One other thing, for a tutorial on the cover system, go to Multiplayer on your cell phone and pick Tutorial. It was a pretty handy match against bots that explained the cover system pretty well. Afterwards I much more handy in a fight.
Has anyone tried the multiplayer? I have a so-so EVDO connection, at best it’s about like 512K DSL. It wasn’t clear how to host a game vs joining one. Both times I tried joining, I checked Ready but a few seconds later I got a message saying something like “One or more players lost their connection to the server.” I don’t know what that matters, unless the player was me? I figure things might be shaky on their servers for a few weeks.
A perfect example of the Uncanny Valley theory. (As games become more and more realistic, we begin to expect realistic responses from the games. When characters in these realistic games respond in non-real ways, the anomaly really stands out much more than if a less realistic game was to have a similar response. So realistic paramedics ignoring an injured NPC because they weren’t programmed to respond otherwise really stands out in this game, versus had the same scenario occurred in the purely-hypothetical GTA 1/2 had it come out on the Atari 2600 in 1984. The blocky graphics would have made it easy to overlook the strange behavior.)
I know, but a few years ago I read an article that explained the theory in video game terms. Same concept. They explained it in terms of an FPS (first person shooter). How the writer’s squad was following orders and interacting in an amazing way, until the player went and shot up a soda machine in the game, knocking it over.
The squad was completely indifferent to the action as they weren’t programmed to react to it. The unrealism of that moment really took him out of “suspension of disbelief” mode… prior to that he was almost dealing with a near-Turing machine that responded as a human would, and the sudden stop was more jarring than had it been a completely mindless, robotic squad that never appeared realistic in the first place.
I think it’s just another aspect of the Uncanny Valley theory. Same concept, different implementation.
Not really. What you’re talking about is something that’s hardly unique to video games. In any media, the harder the work attempts to hew to realism, the more glaring the errors become. The Uncanny Valley is not just a matter of near-perfect simulations still not being perfect. We’re not talking about watching a gag reel, here. It’s an actual feeling of visceral revulsion that many people experience when confronted with something that’s almost, bu not quite human. In other words, the phenomenon does not refer to physical shortcomings of the simulation itself, but to a particular psychological, and apparently instinctual, reaction in the observer himself.
I just bought a PS3 and GTA4 last night and I’ve been pretty unimpressed. The game is BUGGY! First it froze when I went to my map for the very first mission when you drive Roman home from the dock. Then I restarted and it froze during the cutscene in Roman’s apartment. Then I guess my installation got corrupted because I had to delete all the GTA data from the drive and reinstall.
At least there will be patches, but it is near unplayable for me so far.
The only time GTA4 has acted weird for me is when I had a Rock Band guitar wireless USB box plugged in. GTA4 loaded and started loading my saved game, and just kept going forever on the black Loading screen.