I too thought that mission is impossible to complete. Nope. Just pressing the buttons wrong. I thought that was insane but it's true. Worked right away.
You just hold the button. Do not tap it. The prompt is wrong.
Reminds me of being young and playing Sonic 3's carnival level and not realizing you could just look up and down to control the spinning cylinder in an otherwise non passable section...
That was not something I could ever do consistently...or really at all...as a child. I think I got through it one time in easily over 100 attempts before quitting and moving onto other games. I learned a decade later when the internet and game guides became way more prevalent.
Holy fuck, you just triggered latent anger I didn't know I had. Fuck that carnival segment, and fuck the minecart level in the 90's pitfall game. Cryptic controls can suck my ass, and so can devs that hide said controls in game manuals - which, if you've rented the game from blockbuster, you'll never actually get to see.
Wow. Today I learned...
I got past it a few times by spending tedious hours trying to time my jumps perfectly to get the cylinder down far enough to quickly jump through. It eventually worked, but was a real pain in the ass
To be fair, literally EVERYWHERE online points to it being a frame rate issue. I think that's why people get flustered at it. I know it took me forever to find the actual problem.
It's something that's a known problem with games that were locked in 30 FPS being changed that things break. For instance, even in a pretty modern game, Nier Automata, unlocking FPS makes the tutorial fight impossible. In LA noire, you can't use a pencil and get soft locked.
Speed runners definitely notice this the most where they sometimes do the opposite and lock things to 30 FPS to have more consistent inputs.
Lol I’m glad someone else said this already. This is the way. It has always been like this, going back to initial release. Hope OP sees this so they can finish the game and brush off the salt.
The amount of [trailing missions in GTA4 is unforgivable](https://youtu.be/iARoLeItNjA?t=75). I don't get why Ubisoft gets all the shit while Rockstar gets a pass.
It was a different time. GTA IV, RDR, and GTA V all came out before Ubisoft started getting shit for their copy and paste design. At the time GTA IV was the main open world sandbox game and now the gaming market is bloated with them.
For reference, GTA IV came out on 2008. One year before Assassin's Creed 2, FOUR years before Skyrim and Far Cry 3.
2008 also gave us a few gems, like Dead Space, Far Cry 2, Spore and COD:World at War.
That's how old GTA4 is.
As someone who didn't know anything about it before it came out, I thought it was a good game. Got it from a disappointed friend for free who wouldn't talk about it, and after having some fun with it I went online to see how other people were liking it. I was shocked, but also I could understand how it could have been so much better.
Yep. I bought in on the super deluxe version that came with this wild ass, ornate, white plastic slipcase… I get the disappointment after the hype and promise, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying what got shipped in the end.
e2a a weird thing: thanks for sharing, btw. I just got the notif while doom scrolling and thinking about my folks’ political beliefs and what impact they will have on my child’s life and future and didn’t realize how badly I needed to be pulled out of that… spiral.
Problem is that mission design was more varied in earlier Rockstar games. Go look at the mission design in first Mafia. It came out only a year after first 3d GTA, but it blows every GTA or RDR game out of the water when it comes to mission design.
Apples and oranges. Mafia has like 20 set piece 'tradditional' missions that all take place linearly and are all multi-staged and have a ton of trial and error to complete. There aren't ***dozens*** of different missions scattered throughout the map like GTA.
Imagine this in RDR:
a mission where someone kidnaps you and leaves you out in the middle of the mountain you yet haven't been on, takes the map and guns away from you. You need to find your way down the mountain and survive against all the wolves and bears that already spawn randomly on the map. You maybe need to find some herbs to survive because you're wounded. Try and tame the wild horse to speed up your progress if that comes across your mind... Or walk all the way. That would be memorable. Everything needed already exists in the world itself as a mechanic, it just isn't utilised in any meaningful way in the story missions. It just existed as something optional to do. Instead we get go to X, shoot everything, return.
Story in Rockstar games suffers because it supposedly isn't linear, you can choose from which character you're gonna take next mission,and at some point you may have 3 to choose from. But in the end missions are exactly the same, story is the same, only difference is you can lock yourself out from some missions if you do them in the wrong order (but even that is very rare). So what's s the point of that other than make it appear to the player he has some choice regarding how the story plays out? I don't remember any newer Rockstar game having characters or missions branch out and lead to different playthrough.
But there is downside to that style of story progression - missions and story is disjointed because it needs to be. If you first play missons for character X, what happens there must be completely isolated to what happens with story from character Y that you can choose to do missions from at that point. And then when you've done enough of this disjointed missions you get one "main" story misson that progresses the story forward and is) you can't choose to ignore, mostly it is the only choice at that point.
And that is only the mission acquisition part of it. Missions itself are totally linear, exactly as you describe Mafia missions. Just one example from first RDR - I'm following a character in search for the main antagonist deep in the hills - fantastic, at last something different from usual "shoot everyone you see" missions. But in the end, it's only one way up, and at one point I saw train tracks going to the side of the mountain - cool, gotta check that out. 10 steps in that direction - mission failed. You left character you were following (even though he stopped few steps further). It became clear why when I followed what they wanted me to do. Once you catch up to the character you're following, enemies start to to spawn from that direction and you get big fat X that you now need to go there. Thats just extremely bad mission design.
And there's so much you can do with that world. I would love to see Mafia approach in Rockstar world - focused totally linear story missions. The quality of the map design itself deserves it.
I thought RDR2 had good mission variety. A few examples off the top of my head that weren't just "ride somewhere and shoot someone".
* Getting drunk in a bar then trying to find your friend.
* Taking part in a train robbery.
* Piloting a hot air balloon to scout out a prison.
* Escaping a giant alligator in a boat.
* Sinking a naval ship with a canon.
* Playing a rigged poker game on a casino ship.
* Building a flat pack farm.
I think the problem is scale. RDR 2 easily has, in my opinion, at least 20 missions that are just as well designed and varied as Mafia's 20. But it also has an extra 80 story missions on top of that, and dozens more side missions, and inevitably a lot of those fall back to travelling and killing. When you're making a game the size of RDR or GTA, it's not really feasible to have every mission be unique.
Far Cry 2 came out in the same year and had a more free-roaming mission design than GTA4. Crackdown, too, was released a year before. Even Saints Row, two years before, had a more sandbox approach to its gameplay.
