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I had very mixed feelings about GTA 4. The first hour or so of driving around was mind blowing, noticing how realistically thing interact with each other. Then I realised how little there was to actually do, and the missions were repetitive and uninteresting as hell. Not to mention that while Euphoria leads to some wonderful ragdolling, applying it so dilligently to Nico results in about the only game where it's harder to manoeuvre while walking than driving. As we moved from one gritty realistic plot strand to another, with no risk of any of them paying off, I couldn't help but wonder what the hell Rockstar was thinking. We get the usual schizophrenic mess of a plotline (where you end up working for every gang in the city) but without much flair to the missions, since the world is so gritty and realistic. It's kind of the worst of both worlds However, between them, Lost and Damned and Gay Tony offer tantalising glimpses of what could have been Lost and Damned is the grittiness done right. It's a short story that starts you in the dumps and keeps you there, filled with well written, memorably self destructive characters. Johnny's relationship with Ashley is as complex a relationship as I can remember seeing in a game, and the game's over before the mission devolve into repetition. Gay Tony is the schizophrenic plot done right. You save a nightclub by...base jumping off the empire state while shotgunning helicopters and getting into sniper duels. It's all over the place, but its missions are varied enough that it fits. Really, I'd be happy with GTA 5 going firmly in either of these directions, rather than lingering in the middle like GTA 4 vanilla did.
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Sep 14, 2011 00:13
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Chaltab posted:Hm, you think so? GTA4 seemed like a huge step-up in terms of many of the game mechanics. The shooting is actually challenging without being absurdly difficult and largely based on luck as it is in Vice City, the car physics, while taking a lot of getting used to, feel more reliable; you don't flip your car at random so much. I also thought it was well paced and had a really good mission structure. The mechanics were fine. The problem is what they did with them: very very little. Every mission (or at least a huge majority) boiled down to "go to a brown place, shoot some forgettable people, drive away in a sedan." The main selling point of Sandbox games is variety. In Just Cause 2, I can steal fighter plane, strafe a harbour for half an hour, then steal a sports car and hit ramps and jumps. In the same game. For a game series that was initially interesting because of the idea of free agency, it's a very limited, scripted game. You shouldn't experience almost everything it has to offer in two hours.
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Sep 30, 2011 06:28
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trandorian posted:Uh, sandbox game means you don't do all the cool poo poo in missions, you understand that right? Did noone tell you you were allowed to do anything in GTA IV that wasn't a mission? (And from the sounds of it it is almost like you never even got out of the East Island) Aside from shooting pedestrians and getting in gunfights with the cops, what is there to do? I actually got (according to the completion thingy) about 65 % of the way through. Driving isn't partucularly fun (though I can appreciate the technical accomplishment that is the game's physics) There's one armed helicopter in the game, a small selection fairly pedestrian weapons. As I said, the game packs a pretty serious wow factor initially, and it's fun being a dick. To whit, Saints Row 2 does as well. I spent about an hour running down the street, kicking people in the crotch, tasering them, throwing fire hydrants at people and people at traffic. However, two days later, having progressed through a few of the missions, I had also done drivebys, streaking, committed vast amounts of property damage, used helicopters and a bunch of other things. I also had no trouble acquiring fast cars. Two days later in GTA 4, I was still doing the missions because, aside from getting in gunfights with the cops (which was employing the exact same mechanics as the missions) there really wasn't much to do. Also, they never seemed to end and I had no idea which ones were the important ones, forcing me to do them all. Now, you can say "well, the missions are only a part of it" and you're right. The problem with that is, the game puts most of the content under lock and key until you do them. Want a better weapon? Do the missions. Want to explore the other two thirds of the game map? Do the missions. Want money to spend on better weapons? Do the missions. As such, I'm kind of forced to comment on the missions since they are a necessary part of unlocking the fun. As I said, for a sandbox game, it puts a lot of limitations on you and forces you to do a lot of it. By comparison, Saints Row 2 (I use that comparison a lot since, to me, it's an almost perfect sandbox game) lets you access most of the game on your own terms. You do have to do some side missions and activities to progress, but there's enough variety on them, and no order to them. For instance, escort is kind of hard and not engineered particularly well. So I didn't do it. I did activities I did enjoy. Meanwhile, GTA 4 had me stuck listening to characters I hated, driving them somewhere so I could buy some bullets for my pistol and a new grey jumper. Even in the vastly improved Ballad of Gay Tony, there was still Mori, who may be the most annoying character in any form of fiction ever.
