gtaiv74656 Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 Second Glance Exposes the Cracks in the Facade of the GTAIV Hype and Propaganda Let me be honest with you from the start. I bought this game (GTAIV) from gamestop for the Xbox360 for basically one reason only. I have played very little if any of the formal GTA series and generally have no great inclination for this genre. I bought it because of the hype and propaganda of GTAIV being a true Next Generation video game experience that borderlines being cinematic, with an living breathing 24/7 city that never sleep and artificially intelligent citizens, etc... There is no doubt this is a good game overall. Liberty City IS huge, it is fun to drive around, and there are a lot of people, cars, and unique places. There is plenty to see (sightseeing) and it is a very "dense" city in that there are not a whole lot of open spaces with "emptiness". However, sadly, but realistically, that is about where the good parts of this game comes to an abrupt end and the bad parts take over... What is wrong with GTAIV? So many things. This game gets so many basic fundamental things wrong, there are more bugs, glitches, and flaws than any other game for any platform that I have ever played before (with exception of maybe Superman game for N64) there are so many mechanical flaws that directly kill any enjoyment one could have obtained from the game and makes GTAIV nothing but a "chore" to play.. Let me critic the single player aspect first. There is NO storyline. I don't know what everyone else is talking about when they say there is a dynamic plot and no two missions are ever the same... Everyone else must be drinking the collective GTAIV/Rockstar Kool-aid because the missions in this game are truly as linear as they get.. After finishing the game I was throughly disappointed by the entire attempt of single player. Each mission is just the same, go find someone, take them out, repeat... There is no point... You don't feel like you are a part of something greater, you are treated by the game as some mindless bot that is instructed to do this.. do that.. go here.. kill this person... kill that person... chase after him... etc... If you've played any other GTA, you've played them all.... GTAIV has nothing good and brings nothing new to the table... As for multiplayer? O. K. What multiplayer? I have yet to successfully connect to GTAIV's so called multiplayer.. Each time I get almost in just to repeated get disconnected again and again. I feel genuinely cheated of my $65 bucks to tell you the truth. Why can't we at least play split screen? Too much demand on the engine or xbox? Well we could do this in previous games, so this is somewhat of a downgrade? How is this "next generation"? How is not having features due to technological limitations (especially if we previously had them) called "progress"? And from the videos I saw multiplayer experience in GTAIV is hit and miss at best... But it was a total catastrophe for me since it never once worked... And to top it all of, the game would waste 15 seconds to reload each time I became disconnected just to go back to the so very unintuitive multiplayer screen again. Many people have complained that the driving in GTAIV is very unintuitive and painful. While this is true, they missed something even more torturous in this game. The walking. Yes I said walking. If you plan to do any amount of walking in this game you will realize that it is almost impossible to walk. It is impossible to not repeated bump into walls, miss the doors you intend to go through, basically the control is not fluid and has zero finesse whatsoever. Your character feels like a retarded piece of brick instead of a real human being. The so called smart camera is about as dumb as it gets. Many times it fights with you and forces you to view from an impossible angle and refused to cooperate with the player.. When you are driving a car and trying to make a turn the camera forces you to look from an angle least appropriate for making the turn, ensuring you will hit a wall or something else and killing the game play experience. And to make it worse there is no way to turn this so called smart camera off! Can you say LAME? Cars and people disappear in liberty city if you don't look at them. What is the point of an open world if nothing you do matters at all? I mean if you kill a man on the street and walk 10 feet to get in a car to try to run him over with your wheels and have some fun, you would expect the dead man to still be there by the time you turned your car around right? WRONG. The game engine randomly and preemptively "erases" objects (people, vehicles, effects, weapons, etc) in the game to save memory or some system resources or something... Your "interaction" and "changes" are erases almost as quickly as you make them. If you park your car on the street, turn around and walk about 20 feet, odds are your car is "gone" because the game erased it to save memory space... This is beyond pathetic! No other game is as gay when it comes to this as GTAIV... Just this one critical fatal flaw along means this game is poor quality and not worth playing at all! It kills every ounce of immersion and realism that the creators so hyped it up to be... Controls don't work half the time! I was walking pass patrol cops in route to a yellow taxi cab. I was 100% sure