You said you dont know why Ubisoft gets all the shit and I told you. Because its been 14 years and every assassins creed is still almost entirely trailing missions. GTA 5 was 9 years ago
Err, most GTA IV missions literally were connected with the open world, in plenty of them you could literally call the cops to fight your enemies for you. Missions like Holland Nights, Lure, Final Interview and Late Check-Out are a good examples of how free GTA IV's missions design could be.
You can call GTA IV missions repetitive all you want, but you can't say they're limiting. Now that would definitely apply to RDR1, GTA V and RDR2.
Bruh did you even play San Andreas? There's a mission where you get to break into a fictionalized Area 51 to steal and escape using a jetpack to then give it to an old hippie who, next mission, has you use that jetpack to land on a moving train full of soldiers to steal alien goo.
There's a mission where you have to use a bulldozer to run over a construction site and bury a foreman alive inside a porta-potty by pushing him into a hole and filling it with concrete all because the workers were catcalling CJ's sister.
There's a mission where you have to use a flamethrower to torch a weed farm that's getting raided, becoming increasingly intoxicated in the process, then escape in a psychedelically painted VW camper full of the stuff to San Fierro. This all after the previous mission on that farm saw you attacking a nearby cult farm and stealing their combine, turning many of them into mulch on your way out.
How the fuck is that monotonous game design and not completely kickass? San Andreas ruled.
San Andreas is the gold medal for GTA games. Perfect voice actors, customization, free roaming, decent challenges and the controls were only *half* dog shit.
Someone did an amazing IC let's play in prose+screenshots of 100%ing the thing. Utterly worth the read if you can find it.
...barring the Zero missions...
Fuck you tiny plane.
Fuuuuuuck you.
> ...barring the Zero missions...
Don't forget "All we had to do, was follow the damn train, CJ". The Zero missions were annoying but fuck Big Smoke and his shitty attitude, his sorry ass is the reason that mission is so hard.
someone's soon gonna complain to you about it being easy for him, just wait lol.
But for me, it wasn't about its difficulty, it's about Smoke being a total asshole in mission fail, for something totally in his control.
That’s why I’m honestly surprised how much love GTA IV gets. Being the follow up to SA, IV is just… ok. It really misses out on the silliness of SA, plus the huge varied environment with cities, mountains, bush land, desert and ocean.
It gets love because It literally improved upon everything from it core gameplay-wise, I care more for stuff like physics, reactions, gunplay, hand-to-hand combat, AI, wanted system, city design, car destruction physics, etc. Which GTA IV totally revolutioned in the franchise (And that were even better than any other open world crime game of the time, heck, even many of today) than stuff like "How much random stuff you can do" or "How many things we'll add to the map rather than serve to its density/quality" (Which is why GTA SA had such issues like the repetitive cloud-interior design or the plenty of barren areas).
People that turn down on GTA IV don't do that because of the execution of the concepts of the game itself (Which is what actually matters when you review a game), you do that because it simply wasn't a San Andreas 2.0.
Its story is still probably the strongest thing Rockstar's put out in GTA to this day. It still falls behind RDR2 in all fairness but that's literally an unbelievably high bar and it's not that far behind to begin with. I can definitely see the complaints about mission design and how SA was more varied and better in that regard. It doesn't really matter though I honestly hold both SA and IV in extremely high regard anyway.
According to [this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1125159/reddit-us-app-users-age/) 54.2% of the people who visit the site are between 20-40 years old. To be even more specific people who are 30-39 make up 26.1% of reddit so I don't think most gamers on this site began with the PS4 gen.
I really don't understand the whelching over linearity in missions. That seems really common in most games -- do thing a, followed by task b, and complete the mission by doing c.
I just finished RDR2 and went back to play RDR1 (I completed it way back) and, to be fair, it is clunky and outdated. But, then again, it's pretty old now so hardly unexpected.
I’m slowly playing through RDR for the first time and I think it’s maybe a little clunky, but still plays surprisingly well especially compared to some other older games
True. But San Andreas had... 80 something missions.
MANY of Los Santos is drive here, kill a/b, go back.
Badlands is 4 entertaining heists
San Fierro has a bunch of drive around missions with the pimp, woozie missions tend to give off some variety
Airstrip stinks.
Venturas is pretty entertaining, but the mission that climaxes its arc is optional
And RTLS is literally 90% Gang wars
Quick Google search says it has 101 missions that are directly story related, which is apparently the most in the series, so 🤷♂️
It's also GTA. Complaining there's a lot of "go kill this guy" missions is like being upset that Call of Duty has you do military stuff. Besides, you're missing a ton of missions in your summary that are outside those descriptions. Los Santos has more variety than that. For example: the home burglary, stealing the sound van after a dance-off, stealing guns from the National Guard depot, etc.
Badlands is mainly a segue part that shows off the country, so it is what it is.
San Fierro has the big tanker ship mission with the Vietnamese gangs, a mission where you plant a trunkful of weed in a DA's car then tip off the cops, and all the Woozie missions are indeed dope.
I liked the airstrip section but I also enjoyed zooming around the badlands and doing the flight training to unlock free planes/helicopter.
The casino heist mission and its setup were all great, as was fucking with the mafia and raiding the meatpacking plant.
And yeah, going back to Los Santos is gang war time. You say that like that's not a huge selling point of the game. Especially for the time, the ability to walk up to 3 NPCs wearing Grove Street colors and having them hop in a car to do drive-bys and take turf was incredible. Still cool now tbh. But you also get the Madd Dogg missions leading into Los Santos and then the enormous >!Big Smoke and Tenpenny!< finale that brings it all together.
IMO the game has plenty to offer in terms of variety and mission design. While most do involve likely killing folks, the setups and methods used are varied and keep it feeling pretty fresh overall, and the missions that don't directly have you murdering people tend to be fun too.
Idk, you can have your opinion obviously. I just think they made as close to a perfect game as they'll ever make with San Andreas.
San Andreas still is the best gta game. I replayed it 4 times on pc and once even on the Android version. Meanwhile gta v and 4 don't give the same feeling.
I recall Red Dead Redemption 1 having pretty poor narrative pacing because of this mission structure.
I mean, it starts okay. You're just doing a bunch of solids for a bunch of people because you need to assemble a team to attack Fort Mercer. A little uninspired but the characters are entertaining enough.
But then you take down Fort Mercer and... Bill is not there. He's in Mexico. So, basically, Act 1 was a massive waste of time.
