Like majority of the GTA fanbase i feel gta4 is a few years old in terms of variety.
Waiting through the 10 minute installing process i never expected to get this impatient and was literally counting the seconds. Then after the pretty impressive intro to the next-gen look of gta and the cutscene i was left sitting in the car for a few minutes trying to figure out how the bloody hell i drive this contraption?!?
After getting used to the new driving controls i was expecting this game to last quite a while, and it has although mainly for me starting to give up on beating those japanese high-scores on DMC4 :S...
In control of Niko (who i have to agree is my favourite gta protaganist so far)
i browsed my crap-hole of a flat, knocked over a few chairs was impressed with the simply push open door to get outside feature and took my first steps in the immersive world Liberty City.
My first reactions like everyones I'm sure, even the one's that have given it an unfair 5, were breathtaking. Graphically I'm not really hard to please (still lovin the old school graphics of resident evil) and i thought the game looked great.
For the most part, until your forced outa your first safehouse due to a very easily hateable antagonist i started to feel the repitition souring through me and even get a little bored with the mission goals.
So thinking i might just try a few side missions to let me get over and eventually be begging for the story missions, it didn't work as well as i hoped. Yes i did go back to plowing through the story but because thats all there is!!!! No more car modding, no more taxi missions (well besides the occasional and pointless trip lifts for your cousin) no bicycle's not even any gangs to look out for. The improved vigilante missions however do really work well and are incredibly fun though theres only so many which leads me to another problem, theres no reward for doing 'anything' in this game, no more guns spawning at your limited amount of safehoues no unique vehicles to unlock nothing. Even the new and ridiclously hard hidden package system without collecting them all won't get you much anyway.
There is however a friend system which i initially welcomed and was actually glad when they would phone me to go out, since at first that lead me to believe they weren't just AI's and would just want to hang out. Though the activities available are all pretty boring with to me the only un activitie would be the pool. Going to places to eat seem wasted since you simply walk in....2 seconds later you've apparently just had the meal of your life. With the gfs they even explain how much of a conversationist I am :S though of course theres no way to back it up since its all between them. Sorta made me feel like I was left in the dark missing out the most thought provoking conversations of my life...Even getting drunk isn't as satisfying as i hoped, listening to the conversations is funny enough and trying to get back home does have a small amount of entertainment to it, though again you don't see them actually downing the poison, just them walking in sober then sludging out pissed. I would of expected some sort of minigame to accompany it like a chugging contest or at least a small cutscene.
Another main thorn that sticks deeply is that when driving drunk the police will go after you, which is obviously to stop all the bleeding 'concerned' parents to sue for not giving any consequences for drunk driving....but it doesn't make much sense when you can drive around sober like a total nutter and as long as you don't hit a cop car your in the clear....but you actually drive rather slowly and even on the right lane but if your pissed you'll still the boys in navy blue chasing you down. So you can ram through as many cars and bikes as you like as long as your not drunk while doing it....mmmmkay.
Another huge flaw is the money.....there really is practically no use for it besides weapons and spending abit of small cash on your nights out.
I must have given around 10,000 to hobo's cause i just have no use for it.
There's no business' to run not even extra safehouses to buy...just a small amount of weapons to procure (no flamethrower!!!!!!) and limited amount of ammo to buy with it. There are clothes to buy (and that too is very limited) though about halfway i had already bought them all.
Onto to the main focus (or only focus) of the game, the story, that is still very entertaining to play through though as i stated can become very reptitive. The morality choices you make (while having only little affect to the game) really give the game a nice add off rpgness (which is ironic considering how much of rpg play they took out of it) and actually made me think before pulling the trigger. Though as the story nears the end it gets very intense but doesn't pay off since the (both) endings pretty suck. Both aern't exactly a good ending and leave alot to pitch up and just leave you back at the same spot as you were in the beginning....some hired muscle but with noone to employ you.
Though the DLC does sound to hopefully add alot more content i doubt 10 hours worth would match up whats missing and even with the DLC it'll probably still just raise my score to 9.0.
The online play however does have potential to be very fun, though sadly everyone i know has a 360 so I'm left with a bunch of retarded cow mongeror's who thinks its funny to total your car in the co-op missions and quit when there losing in the competitive missions.
Thats of course if I can get through since the ps3 version at least has alot of bugs and is really a game of chance if I can actually get through a game without a bleeding 'Lost connection to one or more players'
So could of very much bin game of this year but honestly wouldn't even match up to game of last year.
Summing up my favourite parts would be the cell-phone, just as handy as it is in real life (well to me anywhoo), the great new shooting system, graphics, much more varied radio selection (now whenever i listen to 'goodbye horses' it thankfully reminds me of running down hobo's in a mafia-sentinal instead of Ted levine's shemale pube exposing dance thingy) and the sheer realistic take on everything from the physics to the bloodstains that begin to show all over Niko and of course the vehicle damage and no blowing up when tossed over.
The negative for me is definattely fueled by the repitition of the missions, sure car chases are pretty sweet the first 40 times your involved in them but can get rather boring. The shoot-outs are the same, insanely fun at first so much you want to actually go out there and buy a few dozen rpg rockets at your local gun shop and and just go around sending prostiteuts flying.
Everything that was removed that made San Andreas the example of what a sand-box game had. No gangs, limited to everything and really just not that appealing after the storys finished.