I held down the yellow button to rid the taxi as a passenger. Guess what? My character Niko not only doesn't go into the taxi as a passenger he takes about 10 steps BACKWARDS, he proceeds to turn around, and tries the handle on the cop car and then whacks the window of the patrol vehicle and instantly gets himself a wanted level! To make it worse during the five seconds of pure idiotacracy displayed by the game I was unable to control my character, it was as if he went on autopilot so I couldn't stop him from making the stupid mistake of trying to jack a cop car. Believe it or not, I wanted to take out a gun and get rid of the cops, but it took me a few extra precious seconds wasted by trying to cycling between the weapons (grenade and rpg are not the best choice for close combat!) and to top it all of when I finally found the weapon I needed Packie (in game character) calls me on the phone (at the MOST inopportune time in gaming history mind you) and Niko (my character) gets arrested!! I mean can you believe this stupidity ! If you buy or rent this game, this is the kind of thing you will have to put up with time and time again whether you like it or not... Graphics. Graphics in this game is HORRIBLE. That is an understatement. Seriously GTAIV graphics look worse than Microsoft Midtown Madness of almost a decade ago! The graphics in this game is so horribly blurry I seriously thought I didn't put my glasses on or something! There is no use in getting a HDTV for this game. You might as well play on a 19" inch Black and White CRT TV from the 70's and you won't notice a bit of difference! And Texture and Geometry popin seriously kills the game experience big time! Even when I am walking in liberty city there are times when the texture's on the walls take about 5 seconds to load/pop in after I came to a complete stop and stare at the wall! When I am driving fast down the underground tunnels everything before me is one gray blob of nothing (because the game can't load the data in time)... Trees, garbage cans, people, cars come out of nowhere and disappear when you turn around to look at them again, only to re-pop in a second later ! And when I use a sniper and zoom in, the buildings and textures seriously look 100 times worse than the textures of say Nintendo 64 of the past. There was a time when I was driving and came to a stop at the side of the road, parked my car and got out of it... Then this tree appears out of the middle of nowhere right smack in the center of my car! And this tree had the most horrible 2-D looking sprite the likes of which I have never seen before! I try to erase such a embarrassment from my mind and proceed to go to a nearby entertainment spot and enjoy myself. After about 2 minutes of the mini-game (which get boring real real fast btw.. so its not a selling point of the game) I came out thinking how on earth I was going to get my car out of the tree... Only to realize hey.. my car isn't there anymore! The game erased it.. again... Overall this is one of the worst games I have ever played in a long long time. The controls are counterintuitive. The driving is poor and the walking is made impossible frustrating. The graphics are seriously lacking, the textures are so blurry and take forever to load even when the character is just walking slowly on the streets. On helicopter rides entire buildings and neighborhoods don't pop-in until you get about 10 feet off the ground! (shamefully really...). The controls not only don't respond about 50% of the time, the other 50% of the time the character does exactly the opposite of what you are trying to have him do! There is never anything (cop, taxi, traffic, etc) when you really need one, and always a bunch of superfluous fluff when you wished it wasn't there or that it got out of your way. There is no single player mode or plot/story.. It feels like just one mindless repetitive killing spree after another. The multiplayer is so sporadic that it might as well not be there anyway. There is no sense of immersion. The characters are so "robot" it isn't even funny. Some mission motorbike chases take many tries to be successful partially because of the counterintuitive controls and handling in the game, and partially because of artificially restricting mission scripts that won't let you get too close or far away from the target at any one time, all of it make so much worse by no checkpoint of saving system. If you lose you have to start over two missions prior! And the loading on the xbox360 is very slow despite what the hype and propaganda machine wants you to believe. When you get into a car all of a sudden every other car on the street is the exact same as your car! When you fly in a helicopter there are no cars and people on the streets whatsoever! Even when you land you see a desolate ghost town.. But then a second later you get hit by an assault of 10 cars that just mysteriously came out of nowhere! So much for looking both ways before you cross the street! Logic doesn't work in a game that operates on dynamic on-the-fly cheating and corner cutting tactics to make you believe the city is so big and blah blah blah.. The worst part is, there is nothing left to do in Liberty City. All the sites, vehicles, and weapons get old real fast! There are no bicycles, no tanks, no airplanes, no nothing! (plus the game is so slow if they had an