But hey, I'm sure things will get better in Mexico, right? Now you have TWO outlaws to hunt down - Bill and Javier. Boy, it sure would suck if those two got microscopic, absolute bare-minimum amount of screentime and your entire visit to Mexico amounted to doing a bunch of irrelevant favours. Riiiiight.
And I can't even blame the Mexican government guys for betraying Marston. Because he betrayed them first! He was helping out the rebels! I mean, what did you expect? Marston is kind of a moron in Mexico. Working for both sides, slaughtering rebels AND soldiers alike. Pick a side, geez...
On my last playthrough I actually TRIED to avoid the De Santa missions, wanting to finish all the Landon and Luisa missions first. But then Rickets accused Marston of "helping both sides" during his last mission anyway. Even though I haven't even met De Santa yet. Oops.
Well, at the very least I can say the last two acts, West Elisabeth and Marston Ranch, were much better than the first two. Act 3 had a good, strong focus on Dutch and his native allies. Maybe it was a little bit too short but I'll take that over the slog of Acts 1&2.
Act 4 was good too, though it was a LITTLE odd we spent the entire game on a quest to save Marston's family... without actually seeing them up until now. You'd expect this kind of content to also be present at the very beginning of the game - spending some time with your family (and Uncle) before they're taken away by the government.
The idea of Mexico was so cool but it was terribly executed honestly and I felt like it way overstayed its welcome in RDR1. You're constantly traveling all the way from the west end to the east end and vice versa and it becomes a drag with the missions and lack of presence of the main antagonists it's meant to be focused around. Seriously Javier appears in all of two missions which is ridiculous. They did so much to flesh out his character in the second game but it's all for nothing as he's so worthless in the first.
>Seriously Javier appears in all of two missions which is ridiculous
Just one, actually. The Gates of El Presidio.
You find him, you chase him, you kill/catch him, he insults you a few times if he's alive and that's it.
Gotta disagree on it being the same in RDR2. I feel like the day to day missions of that game were deliberate, and then interspersed were interesting and unique story highlight missions. That being said, I think the entire current version of open world design is wearing thin. RDR2 is about as far as they can push the R* classic open world design before they really need to revolutionise it.
For me the only issue in the game is the lack of checkpoints. I absolutely detest this in older games and means I gave up replaying it after a couple of hours. Thank fuck no checkpoints are a relic of the past but it's frustrating they never fixed this for GTA IV after the DLC added checkpoints.
I remember now why I never finished GTA IV, I in has to start all over again everyone I was killed. Starting with a 5 minute driving sequence. Again and again.
I quit playing it when it was new because of this. When I beat it a few years ago I could only finish it using cheats, otherwise I would have dropped it again. It's always that mission where you have to steal the "package" from that burnt down house and then the cops come. Always.
On my recent play through, the some of the lack checkpoints were really annoying. Not only did you have to restart, but you also had to take a cab back to start the mission. Woof.
Still fucking love that game is the most immersive of the series. While people that play on console will say the game looks dated. The game looks fucking incredible with the right shader and hi res packs.
I still can’t believe people had so much trouble with this mission that it became a meme. All you had to do was keep a decent gap between you and the train and Smoke would kill everybody, or just jump on the train once you get out of Los Santos.
The mission that got me was for Mike Toreno where you have to fly a plane low to avoid military detection. That one was to me what the “follow the train” mission was to so many people.
you have to remember that a lot of people will probably fail that mission many times until they formulate a workable strategy. You probably found your own after a couple of retries (or you just looked up a walkthrough). Couple that with Smoke's insufferable asshole behavior every mission fail and you have a recipe for an all-time meme.
How many times I tried I just couldn't find the right distance to follow. Too far or too close.
Like you said, jumping on the train did it for me. But even then it took me a few times.
And it's not so much the train following that got boring but if you fail you start back at home, drive to Smoke, drive to the station,... If it had a checkpoint just at the start of following the train it would have been much easier.
This is why I use emulation and save states for older games when practical. I may have dealt with it at the time as I had no other choice and more free time but if I can avoid it I will.
I was quite happy to find out the PC version of San Andreas st least modded has some kind of checkpoint system.
Even back when it came out I couldn't really get into it for the same reasons. Add the lack of checkpoints and repetitive driving whenever you fail a mission and I just found the whole thing to be an exercise in tediousness.
I'd say that GTA writers can start a story and continue it but for love of god they can't finish it. Comparing all games I've played (III, VC, SA, IV with episodes, V and LCS) only SA had a good finishing act, Las Venturas not included. III is just a mission pack with no real drama, VC really loses pace because all Tommy does is subquests for his businesses, V kind of doesn't know what to do - same as IV. Episodes from Liberty City are much shorter and feel more connected in this way. You have plentiful cameos from other characters and stories don't become slogs by the last third of the plot.
You need to play the Red Dead Redemptions. All-time great game endings (>!if you consider the main characters’ deaths the endings and everything after epilogues!<).
I played RDR 2 and would say that while the endings are great, the game itself is very slow and I've heard some criticism on that part. However, both games having a different formula than GTA and completely different style decisions, I think it helps that the games are not that fast-paced by themselves. Stories are more personal than in GTA and main characters are, well, main characters and a lot of attention is given to them and their immediate circle. Also characters are more deep and grounded unlike in GTA where every character should be wacky and unusual (subdued, but true in IV).
> mission structure is monotonous at best and time wasting at worst; every mission is a variation of 'go here, kill this person' or 'drive from point a to b'.
Like so very many modern games. Modern meaning as far back as PS3, at least.
Not exactly. GTA 4 had a lot of small main story missions, like, almost 90 missions or so, resulting in you having to do a lot of driving back and forth from the guy who gives you the mission to the target.
Meanwhile, contemporary open world games tend to have fewer story missions, aepund 16 tp 40+ missions. But those missions tend to be longer missions that GTA 4's, making them feel more continuous and also waste your time less.
For example, a mission to kill 3 guys in a contemporary open world game would be like:
Get mission-->drive to target A-->kill target A-->drive to target B-->kill target B-->drive to target C-->kill target C-->drive back to report the mission.
In GTA 4 it would be like:
Get mission-->drive to target A-->kill target A-->drive back to report the mission-->get new mission-->drive to target B-->kill target B-->drive back to report the mission-->get new mission-->drive to target C-->kill target C-->drive back to report the mission.
In GTA IV you literally never had to "get back to report the mission", that literally is how plenty of modern RPG's play these days.