Waiting through the 10 minute installing process i never expected to get this impatient and was literally counting the seconds. Then after the pretty impressive intro to the next-gen look of gta and the cutscene i was left sitting in the car for a few minutes trying to figure out how the bloody hell i drive this contraption?!?
After getting used to the new driving controls i was expecting this game to last quite a while, and it has although mainly for me starting to give up on beating those japanese high-scores on DMC4 :S...
In control of Niko (who i have to agree is my favourite gta protaganist so far)
i browsed my crap-hole of a flat, knocked over a few chairs was impressed with the simply push open door to get outside feature and took my first steps in the immersive world Liberty City.
My first reactions like everyones I'm sure, even the one's that have given it an unfair 5, were breathtaking. Graphically I'm not really hard to please (still lovin the old school graphics of resident evil) and i thought the game looked great.
For the most part, until your forced outa your first safehouse due to a very easily hateable antagonist i started to feel the repitition souring through me and even get a little bored with the mission goals.
So thinking i might just try a few side missions to let me get over and eventually be begging for the story missions, it didn't work as well as i hoped. Yes i did go back to plowing through the story but because thats all there is!!!! No more car modding, no more taxi missions (well besides the occasional and pointless trip lifts for your cousin) no bicycle's not even any gangs to look out for. The improved vigilante missions however do really work well and are incredibly fun though theres only so many which leads me to another problem, theres no reward for doing 'anything' in this game, no more guns spawning at your limited amount of safehoues no unique vehicles to unlock nothing. Even the new and ridiclously hard hidden package system without collecting them all won't get you much anyway.
There is however a friend system which i initially welcomed and was actually glad when they would phone me to go out, since at first that lead me to believe they weren't just AI's and would just want to hang out. Though the activities available are all pretty boring with to me the only un activitie would be the pool. Going to places to eat seem wasted since you simply walk in....2 seconds later you've apparently just had the meal of your life. With the gfs they even explain how much of a conversationist I am :S though of course theres no way to back it up since its all between them. Sorta made me feel like I was left in the dark missing out the most thought provoking conversations of my life...Even getting drunk isn't as satisfying as i hoped, listening to the conversations is funny enough and trying to get back home does have a small amount of entertainment to it, though again you don't see them actually downing the poison, just them walking in sober then sludging out pissed. I would of expected some sort of minigame to accompany it like a chugging contest or at least a small cutscene.
Another main thorn that sticks deeply is that when driving drunk the police will go after you, which is obviously to stop all the bleeding 'concerned' parents to sue for not giving any consequences for drunk driving....but it doesn't make much sense when you can drive around sober like a total nutter and as long as you don't hit a cop car your in the clear....but you actually drive rather slowly and even on the right lane but if your pissed you'll still the boys in navy blue chasing you down. So you can ram through as many cars and bikes as you like as long as your not drunk while doing it....mmmmkay.
Another huge flaw is the money.....there really is practically no use for it besides weapons and spending abit of small cash on your nights out.
I must have given around 10,000 to hobo's cause i just have no use for it.
There's no business' to run not even extra safehouses to buy...just a small amount of weapons to procure (no flamethrower!!!!!!) and limited amount of ammo to buy with it. There are clothes to buy (and that too is very limited) though about halfway i had already bought them all.
Onto to the main focus (or only focus) of the game, the story, that is still very entertaining to play through though as i stated can become very reptitive. The morality choices you make (while having only little affect to the game) really give the game a nice add off rpgness (which is ironic considering how much of rpg play they took out of it) and actually made me think before pulling the trigger. Though as the story nears the end it gets very intense but doesn't pay off since the (both) endings pretty suck. Both aern't exactly a good ending and leave alot to pitch up and just leave you back at the same spot as you were in the beginning....some hired muscle but with noone to employ you.
Though the DLC does sound to hopefully add alot more content i doubt 10 hours worth would match up whats missing and even with the DLC it'll probably still just raise my score to 9.0.
The online play however does have potential to be very fun, though sadly everyone i know has a 360 so I'm left with a bunch of retarded cow mongeror's who thinks its funny to total your car in the co-op missions and quit when there losing in the competitive missions.
Thats of course if I can get through since the ps3 version at least has alot of bugs and is really a game of chance if I can actually get through a game without a bleeding 'Lost connection to one or more players'
So could of very much bin game of this year but honestly wouldn't even match up to game of last year.
Summing up my favourite parts would be the cell-phone, just as handy as it is in real life (well to me anywhoo), the great new shooting system, graphics, much more varied radio selection (now whenever i listen to 'goodbye horses' it thankfully reminds me of running down hobo's in a mafia-sentinal instead of Ted levine's shemale pube exposing dance thingy) and the sheer realistic take on everything from the physics to the bloodstains that begin to show all over Niko and of course the vehicle damage and no blowing up when tossed over.
The negative for me is definattely fueled by the repitition of the missions, sure car chases are pretty sweet the first 40 times your involved in them but can get rather boring. The shoot-outs are the same, insanely fun at first so much you want to actually go out there and buy a few dozen rpg rockets at your local gun shop and and just go around sending prostiteuts flying.
Everything that was removed that made San Andreas the example of what a sand-box game had. No gangs, limited to everything and really just not that appealing after the storys finished.