airplane I bet the city would look like a flat surface LOL!) There is nothing interactive in the game at all! All the cool weapons and stuff in previous GTA's and in Saints Row have been stripped out and we are left with a bare bone game with nothing fun to play with at all! heck we can't even skydive in the game anymore! And to make it worse, the framerates are SLOW! It feels like I am trying to play Crysis on an old 286 PC machine or something... I swear after about an hour of playing this game your Xbox machine will generate so much heat it could be used as a heater in the winter! LOL.. And you can forget fun firefights.. The only thing you will be fighting is the controls, the sluggish interface, the counterintuitive "logic" of the GTAIV world, and the all but nonexistent framerates... So do yourself a favor and stay FAR FAR AWAY from this so called masterpiece game. Save your money, time, resources, and life. Go outside and enjoy the real city. At least trees won't pop out of nowhere and cars would disappear and make you think you are losing your eyesight and your mind. This to me is the prime example and epitome of a miserable failure at true gameplay experience while the best propaganda and false flag operation of its time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Connor Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 (edited) Did JT put you up to this? Because that´s one hell of a load of bullshit. Edited May 31, 2008 by Cat Licker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gtaiv74656 Posted May 31, 2008 Author Share Posted May 31, 2008 Did JT put you up to this?Because that´s one hell of a load of bullshit. Uhm I dunno what you mean by JT?? This is the truth, I am giving my opinion of the gameplay. I find it BS how ever reviewer give this game 10/10.. Like how this graphics portion of GTAIV is HIGHER than Crysis or Assassins Creed? That has BS written all over it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike356 Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 (edited) you must play it on a bad tv then or be really bad Edited May 31, 2008 by shadow536 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kitsune Inferno Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 (edited) Now, I know everyone is entitled to an opinion. Some people have more valid opinions. Others, like gtaiv74656, can only come up with bullshit to explain away how much they suck at the game. I've NEVER encountered any of the problems the topic creator claims has allegedly happened to him. I've hardly had a problem with the camera or controls. I personally think the driving works fine if you actually know how to drive in real life. The graphics, while not on the level of Crysis, are still pretty good. I've never seen any significant glitches and I can get into a multiplayer game most of the time. You can try to bash one of the best games released in the past few years, but you aren't gonna get far. There is hardly anything to complain about. The only reason I can see someone hating this game is if you're a.) A certain Miami-based lawyer and attention whore, b.) A San Andreas fanboy who can't get past horrible-handling jetpacks and useless car modifications, or c.) Someone who sucks at the game and instead of dealing with it and admitting he sucks, he'll bash the game and make up entirely false claims of glitches and control issues. Edited May 31, 2008 by L-RiC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noru Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 I'm not even going to bother reading all that... But I'll just quote this one line there are more bugs, glitches, and flaws than any other game for any platform that I have ever played before Have you ever played True Crime? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TM™ Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 So do yourself a favor and stay FAR FAR AWAY from this so called masterpiece game. Save your money, time, resources, and life. Go outside and enjoy the real city. At least trees won't pop out of nowhere and cars would disappear and make you think you are losing your eyesight and your mind. This to me is the prime example and epitome of a miserable failure at true gameplay experience while the best propaganda and false flag operation of its time! Wow you seem like a fucking asshole you know. Listen here bud, if you don't like this game, then don't fucking come here then, this site is dedicated to ONLY GTA FANS, not GTA Haters. This is probably one of the biggest improvements for a GTA game so if you don't think it is, keep that opinion to yourself, we don't want to here shit from a hater because we know what we would expect from them. Uhm I dunno what you mean by JT?? This is the truth, I am giving my opinion of the gameplay. I find it BS how ever reviewer give this game 10/10.. Like how this graphics portion of GTAIV is HIGHER than Crysis or Assassins Creed? That has BS written all over it. Have you played San Andreas, Vice City, GTA 3 and the Stories' edition? Well, if not, then you probably might want to get your hands on a game like that, because those games had bugs and "Not So Good" graphics, yet they are like one of the greatest classics for the series. Also, what games do you think aren't shit? If you say one game doesn't have bugs and glitches, you're wrong. All games have these