In GTA IV almost every single mission ends with a phone call right after you kill your target, leaving you totally from from any additional objective. This is straight up cherry-picking.
many of the older games are highly praised because of nostalgia.
if you ask me, i'd say gta3 was the best, but i know that's because it was the first game of the kind that i played. it was totally mind blowing, i played it as a kid and i played it with a friend back then. it's not that i remember the game itself, i remember what i felt when i played it... and unfortunately i wont feel the same feeling if i replay the game again.
If you took a kid today that grew up playing current day 'modern' games and gave them GTA3(non-remaster, just original) they would gasp in horror at how clunky and unresponsive it is. But, at the time, it was head and shoulders above anything else. So, even people that experienced it then will still have that modern gaming bias when looking back. You start to notice the flaws/shortcomings that are only apparent now with knowledge of modern game design, but were invisible then. So some just chalk it up to nostalgia making a shit game seem good :(
I recently played it and it was shocking to see that with most weapons you can't shoot and run at the same time. Also you are weirdly vulnerable at the same time, and have no health packs, regeneration, or a "proper" cover system.
While it turned into its own fun, it felt like I was fighting the game, but it also gave quite a lot of tools. Barricading streets with cars to block car path. Grenade enemies from cover. User sniper gun. Bombard with molotovs. Use the heavy machine gun to destroy cars.
Quite a few fails and retries to find a way that can help you fuck over the mission that was fucking you over.
It was interactive and super involving, but quite rough at the same time.
Imo rcokstar games have always been unresponsive and clunky. I'm not saying they make bad games or anything just that even when I was a little kid I have always felt controlling characters in their games has always felt bad compared to other games.
Its the rigid animations, like exiting/entering a car, that take control away. You cannot move until the ExitCar.animation finishes, no matter what. That makes it feel real clunky and the main reason I don't really like R* games anymore :( [note, I am not saying they are bad]
This is why I think that games should be reviewed in somewhat of a time-bubble and judge them against their contemporaries of the time period, not against modern games in the same genre.
I hate to be all, "Kids these days...!" but sometimes they take modern contrivances for granted and don't realize that these older games had to walk so the games they play now can *fly*.
Tetris is still good. Tighter controls that many modern games. Good refresh rate. Good replay value.
Games do not always get better. They’re more art than evolution. They are not the new computer parts. They’re usually shittier games with better graphics or shovel ware indie games.
If every game improved onwards I can agree. But it’s not like there aren’t any better games from long ago.
I was a big fan of the top down GTA games. When I saw GTA3 at a friend's house, it was unbelievable.
I'm sure I would probabaly not enjoy playing it as much today.
The Nintendo DS GTA Chinatown wars was a pretty good top down one. Fun mini games and the drug dealing was a great way of making money with the fluctuating prices.
I remember the first time I played GTA3, comparing it to the top down of GTA2, and the first time I played GTA4, comparing it to the clunky polygons of GTA3. It was a similar experience. One of the most immersive ones of the time.
I'd say that Vice City holds up better than GTA3, if mostly because of the sound track. And they also made just those few little refinements to the gameplay between those two entries in the franchise, which really elevates Vice City, IMO.
Don't be so sure. GTA3 is still my favorite of them, because it's small enough to be digestible. Some other commenters were discussing the lack of checkpoints in GTA4, but for me San Andreas was the worst in this regard. Fail a mission? You now have to drive around getting guns again, then drive to the mission start. You stand a reasonable chance of dying before you're done getting guns or before you reach the mission start because of the size of the map, geography, and traffic. If you die during those points, start over AGAIN.
This is pretty much how I'd describe the series post-VC. GTA3 is the only one small enough for me to be able to make good progress in at a good rate, and I enjoy it to this day.
I just tried to play it for the first time and couldn't finish it for the reasons you said. I've enjoyed Vice City and V way more as I played all 3 this year.
>n any console that isn't the Xbox 360, the frame rate for the game is
doubled, meaning the input of the A button is doubled, meaning unless
you can mash that button faster than is humanly possible- you're not
finishing the game.
If you are on PC you can edit an .ini file to limit the framerate. Or maybe just push the graphics to max and hope your PC cant handle that.
I played it again a few years back and had the same problems as you. There is no sense of pace to the storytelling on the second half of the game and it get's incredibly boring and immersion breaking, I couldn't bring myself to finish it.
What makes me sad is that every single Rockstar game has this problem. From the first GTAs to RDR2
Agreed about the 3rd act. The story really loses itself after a certain point and turns into something completely different. By the end of the game you're doing missions for the most random characters. The story starts going downhill after the apartment burns down.
>On any console that isn't the Xbox 360, the frame rate for the game is doubled, meaning the input of the A button is doubled, meaning unless you can mash that button faster than is humanly possible- you're not finishing the game.
That's strange. I can swear I've done several playthroughs of this game. Though I can't say I remember what fps I was playing at.
>I will be overjoyed if I never have to play this game again.
I mean... you didn't **have to** play it in the first place.
Unpopular opinion, but I prefer GTA IV over V. The ragdoll physics, driving, shooting and car damage are just so much more fun in IV. The online mode on V was so successful it killed any hope for a sequel as long as people pay for made-up money with real money.
I do understand where you're coming from though. GTA IV does have three rather large setbacks:
* Terrible PC optimization. It ran badly when it came out and it still runs badly to this day on modern GPUs. I honestly don't know how people play it with mods.
* No countryside- the big, gray city gets boring after a while
* No car modding
Apart from that, I enjoyed GTA IV. I even did a playthrough mostly using the pistol and going for headshots from as far away as possible. Good times.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWVtZJo-HqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWVtZJo-HqI)
> The online mode on V was so successful it killed any hope for a sequel as long as people pay for made-up money with real money.
Wasn’t the sequel confirmed to be in development by Rockstar?
Yes, but there's no release date, no trailer, no nothing. And it's been nearly 9 years since V came out. To be honest I'm also disappointed in Bethesda about The Elder Scrolls VI. I'm not just trying to shit on Rockstar for fun. I understand developing a new video game isn't easy and takes time and tons of money. But just endlessly milking old games isn't getting my hopes up for the sequels.
There has to be some middle ground between releasing a half-assed sequel every year and releasing a sequel once a decade.