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Sep 30, 2011 06:57
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trandorian posted:Honestly it's like you're playing some bizarre alternate universe GTA IV compared to me. so in your universe all weapons and the entire map were available straight away? I specify that because it's kind of emblematic of my problem with GTA 4. San Andreas kept plenty under lock and key. But it was stuff like planes, easily accessed helicopters, flamethrowers, jetpacks, missions involving base jumping. There was a clear sense of progression and upgrading. In the later parts of GTA 4 you unlock...missions from a homeless guy? a slightly better assault rifle? Snowman_McK fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Sep 30, 2011 |
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Sep 30, 2011 11:10
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trandorian posted:It takes like 2 hours to get to Algonquin and then you have pretty much everything unlocked. But there was also plenty to do on the East Island + Bohan by themselves. In San Andreas you didn't get to most of the good stuff until you'd already completed 4 (Los Santos I, Wilderness, San Fierro, Desert) out of the game's 6 acts. Which ties into my point that there's bugger all to unlock. A slightly better gun, a different selection of brown jumpers, different grey scenery, and it still takes a pretty long time to get all that (it's longer than two hours) and what you have to do to unlock isn't really fun (here, drive this annoying character somewhere). I didn't particularly like San Anderas, even at the time, the game's pace was too slow for me, but across the overly long campaign, you unlock a pretty wide variety of things and places and stuff to do. 4 years, and millions of dollars later, across a slightly shorter campaign in GTA 4, you unlock basically nothing. Or at least, nothing that couldn't have been unlocked straight away. Basically, GTA 4 is the biggest waste of talent and technology I've played. It was still obeying conventions they established in GTA 3 (like having a lot of very uninteresting "drive point a-b missions) without noticing what else was in the genre at the time. It gave you a big playground without putting anything to do in it (yes, you can pick fights, you can do that in every sandbox game, along with lots of other things) and had fewer unlocks than previous games in the series. It felt like a teched up GTA 3, but that doesn't quite describe it either, since GTA 3 had A. A lot more to do, and B. a sense of fun.
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Oct 1, 2011 01:40
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Intel&Sebastian posted:They call them sandbox games for a reason. Sandboxes tend to have sand in them, rather than being paved. You can defend a lot of the choices made for GTA 4, and it's a game with some amazing attributes. But honestly, if you had enjoyed San Andreas (which a lot of people did) and created your ideal follow up in your head, how many of the choices that people complain about would you have made yourself?
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Nov 3, 2011 00:00
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mobby_6kl posted:Ahaha are people seriously saying that GTA 4 was good because it sold a lot of copies? A blaxploitation game with a main character voiced by Pam Grier would own bones.
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Nov 3, 2011 00:59
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Here's a thought, it's a video game, not a real business. How about including features that make sense for a video game?
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Nov 3, 2011 02:44
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Joda posted:I know gently caress all about American geography, but they mentioned that two rural landmarks shown (Yosemite National Park and the windmill area) are known for being between Los Angeles and Las Vegas and San Francisco respectively. If that's true the case is looking pretty solid to be honest. Miami's on the other coast.
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Nov 3, 2011 02:56
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Joda posted:Forgive my ignorance, but how/why is Miami relevant in this regard? Is that where one of the landmarks is? Vice City was "not Miami" and that was where we left Tommy Vercetti.
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Nov 3, 2011 02:59
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Install Gentoo posted:When you think about it, IV with Episodes is basically IV with multiple characters. The plots completely intertwine and all that. If Niko's story had been as short, self contained, focused and well done as Lost and the Damned, I would have had no problem with the change in tone.
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Nov 3, 2011 03:16
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kater posted:I think they can drop Venturas and not be missing anything. Las Vegas is pretty one note in the first place, not much new satire you can bleed from it. They could make a bunch of terrible, spelt out jokes about MMA? Actually, maybe it was just my cynicism or age, but was there a drop in quality in the ads in GTA 4? All of Vice City had me chuckling like an idiot, but GTA 4 had a bunch of ones where I wasn't sure what the joke was, like an impotence ad that featured a boy not getting it up for his teacher. It seemed less parody and more random mash up. And a Dragonheart parody? In 2008?
