and made up for it with the Lost and the Damned, giving some excuse that 'An immigrant might not be an expert at handling a bike but these guys are.' Seemed lame, but I was glad they "Fixed" it.
I think they mean that Dan and Sam Houser said they were separate universes, like Tommy, Carl don't exist in the 360/PS3 universe and they said they were like mythical creatures in this universe.
AgentP
Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
This.