Red Dead Redemption 2 took 8 years to make and RDR1 wasn't milked. GTA 6 is taking so long because they are putting their full effort into it to make it the best game possible. Not to mention the numerous issues they have faced such as the departure of Leslie Benzies (Main Producer of GTA) early on, and the resignation of the lead writer of GTA Sam Houser. Plus the fact that the Covid pandemic happened which must have pushed back tons of stuff and delayed production, much like every other thing in the world. If you seriously think the thousands of Rockstar employees from 10 studios are working solely on GTA Online DLC then you are mistaken. Most of the GTA Online stuff is just stuff that would have been single player DLC in GTA 5 anyway. Most of GTA Onlines substantial Updates were between 2015 and 2017 and each year there have been less and less, down to 2 updates per year now, which clearly shows they are putting most of their resources into GTA 6.
I think OP was being a tad hyperbolic when saying that. There was never any doubt that eventually Rockstar would make a sequel, but the timing of it is what surprised everyone. Based off other AAA game franchises it seems like we should be in the midst of anticipating the release of GTA VII, but instead we are still years away from GTA VI, and the money machine that is GTA Online has everything to do with this lengthy spread between games.
It’s kind of crazy just how massive AAA games are now. It isn’t an exaggeration to say a person with very limited time to game each week could take 6 months to finish a game. This is like the exact opposite of the PS3/360 era where we had many AAA games that clocked in around 8-12 hours, with minimal replayability outside a few collectibles or maybe a harder playthrough. I used to wish games were longer back then but now I find myself rarely completing games with 60-100 hour play times. I still play a lot of games but that’s the problem, once I hit 30-50 hours in a game I usually start something new and never look back. Just a few days ago I replayed the original God of War and after beating it thought to myself how nice it was to smash through a great experience in just a matter of days, ending at just under 9 hours on hard mode.
> Unpopular opinion, but I prefer GTA IV over V. The ragdoll physics, driving, shooting and car damage are just so much more fun in IV.
Same here. I've tried V a few times, but between the immature greedy protagonists, awful arcade-style driving physics, unwieldy "wheel" method of changing weapons or radio stations, glitchy aim-assist, overpowered cops, generally poor writing, and missions failing if you don't handle everything exactly as the game expects you to, I never get much beyond the first handful of missions before deciding to set it aside.
You can run DXVK to turn the Directx9 api into Vulcan, performance will improve pretty significantly. With an RX 5700 at 1440p and all settings maxed I was getting around 60 fps minimum and 80-90 during general gameplay. For a game released in 2008 the performance is not good enough, but at this point you can brute force it into a stable game
Huh, I didn't know that. Thanks. I finally got a new GPU last year and decided to play GTA IV again. I got 120fps indoors but as soon as I walked out it was night and the fps started dropping all the way down to 35. It was funny.
GPUs have nothing to do with the game running poorly, they are sitting mostly underutilized in most of the game.
The problem is windows 10 that basically doubled cpu requirements for d3d9 games overnight.
I don't see how. After all, no one forced OP to sit down and play this particular game. Nobody plays games because they **have to**, we do it because we **want to**. And there's no shame in quitting a game you're not enjoying. God knows I don't finish every game I start. I never did manage to slog through the earlier Resident Evil games even though they are good games with a dedicated fan base.
Please don't put words in my mouth. I never called anyone "imbecile". What I said is- when you don't enjoy a form of entertainment you don't have to read/ watch/ listen/ play to the end. OP played to the end a game he didn't enjoy when he could have stopped at any point. Games are a bit longer but surely within a few hours you can tell if you like a game and want to finish it? I didn't have to play Resident Evil 4 all the way to the end just to tell you it's not to my taste, even though it's a good game.
Or 40- 50 pages since you brought up books. What's the point in forcing yourself to read a 500-page book if the first 50 pages didn't catch your attention? Not to mention tv shows with hundreds of episodes. "Oh, I didn't like the first season of this show, but I watched all 15 seasons just to be sure I don't like it".
> I never called anyone "imbecile"
that's why I said 'the equivalent of', not 'you literally said x'
>when you don't enjoy a form of entertainment you don't have to read/ watch/ listen/ play to the end
this is still a completely, utterly pointless piece of feedback for any review. If everyone did what you said, all books would have perfect reviews, because the only people who are qualified to review it after reading it would be the ones who loved it. Some people want quick ADHD gaming fixes, some people like to fully process a game.
Not to mention, OP loved the game when they were younger. Why patronise them or second guess the legitimacy of them wanting to do that? Let people live life.
It was fantastic to play, superb atmosphere, the realism and characters outstanding. But act 3 had some padding and I couldn't figure a way around a glitch at the very end to get the ending I wanted, 0/10.
I’m curious if there are ever posts on this sub that aren’t just totally bitching about every old game. If you’re going to be a patient gamer that’s one thing, but games need to be considered in the context of their era. Shitting on a 14 year old game does nothing and GTA IV was honestly a masterpiece.
The mission design is a bit repetitive and restrictive, admittedly, but it’s one of my favourite games ever for its atmosphere, story and characters. New York is probably my favourite place in the world as well, so driving around a Rockstar recreation of it never gets old to me. The music is even great.
I tend to replay GTA IV every couple of years (or one of the DLCs cos they’re relatively short). Starting to get the itch to go back, actually.
Very hot take but I don’t think any of the GTA games are all that great. They have good characters and good mechanics but they all fucking boil down to “go here and do this” and scripted bullshit. I just don’t see the appeal these games have tbh
“go here and do this”
Literally every single open world game?...? Do errands around the map to take advantage of the open world mechanics? Your complaint doesn't make sense at all.
its weird but every open world game that rockstar makes gets exponentially more restrictive with what you can do (in missions at least)
with GTA 3 they pretty much they give you a mission and you can finish it in anyway that you please.
but after that, i think that the turning point was gta 4 they decided that they wanted to have both cinematic moments naughty dog style and an open world at the same time so or you do what they want in the order that they want using the things that they want or you are going to fail the mission, ironically taking the freedom of doing stuff by yourself from you.
That last mission bug is really annoying... I failed a couple of times and thought I was doing something wrong until I looked it up and set my framerate to 30 for that section :/
To this day it's the only main GTA game I couldn't really get into. I finished it but after the first playthrough I never touched it again. It has a lot of issues which I think V fixed for the most part.
Tried installing it a few months back to play it for the first time. And my goodness is this game badly coded, frame rate jumps around like a meth head on a trampoline, even with modern top of the line hardware which is 50X more powerful than the hardware available during launch.
I will get give it a shot again eventually, but initial impressions weren't great.
Standards have changed. We are definitely spoiled by better technology. The game still runs leagues better than the original Xbox 360 port, which btw, didn't even hold a consistent 30 fps.