even if you don't see it, not every game you play will be perfect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandora Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 In essence, he is right you know. Exaggerated, but right nevertheless. GTA IV has horrible pop in. The textures ARE blurry and the missions are rather repetitive. And of course it fucking sucks to see that vehicles/people ect. disappear when you don't look at them. I've hated that about GTA. Like how this graphics portion of GTAIV is HIGHER than Crysis or Assassins Creed? That has BS written all over it. Very, very true. Explosions look nice though. But in the end GTA is about the 'feel'. Driving around the city while listing to the awesome radio and creating you own little plots. I seriously hope Rockstar will up the textures for the PC version (since PC has over 10 times more RAM than a PS3 (though you'll be running a full OS too...)) and they'll fix the pop-up problem and the "disappearing" prob too. But even if they don't, I still will be getting the game. Even though it has so much (fundamental) flaws, the overall experience still is very entertaining and don't tell me you haven't actually had a smile on your face some time during the game, cause unless you're just an old jerk without a sense of humor or simply are deaf and can't read, you have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sherman Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 I have played very little if any of the formal GTA series and generally have no great inclination for this genre If you've played any other GTA, you've played them all.... GTAIV has nothing good and brings nothing new to the table... I LOL'D . So you just told us you've barely played any others in the series and even don't have a strong liking for this type game (Sandbox I believe?) but it brings "nothing new to the table", yet apparently you don't play many of these type games? So how are you to know what's new and what isn't? I'm not being a bitch, just pointing out what I saw and questioning. I don't care that you don't like the game, it's just these two statements don't make a lot of sense to me. Or you can just go back to WoW, won't bother me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr.Dbl-Gee Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 I personally think that most but not all of the stuff you mentioned are complete bullshit. I enjoyed the game and never had any problems with the camera, driving or playing through the story line. Eventhough i think the game is not worth 10/10, i still love it and enjoy playing it. The graphics are not excellent but is still very very good but still perhaps not as good as in crysis but that still does not make crysis a better game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGunslinger Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 gtaiv74656, believe it or not some people actually like this game (im one of them), and your exagerated bitching about glitches that are barely noticable is not gonna change their minds. Its quite simple really, if you dont like the game, dont fucking play it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TM™ Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 gtaiv74656, believe it or not some people actually like this game (im one of them), and your exagerated bitching about glitches that are barely noticable is not gonna change their minds. Its quite simple really, if you dont like the game, dont fucking play it. Exactly what I was trying to say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris82 Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 Let me critic the single player aspect first. There is NO storyline. I don't know what everyone else is talking about when they say there is a dynamic plot and no two missions are ever the same... Everyone else must be drinking the collective GTAIV/Rockstar Kool-aid because the missions in this game are truly as linear as they get.. After finishing the game I was throughly disappointed by the entire attempt of single player. Each mission is just the same, go find someone, take them out, repeat... There is no point... You don't feel like you are a part of something greater, you are treated by the game as some mindless bot that is instructed to do this.. do that.. go here.. kill this person... kill that person... chase after him... etc...If you've played any other GTA, you've played them all.... GTAIV has nothing good and brings nothing new to the table... What they meant by dynamic is there are choices to make in missions as in who to kill when given the choice and also that there are many ways to complete a mission. Stealth, RAMBO-style, calling the police and watching them shoot up the bad guys, etc... As for multiplayer? O. K. What multiplayer? I have yet to successfully connect to GTAIV's so called multiplayer.. Each time I get almost in just to repeated get disconnected again and again. User error. Look at all the people who play GTA IV online. They can do it, why can't you? User error. Check your connection. Also, San Andreas' multiplayer wasn't split-screen, it was 2-player one screen. Besides, this is a new engine, the first GTA game developed with it, so just wait until the next one comes out. If you plan to do any amount of walking in this game you will realize that it is almost impossible to walk. It