Five Days Locked in a Room With GTA IV

bippy writes "Five days, one game. The Rocky Mountain News has a write up of five days spent playing Grand Theft Auto IV recently in a San Francisco hotel. It ends: 'In Grand Theft Auto IV the story isn't just an amalgam of cut scenes and cleverly written dialogue, it's the experiences I create, too. It's now, watching Niko stand, his shoulders slumped, that the depth of this game finally hits me. Niko's journey, the one crafted by Rockstar, may have ended, but Niko's adventures in the story I am creating have just begun.'" The most anticipated game in a while, to be sure. I'm certainly looking forward to busting some heads and jumping ramps.

hmmmm...

Is it just me or are people getting way too excited about this game?

Now before everyone instantly mods me troll, I'll point out that I own GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas and loved two of those three games (I'll leave it to you to guess which ones), but I never saw them as deep or as art. I saw them as a fun way to pretend to be a gangster and run around causing mayhem.

Yet this GTA comes out and people are practically wetting themselves over what is going to be the same thing but shiny? Don't get me wrong - I'm sure it'll be a good game and win lots of GOTY awards, but does anyone honestly think they'll see a lot they're not expecting?

Re:hmmmm...

Yet this GTA comes out and people are practically wetting themselves over what is going to be the same thing but shiny? Don't get me wrong - I'm sure it'll be a good game and win lots of GOTY awards, but does anyone honestly think they'll see a lot they're not expecting?

GTA is still the finest sandbox-game series, of course we're eager to see it. And the incremental upgrade approach works fine for me so long as we keep getting new storylines. Odd games tend to introduce game mechanics and even ones provide a large world in the game; this title improves mechanics, and the next one will probably have the large world again, AND the new complexity. At least, that's been the pattern so far. So yes, I think that people are justified in being excited.

Personally, I want to see new things done to continue improving replay value. I will keep buying the games if this happens; otherwise I'll get tired of them eventually. It hasn't happened yet, though.

Give me split-screen and/or LAN play, and I can keep the game fresh basically for eternity.

Re:hmmmm...

GTA is still the finest sandbox-game series

Civilization 4, Fallout or The Elder Scrolls are better candidates for the "finest sandbox-game series" than GTA will ever be.

Not that GTA doesn't fill it's own little crime-and-mayhem niche or won't be fun or anything.

Re:hmmmm...

>it just seems that GTA is going the way of FIFA

what... the... fuck... ?

they just released the first game in 3.5 years. aside from downloadable content, the rumours are that the next full game won't appear until the next generation of consoles.

so I ask again: what... the... fuck... ?

Re:hmmmm...

Well, if you do read any of the in-depth reviews that have come out so far, what has surprised people has been the fact that the storyline is deeper and more "artistic" than the previous GTA games. As you said, most people expected this game to be the same thing but "shiny", which probably would have been enough any way for plenty of praise and GOTY honors. That they also seem to have made a more mature and complex story is why people are giving this even more praise. I can say that I've mainly played the previous GTA games as sandboxes and not really gotten much into the story itself, but if the early word is anything to go by, it seems like this will be a game where the story aspect will be a lot more compelling.

censorship

sucks how the aus and kiwi versions are censored! free speech anyone? and there's no PC version WTF? CoD learned from that mistake

My Impressions

I've played the game a few hours since the ISO was released on Thursday. The main difference between GTA IV and previous versions is that the city feels more alive. Pedestrians say more and varied crap to you, people act in a variety of ways when you jack their car, the police act intelligently and hide behind their car doors, etc. There's a ton of stuff to do in the game and I'm sure it took a superhuman effort by the programming staff to get all this stuff packed into the game.

My main complaint is that GTA IV is just a souped up version of the previous GTA games. You play a gangster who goes around breaking laws and doing gangster stuff. The missions are basically the same since the first GTA III - Steal this, muder that, etc. Also there are some frame rate issues, I notice FPS lagging on some occasions. Strange because Burnout looked better and didn't have these problems.

Overall it's a great game. But in many ways it's the same game you've been playing for years.

IGN Review

IGN has the first video review.

http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/827005/grand-theft-auto-4/videos/gta4_review_042508.html [ign.com]

They have proclaimed it the best game of the decade.

Text review: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/869/869381p1.html [ign.com]

Yay

Remind me in a year or two when the PC version finally comes out.

What about Wii

I'd actually like to see a Wii version, I don't care if it has to be scaled back, we know it can be at least as good as San Andreas. It's too bad the Wii is being ignored by many popular franchises, I guess they just don't want money from the largest inst

Re:

Have you seen/dealt with the Xbox 360 SDK? Just curious to see if you are pulling information out of the blue. Secondly, Xbox 360 is PowerPC based and whilst cross-development is possible probably, they probably just serial cable or even USB these days the

Re:Yay

I agree that R* doesn't seem to care much about their PC releases once they've gone gold. And there are bugs that could do with fixing (not so much with San Andreas imho), but overall the PC ports are reasonably polished if you ask me.

And they most certainly do make enhancements to the PC versions. They all have higher resolution textures than their console counterparts. They all support using a mouse in a reasonable fashion while also using a controller for driving/flying. You can configure every single key, and you never have to deal with unbindable keys or unchangeable binds. If anything R* probably is one of the best development houses at making decent PC ports of titles that started on a console.