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Nov 3, 2011 07:18
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/\ /\ /\ I'm fine with skillful driving being required sometimes, like during missions, you should be able to drive well and push yourself, but when I'm just getting from point A to B, it's nice for that to be easier, since that's just getting around. Having an alternative is also nice.Intel&Sebastian posted:
Nope, you could fast travel literally anywhere if you set a waypoint in RDR. Also, no matter how convenient the gun van was, not having to visit it is more convenient. MaliceMolaka posted:Maybe Grand Theft Auto just isn't your cup of tea. fast and convenient? Call of Duty comes out Tuesday! This is a dumb thing to say. Grand Theft Auto is possibly the worst game to try and be snobby about, given how ridiculously popular literally every incarnation of it has been. Not to mention that wanting it to be a better version of its own genre is hardly synonymous with being an entirely different game from a different genre.
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Nov 5, 2011 01:51
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MaliceMolaka posted:What I'm trying to get across is that the game has been and always will be centered around driving. If you don't have the patience to drive to and from your various objectives and enjoy the laboriously crafted world around you then perhaps a game with nonstop and instantly gratifying action would be more suitable. driving around and enjoying the city is fine, if I feel like that, but there needs to be an alternative, otherwise you're just forcing tedium on the player. Not to mention, it would be nice if more missions started closer to where the action takes place. If I'm going to have to listen to a character as annoying as Morrie loving Klebbitz (seriously, gently caress that guy so hard) can it be for 30 seconds instead of 5 minutes? Don't start with "well, if you can't pay attention for five minutes...something, something...ADD" it's five minutes of doing nothing but driving normally while an unbelievably annoying character screeches at me. Most of the time it's just tedious, but with a couple of the characters it was actually unpleasant.
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Nov 5, 2011 06:09
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Yeticopter posted:I remember the first time I hung out with Roman he loving talked the whole time my favorite Liberty Rock song was on (1979) and I realized if you shoot out the window he stops talking, and resumes the beginning of the line after a few seconds ad infinitum. But I'm pretty sure this issue was tackled in a pretty big way with GTAIV. The mission checkpoints were substantially better than previous games, and usually respawns you pretty close to the bad guy that killed you. Of course, if you were doing the initial drive (say the bank heist mission) that's fairly long and get killed on the way, well that sucks. I bring up Saints Row 2 a lot (sorry) but it handled this by starting you really close to what was happening. Like, a block or two over, a suburb at most. If you had to go a long way, there would be a challenge to it, like multiple pursuers or a time limit. There were multiple missions even in the vastly improved BOGT that placed the start and the meat of the mission on opposite sides of the city. Again, driving round the city, at my leisure, can be really fun. It's an amazingly detailed city, the driving engine, while tricky to get the hang of, is great in BOGT. The problem is forcing me to do that so I can get to the fun. There's a brilliant analogy in a Cracked article, of all places, that compares throwing cards into a hat while bored to doing it in order to have sex with your girlfriend, and that's what GTA 4 felt like: work.
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Nov 5, 2011 07:21
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Yeticopter posted:I think the long drives have a legitimate purpose though, up to a point. As the game's story unfolds you're constantly forced into new unexplored areas of the city you wouldn't ordinarily go if all the missions took place in like, a single neighborhood or borough. And the fact that it's so BIG is what GTA is all about anyway, the story is really just a backdrop to the huge realistic city you drive around and kill people in. But yeah, driving from south Broker to Alderney is a loving chore. The missions themselves could've used less tedious driving, but not a lot less. It's called Grand Theft Auto after all. Grand Theft Auto Really, there should be no tedious driving, tedious is an inherently negative quality. If the only way you can get people to explore your enormous city is by forcing them to do it, you loving suck at designing games.
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Nov 5, 2011 08:51
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MZ posted:I really hope they don't have a refueling system, that would be retardedly boring. At this rate, it'll be as fun as San Andreas in about 4 games.
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Nov 5, 2011 14:04
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FetusOvaries posted:Yeah, seriously. It's like you guys have never been outside on a gloomy day. Getting shot doesn't actually result in you re-spawning at a nearby hospital. Realism is a poor excuse for an ugly effect
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Nov 7, 2011 08:06
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Underflow posted:If only they put in character and vehicle customisation. Videogaming will not have come of age until the advent of the fat middle-aged female protagonist on a souped up lowrider Segway with integrated flamethrower. You know, there's another franchise you might want to look into...
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Nov 11, 2011 13:16
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 11:08 |
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I am a big dummy who has no idea how to use even cosmetic mods for games. I've been having a blast with San Andreas (it is mindblowing how ambitious that game was) but it could use a graphics tweak. Could someone link me to A. The best graphical mod for a mid range computer and B. A guide, even just a basic one, for how to implement the mod. Apologies if this has already been covered.
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Mar 8, 2014 09:20
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