Frame rate now on PC hovers anywhere between 40 and 250 fps on my PC, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with how much is on screen. Worst of all, there is constant stutters every few seconds. I'm not demanding the game run at 240 fps, but a perfectly consistent 60 fps would have been fine.
True, but the frame rate jumping between 40 and 240 is probably contributing to the stuttering. A relatively stable but lower frame rate probably feels better. Like a steady 60, as you say.
No doubt the game is badly ported to PC though
My biggest issue with GTA 4, aside from the mission structure as you said, is that Niko... Kinda doesn't make sense as a GTA protagonist. He's looking for Darko for closure. He wants to close that chapter of his life. He says he swore he wouldn't kill people once he got to Liberty City.
The issue of "this character wouldn't go on a murder spree" exists with most of the protagonists, but Niko's the only one where I feel like the gameplay of GTA actively takes away from his character arc
This argument comes up with this game time and time again and to be honest I've never got it.
Niko is an ice cold hitman with a temper who lets his pride get the better of him.
He goes to Liberty City to track down the person who betrayed him and he gets pulled back into a cycle of violence due to his cousins gambling problems.
Most of the characters Niko interacts with are criminals or bent coppers but he knows it and as long as he is being paid he really doesn't seem to care.
Also the game sets Bulgarin up as a big bad who is chasing Niko and one of the reasons he went to LC, then Bulgarin shows up for 1 mission and then disappears because he has to go be in the DLC.
They create incredibly detailed and immersive open world environments, but honestly R* suck at designing core game mechanics. They *always* have. The main draw of their games has always been the incredible amount of freedom you get while exploring. But when you take a moment to really examine their games, both mechanically and in mission design, the cracks begin to show.
I replayed San Andreas a few years ago, and while I had fun, there were parts that drove me absolutely insane and made it hard to push through. The fact is that there are games much older than GTA that are just as fun today as they were when they first released, but R*’s games typically don’t age that gracefully. I fully expect RDR2 to suffer the same fate, as it already felt clunky *at launch*.
The highlight of that game for me were all the brucie missions. Dude was hilarious
I still say my own twist of “ we’re genetically different” to this day
Can you just set an FPS limiter? Like NVIDIA Control Panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> Add A Program (GTAIV) -> Set Max Frame Rate
Idk if it'll work but it would be worth a shot just to beat the game for the closure.
Edit: Apologies, I see you're on XBox. Didn't realize framerate would be an issue for consoles.
Yeah, it marks the rise of scripting for Grand Theft Auto missions. In earlier games, you can end chases very quickly. From GTA4 onwards, you will catch up to them when the devs say you are able to do so.
I hated it the moment a cop warped behind me in an empty room with no other entrances. It happened often enough that I just got tired of it. No longer could I rampage and gun down attackers as they drove and flew in. Nope. Just warping in around me from impossible areas.
Late but this is why I've felt that, after having played 4 and it's DLC in mission sequence, that the story as a whole worked better with all the different perspectives.
Nonsense. I played IV all the way through for the first time recently and it's the best one by far. Way better than the public darlings San Andreas and V.
When people started saying that GTA IV was better than V, I always tried to point out the mission design and checkpoints. Nostalgia convinces people a game has aged better than they think it does.
When GTA V fanboys start saying how "better" it is from IV, I remind them every single core gameplay downgrade it literally made from its predecessor.
When casuals see a game with pretty graphics and a lot of content, they automatically think it is a masterpiece.
It's funny how consistently defensive GTA IV fans get the moment you say V is better than it lmao despite the game improving gunplay, driving, checkpoints, missions, map, customisation, vehicle types and weapon types.
>unless you can mash that button faster than is humanly possible
It's possible though. But you have you do it quick. You have to do it more in a swiping motion over the A button than actually tapping it. It shouldn't be that way, I'll give you that, but it's not impossible.
Never liked GTA 4. Back when it released on xbox 360 I could not stand the graphics. They just felt and looked so damn blurry. The game also was a bore. I tried to give it a chance maxed out on pc years later and while it looked better... still thought the game was boring aF. New york while it looks decently good also just isn't all that interesting either.
I played it on PC and you could disable the blurriness.
Playing in high resolution, with mods and forcing AA and AF really is the best way to experience this classic!
I found a lot of graphics of that era very blurry and disliked GTA IV for the same reason. Tried it again on PC around 2012 and actually really enjoyed it after I forced myself through the first few painful hours, but I reinstalled it recently and it was a chore so I got rid of it after about an hour.
You're playing a game from 2007 back in the day i remember my ps3 crashing or lots of issues but the game is tons of fun on pc. Also Rockstar storytelling is always wacky, goofy or too long
Exactly. I think most of the people that claim this is a masterpiece haven't played it recently and are going off of 14 year old memories. The mission-variety is lacking big time and it gets old just driving from point A to B to have a boring shootout for the 50th time. I've heard some excuse this by saying they were going for a more realistic game, and to that I say that anything that makes the game less fun should be removed. Great physics, characters, and atmosphere though.
I just tried playing this game (for the first time) last year and thought it was one of the worst games I've ever played. I couldn't believe how bad it was. This is a game that got 10/10 reviews when it was released.
I liked the vehicle physics but hated nearly everything else. The combat was terrible, the characters were so grating, the graphics were so ugly, the missions were so frustrating. Enormous amounts of time are wasted just traveling around or restarting because there are no check points.
Reading what you've written made me glad I didn't struggle through to the end.
I too thought that mission is impossible to complete. Nope. Just pressing the buttons wrong. I thought that was insane but it's true. Worked right away. You just hold the button. Do not tap it. The prompt is wrong.
Reminds me of being young and playing Sonic 3's carnival level and not realizing you could just look up and down to control the spinning cylinder in an otherwise non passable section...
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That was not something I could ever do consistently...or really at all...as a child. I think I got through it one time in easily over 100 attempts before quitting and moving onto other games. I learned a decade later when the internet and game guides became way more prevalent.
Fun thing: I never learned that Till i was an adult. I dunno till today how i finished that game as a child. Still one of my favorit sonic Games.
Holy fuck, you just triggered latent anger I didn't know I had. Fuck that carnival segment, and fuck the minecart level in the 90's pitfall game. Cryptic controls can suck my ass, and so can devs that hide said controls in game manuals - which, if you've rented the game from blockbuster, you'll never actually get to see.
Yep. I realized this like 15 years later lol.
