I’m thinking of GTA 4 being my next game purchase, and now that it’s been out for a while, I was wondering how it holds up. Is the story worth playing through? I don’t mind a little bit of freeform running around, but I play mostly for a good story. Are there a lot of timed missions? That’s one of my peeves in many games; I hate feeling pressured to finish something NOW NOW NOW! I don’t mind one or two, but I don’t think I’d enjoy a game where the majority of missions have a deadline.
Rent it. Do you know someone that has it? Go over there when they’re playing it.
Yes, it’s worthwhile. It’s one of the best video games ever made. You’re late on the wagon, woman! You’ve got catching up to do!
Stop being a wuss. Jump in!
OK, LOUNE, between your enthusiasm (and of course what choice do I have now that you called me a wuss? :)) and the trailer I just saw on Gamestop, I’m convinced. As soon as I finish Overlord (I’m on the last mission), I’ll get it next.
Even though I just bought $135 worth of MST3K last week.
I actually bought an XBox 360 to play it. And play it I did, and I liked it. But it had one fatal flaw for me; you can’t save anytime you want, only at the beginning of missions. What that meant for me was that I had to do some missions 4-5 times before I got through them. It ruined the game for me - even if the mission is only ten or fifteen minutes long, I got really sick of driving across town, meeting with Bad Guy X, getting in the car chase, then ten minutes in, missing one stupid turn and crashing and burning or getting shot or whatever and having to do the whole thing over again. I ended up selling the game and returning the XBox (thank you Amazon!) because it simply made the game frustrating to me.
If I could just save when I wanted (ie, right before the part where I got killed), I would have loved the game. And as it is, I’ll probably buy it when it comes out for the PC.
The PC version will almost certainly have the same save system as the console. Vice City and San Andreas both did.
Very few of the main storyline missions are timed (I can’t think of any off the top of my head, and I just finished it, so it’s still fresh in my mind). A lot of the side missions and activities are timed, but I can only think of a couple that had me swearing because of the short clock.
Cabs. They’re your friend. You move instantly to your destination. Not only that, if you use the cabs enough, you get an achievement.
Good. Now there’s proof that you stopped being a wuss. One more wuss-proof activity and you’re on the road away from wussdom.
I think you’ll be very happy with it. It’s one of those games you’ll be talking about years down the road, much like Grand Theft Auto 3 did.
Not only is the story pretty good, but so are the characters (in spite of the lack of celebrity voice actors like in previous GTA games). My favorite is your steroid addicted meathead friend “Brucie”. The Russian protagonist “Nikko” is probably one of the most likable yet (although I’m partial to crazy Ray Liotta’s Tommy Vercetti in Vice City).
Like all GTA games, the driving around town can often become a bit of a chore. Driving from Alderney (New Jersey) to Dukes (Queens) is about as big a pain in the ass in the game as it is in real life, but the cabs take care of that.
The game does start out slow at first. For the first few missions it seems like all you are doing is running errands and taking your cousin to bars, stripclubs and pool halls. At first I’m kind of like what do I need a video game to simulate a typical Saturday night for me in NYC?
The cell phone feature is great, allowing you to call various contacts and perform different activities with them. As is the online dating and “friend” system where you get certain rewards as you befriend certain characters by hanging out with them.
The radio stations are pretty good too.
What sold me on this game is the sheerly mad amount of dialogue recorded.
. . . And then my copy started freezing every 5 minutes. (And by freezing, I mean locking up my 360 completely.) And I lost a lot of respect points for Take Two when I just found out that two months after the release, they still haven’t given 360 owners a goddamn patch. I sold the game used after two weeks of waiting, thinking that I’ll probably go back to it once it’s been fixed. With this, I don’t know that I ever will.
Now you guys are making me wonder if I should try to hit a Best Buy before they close tonight, and I need to exercise!
ETA: Just checked, and it looks like they all close at 7:00 instead of 8:00. Probably a good thing.
To be honest, it’s a solid 80. Maybe an 85. The combat is lackluster, the missions aren’t all that special and don’t stand out from other ‘quest’ style games. Sure, the sandbox nature of the game is nice, but…
Honestly, I’d buy it used if you get the chance, but I wouldn’t spend more than 20 bucks for it, 30 at most. There are far better games out there for whatever you’re looking for, gunplay, driving, missions, storyline or sandbox play.
Sir, you just don’t like video games, do you?
A solid 80? I wouldn’t say it’s a 100. Its multiplayer component is too weak for that, especially compared to Halo 3, the best multiplayer title out there.
GTAIV is a 90 or 95.
GTA IV just isn’t an exceptional game.
It’s neat, in that there’s a lot of stuff going on and you can watch TV and there are a million radio stations and traffic flows on its own and such… but the actual game is solid without being exceptional. Combat actually managed to be less impressive than Gears of War, which is difficult to pull off. Driving and smashing stuff, while fun for a bit, quickly gets old. The storyline was merely okay. Etc, etc, etc…
Heck, after beating it I admit I’d almost rather load up the old Black and White, which was much the same; very little game but an interesting world to poke at.
There are far better combat games. Far better quest games. Far better ‘quest’ games. Far better sandbox games. Far better stories told by games.
There’s nothing GTA IV does well that isn’t done better by someone else, except for some details like having lots of stations on a radio which, let’s be honest, don’t matter.
I agree with you on your last point. Hell, I think they screwed up on multiplayer.
Unfortunately, you can’t take everything into parts like you did. It’s just one game. Of course another game does the combat better. They’re called FPS games. Better stories? That’s debatable.
Perhaps we look for different things in video games. I, for one, don’t care so much about an “engrossing story”.
Sure you can analyze the components, and that’s the whole point. A game that does nothing particularly well is an all-around-mediocre-game.
It’s not a great combat game.
It’s not a great driving game.
It’s not a great ‘quest’ game.
It’s not a great story driven game. (Let’s be clear, GTA IV doesn’t even hold a candle to Planescape: Torment)
It’s not a great sandbox game.
So what is it, if none of its components are great?
It’s not a great game.
It can’t be a great game if nothing about it that matters is great and it’s only the fairly interesting integration of a number of mediocre components. We’re not talking some amazing synergistic fusion here, just an amalgam of okay-things in a world that’s fairly interesting due to its sandbox nature.
It’s an okay game.
Solid 80. 85, maybe.
That’s a pretty high bar to reach. I can’t think of any game that can compare well with Torment in story.
We’re not speaking the same language. It does a ton of things very well, but the gem in all of it is the city. That’s the main character.
90, I say!
Well, there are a few games that can compare well in terms of sheer story. Mass Effect springs to mind as well as Deus Ex. Of course, no, they’re not all that close, but they at least have compelling stories to tell. GTA IV was kinda… meh. Most of the storyline was eminently forgettable, and in fact, I’ve forgotten most of it already.
I was just using Torment as an example of how GTA IV could not accurately be said to have a “great” story, no matter how you slice it. I wouldn’t even put it on the level of “really good” stories like Deus Ex.
PS:T spoilers
Well, it IS kind of hard to beat a game’s story where you can beat the final boss by literally willing yourself out of existence. 
end spoilers.
Anyway, I guess I’m a wimp, 
GTA just doesn’t appeal to me at all and I wish there was another 10 game coming out so I could also bask in the glory that is a “mostly perfect” game by critical accounts.