is impossible to not repeated bump into walls If you're retarded, try using the right control stick to see where you're going. IV is more realistic than previous games, therefore you can't "turn on a dime" like in the GTA3-series. Cars and people disappear in liberty city if you don't look at them. What is the point of an open world if nothing you do matters at all? I mean if you kill a man on the street and walk 10 feet to get in a car to try to run him over with your wheels and have some fun, you would expect the dead man to still be there by the time you turned your car around right? WRONG. The game engine randomly and preemptively "erases" objects (people, vehicles, effects, weapons, etc) in the game to save memory or some system resources or something... Your "interaction" and "changes" are erases almost as quickly as you make them. If you park your car on the street, turn around and walk about 20 feet, odds are your car is "gone" because the game erased it to save memory space... This is beyond pathetic! No other game is as gay when it comes to this as GTAIV... Just this one critical fatal flaw along means this game is poor quality and not worth playing at all! It kills every ounce of immersion and realism that the creators so hyped it up to be... You have no idea what you're talking about nor do you have any idea how games work. The Xbox 360 has more than enough RAM to cope with remembering "objects." Again, this is likely a user error but I've never had a vehicle disappear on me. Not once. Even when I do something such as pick up Roman, drive to the strip club, park outside, go in and have fun for several minutes, then I go back outside. The car is still there, every time. Controls don't work half the time! I was walking pass patrol cops in route to a yellow taxi cab. I was 100% sure I held down the yellow button to rid the taxi as a passenger. Guess what? My character Niko not only doesn't go into the taxi as a passenger he takes about 10 steps BACKWARDS, he proceeds to turn around, and tries the handle on the cop car and then whacks the window of the patrol vehicle and instantly gets himself a wanted level! To make it worse during the five seconds of pure idiotacracy displayed by the game I was unable to control my character, it was as if he went on autopilot so I couldn't stop him from making the stupid mistake of trying to jack a cop car. Believe it or not, I wanted to take out a gun and get rid of the cops, but it took me a few extra precious seconds wasted by trying to cycling between the weapons (grenade and rpg are not the best choice for close combat!) and to top it all of when I finally found the weapon I needed Packie (in game character) calls me on the phone (at the MOST inopportune time in gaming history mind you)and Niko (my character) gets arrested!! I mean can you believe this stupidity ! User error, though the controls have been "juanky" in all GTA games, if you didn't hold Y down then Niko would try to get into the nearest vehicle as the driver, even if it is several feet away. Graphics. Graphics in this game is HORRIBLE... Ok, considering the size of the city and the non-existent loading times going into interiors, the graphics look a LOT better than previous games. Yes there is pop-in and there are many imperfections but it is an extremely nice game considering the new engine, the fact that Rockstar had to make it for both consoles at once, and the scope of the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandora Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 You have no idea what you're talking about nor do you have any idea how games work. The Xbox 360 has more than enough RAM to cope with remembering "objects." Again, this is likely a user error but I've never had a vehicle disappear on me. Not once. Even when I do something such as pick up Roman, drive to the strip club, park outside, go in and have fun for several minutes, then I go back outside. The car is still there, every time. In the short time I played IV, I have experienced this. Not a car you've actually used, but if you shoot some guy in a car. Walk away for something like 20 seconds, BOOM, car vanished. Ok, considering the size of the city and the non-existent loading times going into interiors, the graphics look a LOT better than previous games. Yes there is pop-in and there are many imperfections but it is an extremely nice game considering the new engine, the fact that Rockstar had to make it for both consoles at once, and the scope of the game. True. But they should have actually given an option to have some loading times (like Vice City?) to reduce the pop up (same as pop-in?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kitsune Inferno Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 No, because the pop-in isn't so bad that you're gonna fail a mission because you couldn't see the tree that just mangled your sedan, unlike in San Andreas. Besides, load times take you out of the experience, IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Victor_Vance Posted June 4, 2008 Share Posted June 4, 2008 this is longer than my english essays! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Desert Fox Posted June 4, 2008 Share Posted June 4, 2008 This really is a croc of shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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