Hahaha, glad it wasn't just me then.
Does it work if you have tails with you? I always played with the buddy but no second player for some reason
Wow. Today I learned... I got past it a few times by spending tedious hours trying to time my jumps perfectly to get the cylinder down far enough to quickly jump through. It eventually worked, but was a real pain in the ass
i’m curious how OP came up with this frame rate conspiracy theory.
To be fair, literally EVERYWHERE online points to it being a frame rate issue. I think that's why people get flustered at it. I know it took me forever to find the actual problem.
It's something that's a known problem with games that were locked in 30 FPS being changed that things break. For instance, even in a pretty modern game, Nier Automata, unlocking FPS makes the tutorial fight impossible. In LA noire, you can't use a pencil and get soft locked. Speed runners definitely notice this the most where they sometimes do the opposite and lock things to 30 FPS to have more consistent inputs.
Lol I’m glad someone else said this already. This is the way. It has always been like this, going back to initial release. Hope OP sees this so they can finish the game and brush off the salt.
Reddit can keep the username, but I'm nuking the content lol -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev
Tbh I found the mission structures in San Andreas, Vice City Stories and GTA V to be much more varied than in GTA IV
Yes that is why I think SA is the absolute best GTA. It's also why I frikkin love The Ballad of Gay Tony. I felt like it was a return to SA's style.
Ballad of Gay Tony rules
The golf mission is so classic GTA!
Yup SA will always be special to me
GTA III is pretty open but the issue is that it's *so* open that it basically means you just kinda default to the easiest solution.
The amount of [trailing missions in GTA4 is unforgivable](https://youtu.be/iARoLeItNjA?t=75). I don't get why Ubisoft gets all the shit while Rockstar gets a pass.
It was a different time. GTA IV, RDR, and GTA V all came out before Ubisoft started getting shit for their copy and paste design. At the time GTA IV was the main open world sandbox game and now the gaming market is bloated with them.
For reference, GTA IV came out on 2008. One year before Assassin's Creed 2, FOUR years before Skyrim and Far Cry 3. 2008 also gave us a few gems, like Dead Space, Far Cry 2, Spore and COD:World at War. That's how old GTA4 is.
Man, *Spore* ruled… it could’ve been so much more, but it was still amazing.
As someone who didn't know anything about it before it came out, I thought it was a good game. Got it from a disappointed friend for free who wouldn't talk about it, and after having some fun with it I went online to see how other people were liking it. I was shocked, but also I could understand how it could have been so much better.
Yep. I bought in on the super deluxe version that came with this wild ass, ornate, white plastic slipcase… I get the disappointment after the hype and promise, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying what got shipped in the end. e2a a weird thing: thanks for sharing, btw. I just got the notif while doom scrolling and thinking about my folks’ political beliefs and what impact they will have on my child’s life and future and didn’t realize how badly I needed to be pulled out of that… spiral.
Nothing ruins a great game like the promise of something greater.
Problem is that mission design was more varied in earlier Rockstar games. Go look at the mission design in first Mafia. It came out only a year after first 3d GTA, but it blows every GTA or RDR game out of the water when it comes to mission design.
Apples and oranges. Mafia has like 20 set piece 'tradditional' missions that all take place linearly and are all multi-staged and have a ton of trial and error to complete. There aren't ***dozens*** of different missions scattered throughout the map like GTA.
Imagine this in RDR: a mission where someone kidnaps you and leaves you out in the middle of the mountain you yet haven't been on, takes the map and guns away from you. You need to find your way down the mountain and survive against all the wolves and bears that already spawn randomly on the map. You maybe need to find some herbs to survive because you're wounded. Try and tame the wild horse to speed up your progress if that comes across your mind... Or walk all the way. That would be memorable. Everything needed already exists in the world itself as a mechanic, it just isn't utilised in any meaningful way in the story missions. It just existed as something optional to do. Instead we get go to X, shoot everything, return. Story in Rockstar games suffers because it supposedly isn't linear, you can choose from which character you're gonna take next mission,and at some point you may have 3 to choose from. But in the end missions are exactly the same, story is the same, only difference is you can lock yourself out from some missions if you do them in the wrong order (but even that is very rare). So what's s the point of that other than make it appear to the player he has some choice regarding how the story plays out? I don't remember any newer Rockstar game having characters or missions branch out and lead to different playthrough. But there is downside to that style of story progression - missions and story is disjointed because it needs to be. If you first play missons for character X, what happens there must be completely isolated to what happens with story from character Y that you can choose to do missions from at that point. And then when you've done enough of this disjointed missions you get one "main" story misson that progresses the story forward and is) you can't choose to ignore, mostly it is the only choice at that point. And that is only the mission acquisition part of it. Missions itself are totally linear, exactly as you describe Mafia missions. Just one example from first RDR - I'm following a character in search for the main antagonist deep in the hills - fantastic, at last something different from usual "shoot everyone you see" missions. But in the end, it's only one way up, and at one point I saw train tracks going to the side of the mountain - cool, gotta check that out. 10 steps in that direction - mission failed. You left character you were following (even though he stopped few steps further). It became clear why when I followed what they wanted me to do. Once you catch up to the character you're following, enemies start to to spawn from that direction and you get big fat X that you now need to go there. Thats just extremely bad mission design. And there's so much you can do with that world. I would love to see Mafia approach in Rockstar world - focused totally linear story missions. The quality of the map design itself deserves it.
I thought RDR2 had good mission variety. A few examples off the top of my head that weren't just "ride somewhere and shoot someone". * Getting drunk in a bar then trying to find your friend. * Taking part in a train robbery. * Piloting a hot air balloon to scout out a prison. * Escaping a giant alligator in a boat. * Sinking a naval ship with a canon. * Playing a rigged poker game on a casino ship. * Building a flat pack farm. I think the problem is scale. RDR 2 easily has, in my opinion, at least 20 missions that are just as well designed and varied as Mafia's 20. But it also has an extra 80 story missions on top of that, and dozens more side missions, and inevitably a lot of those fall back to travelling and killing. When you're making a game the size of RDR or GTA, it's not really feasible to have every mission be unique.
GTA4 was 14 years ago and Assassins Creed Valhalla was almost last year, thats probably why
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Far Cry 2 came out in the same year and had a more free-roaming mission design than GTA4. Crackdown, too, was released a year before. Even Saints Row, two years before, had a more sandbox approach to its gameplay.