Still, it's certainly disappointing how little they appear to care for PC gamers.

Gotta Say It...

Get a Life!

No you can't download one. Second Life does not count.

The Hype Machine

I don't subscribe to any gaming magazine anymore. I don't like to think of myself as being easily manipulated, but I used to buy 2-3 PC games a month, based on glowing reviews telling me that such-and such game is the end-all and be-all of gaming. I own UT3, Crysis, Frontlines:FOW, and HL2 (Orange Box). Out of ALL of them, Portal is the only one I actually enjoyed so much that I couldn't wait to get back to it and replay it--and it was thrown in as almost an afterthought. HL2 was interesting but became too much of a grind, and the others simply lack depth, no matter how pretty they are.

Other games that were overhyped and failed to satisfy me: Oblivion, World in Conflict, SupCom, Prey... Oh sure, I was stoked to be playing the latest and greatest on really good hardware, but after a couple of hours the shine starts to wear off and then it becomes a job. I have tried to play these games, really tried to finish them, but I just can't. And then, buyer's remorse sets in--it's a viscious cycle because you feel like you have to play all the way through regardless of enjoyment because it cost 50 damned dollars and you have to get your money's worth, right? I mean, come on, what's wrong with me? Why aren't I shivering in adulation of these gods of the gaming universe? Everyone tells me and I keep hearing how awesomely, Earth-shatteringly, mind-blowing these games are. I've got plenty of horsepower in my rig to run them, so it's not that; I know the developers worked their collective asses off making them, so quality isn't an issue either. I guess I just finally learned to stop buying games based on the "objective" reviews, and once I realized that is when I let my magazine subs lapse.

xx01dk's law: All. Game. Reviews. Are. CRAP.

-and its corollary-

Thank goodness for BitTorrent and leaked/pirated releases.

Do not misunderstand me here; if I like a game that I download, I will go out and buy it. If I do not, it gets deleted and I save my money. In addition, just like my favorite musicians, I will buy outright almost any game that is made by my short list of trusted companies/developers. (i.e.: Frank Delise, Sid Meyers, Stardock, Valve, and Rockstar)

Where was I. Oh yes, the hype machine for GTA4. I'm going to buy it but not because of any stupid review. I own GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas and have played them all through because they were fun. I don't even care that GTA4 won't be out for PC anytime soon because the content is what matters here, and it will still be fresh (to me). I like what Rockstar does, so I will support them by buying their product sans reviews (I actually liked Postal, I think PCG gave it a 0 out of 10 rating...).

Queue fanboy flame wars in 3... 2...

Solution

Pirate the games, if you like the game, go out and buy a hard copy, if it was crap either don't go out and buy it, or spend the money on something more worthy, I.e, fork out the same money to a charity.

I dont like this

That summary read like a piece of proganada. I mean I have no doubt its going to be an excellent game and I am huge fan of the series and video games in general. But with so much hype before release, as seems to be the norm these days. I'm started to wonder about the motivation of such glow reviews. Sure it's probably fanboyism and follow the leader mentality, but a small part of me wonders if this isn't just some propaganda to ensure a nice bottom line.

Re:What next?

So they've done Miami Vice, mobsters, LA street gangs, and now Russian mobsters. What's next?

Uh, Cowboy Neal?

Re:What next?

What's next?

They go 60's camp. You are a super villains side kick, dressed in fluro spandex you have to try to dominate your city before the other super villain gangs do, all the while evading police and the occasional vigilante dressed in a leotard with a really cool utility belt.

Re:What next?

What's next?

They go 60's camp. You are a super villains side kick, dressed in fluro spandex you have to try to dominate your city before the other super villain gangs do, all the while evading police and the occasional vigilante dressed in a leotard with a really cool utility belt.

I would buy that in a heartbeat, there's not enough supervillain games out there.

A sandboxy Batman game would also be pretty good.

I would also buy "Grand Theft Auto: Mushroom Kingdom", a self-parody with Wario running around outrunning Toadstool cops and the like.

Re:What next?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciubx6RijLo [youtube.com]

Re:What next?

> So they've done Miami Vice, mobsters, LA street gangs, and now Russian mobsters. What's next?

Chicago gangs of the 1930s? (I know it's been done by other games, but I'd love to see a GTA version.)

Re:What next?

Would be an interesting storyline, but I'm not sure the whole "auto" thing would work out. There wasn't a whole lot of variety in cars back then. It brings to mind Need For Speed, Porsche Unleashed. Which was a great game, but the story mode kind of sucked, because you had to spend so much time driving cars from the 50s and 60s. Really shows you how much cars have changed since their early days.

Re:

True. Because when one thinks of GTA the first thing that pops into mind is realism.

Re:

I think I've already seen that on CNN. It starts out strong, but the story has no ending to speak of, and just degenerates into random nonsense the longer the administrati^Wgame continues.

Re:

Have you ever played a GTA game? Specifically San Andreas? The game was something like a 100 square miles large, had missions all over the place, heck, you could micromanage your characters body fat if you wanted. That game had a ton of depth.