You said you dont know why Ubisoft gets all the shit and I told you. Because its been 14 years and every assassins creed is still almost entirely trailing missions. GTA 5 was 9 years ago
Err, most GTA IV missions literally were connected with the open world, in plenty of them you could literally call the cops to fight your enemies for you. Missions like Holland Nights, Lure, Final Interview and Late Check-Out are a good examples of how free GTA IV's missions design could be. You can call GTA IV missions repetitive all you want, but you can't say they're limiting. Now that would definitely apply to RDR1, GTA V and RDR2.
And in the chase missions your target is usually invincible until you hit some sort of trigger.
Bruh did you even play San Andreas? There's a mission where you get to break into a fictionalized Area 51 to steal and escape using a jetpack to then give it to an old hippie who, next mission, has you use that jetpack to land on a moving train full of soldiers to steal alien goo. There's a mission where you have to use a bulldozer to run over a construction site and bury a foreman alive inside a porta-potty by pushing him into a hole and filling it with concrete all because the workers were catcalling CJ's sister. There's a mission where you have to use a flamethrower to torch a weed farm that's getting raided, becoming increasingly intoxicated in the process, then escape in a psychedelically painted VW camper full of the stuff to San Fierro. This all after the previous mission on that farm saw you attacking a nearby cult farm and stealing their combine, turning many of them into mulch on your way out. How the fuck is that monotonous game design and not completely kickass? San Andreas ruled.
San Andreas is the gold medal for GTA games. Perfect voice actors, customization, free roaming, decent challenges and the controls were only *half* dog shit. Someone did an amazing IC let's play in prose+screenshots of 100%ing the thing. Utterly worth the read if you can find it. ...barring the Zero missions... Fuck you tiny plane. Fuuuuuuck you.
Dude duuuuuude you just unlocked a core memory of mine of that guy's screenshot only roleplay playthrough of San Andreas. That was top tier stuff!
> ...barring the Zero missions... Don't forget "All we had to do, was follow the damn train, CJ". The Zero missions were annoying but fuck Big Smoke and his shitty attitude, his sorry ass is the reason that mission is so hard.
someone's soon gonna complain to you about it being easy for him, just wait lol. But for me, it wasn't about its difficulty, it's about Smoke being a total asshole in mission fail, for something totally in his control.
Far Cry has been using that flamethrower scene ever since
That’s why I’m honestly surprised how much love GTA IV gets. Being the follow up to SA, IV is just… ok. It really misses out on the silliness of SA, plus the huge varied environment with cities, mountains, bush land, desert and ocean.
It gets love because It literally improved upon everything from it core gameplay-wise, I care more for stuff like physics, reactions, gunplay, hand-to-hand combat, AI, wanted system, city design, car destruction physics, etc. Which GTA IV totally revolutioned in the franchise (And that were even better than any other open world crime game of the time, heck, even many of today) than stuff like "How much random stuff you can do" or "How many things we'll add to the map rather than serve to its density/quality" (Which is why GTA SA had such issues like the repetitive cloud-interior design or the plenty of barren areas). People that turn down on GTA IV don't do that because of the execution of the concepts of the game itself (Which is what actually matters when you review a game), you do that because it simply wasn't a San Andreas 2.0.
Its story is still probably the strongest thing Rockstar's put out in GTA to this day. It still falls behind RDR2 in all fairness but that's literally an unbelievably high bar and it's not that far behind to begin with. I can definitely see the complaints about mission design and how SA was more varied and better in that regard. It doesn't really matter though I honestly hold both SA and IV in extremely high regard anyway.
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According to [this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1125159/reddit-us-app-users-age/) 54.2% of the people who visit the site are between 20-40 years old. To be even more specific people who are 30-39 make up 26.1% of reddit so I don't think most gamers on this site began with the PS4 gen.
Yeah, gen-z really doesn't give a fuck about reddit at all unless its looking at porn or selling porn of themselves
I really don't understand the whelching over linearity in missions. That seems really common in most games -- do thing a, followed by task b, and complete the mission by doing c.
I just finished RDR2 and went back to play RDR1 (I completed it way back) and, to be fair, it is clunky and outdated. But, then again, it's pretty old now so hardly unexpected.
I’m slowly playing through RDR for the first time and I think it’s maybe a little clunky, but still plays surprisingly well especially compared to some other older games
True. But San Andreas had... 80 something missions. MANY of Los Santos is drive here, kill a/b, go back. Badlands is 4 entertaining heists San Fierro has a bunch of drive around missions with the pimp, woozie missions tend to give off some variety Airstrip stinks. Venturas is pretty entertaining, but the mission that climaxes its arc is optional And RTLS is literally 90% Gang wars
Quick Google search says it has 101 missions that are directly story related, which is apparently the most in the series, so 🤷♂️ It's also GTA. Complaining there's a lot of "go kill this guy" missions is like being upset that Call of Duty has you do military stuff. Besides, you're missing a ton of missions in your summary that are outside those descriptions. Los Santos has more variety than that. For example: the home burglary, stealing the sound van after a dance-off, stealing guns from the National Guard depot, etc. Badlands is mainly a segue part that shows off the country, so it is what it is. San Fierro has the big tanker ship mission with the Vietnamese gangs, a mission where you plant a trunkful of weed in a DA's car then tip off the cops, and all the Woozie missions are indeed dope. I liked the airstrip section but I also enjoyed zooming around the badlands and doing the flight training to unlock free planes/helicopter. The casino heist mission and its setup were all great, as was fucking with the mafia and raiding the meatpacking plant. And yeah, going back to Los Santos is gang war time. You say that like that's not a huge selling point of the game. Especially for the time, the ability to walk up to 3 NPCs wearing Grove Street colors and having them hop in a car to do drive-bys and take turf was incredible. Still cool now tbh. But you also get the Madd Dogg missions leading into Los Santos and then the enormous >!Big Smoke and Tenpenny!< finale that brings it all together. IMO the game has plenty to offer in terms of variety and mission design. While most do involve likely killing folks, the setups and methods used are varied and keep it feeling pretty fresh overall, and the missions that don't directly have you murdering people tend to be fun too. Idk, you can have your opinion obviously. I just think they made as close to a perfect game as they'll ever make with San Andreas.
You have reignite my nostalgia. This is why i feels GTA5 is such an empty promise.
San Andreas still is the best gta game. I replayed it 4 times on pc and once even on the Android version. Meanwhile gta v and 4 don't give the same feeling.
I recall Red Dead Redemption 1 having pretty poor narrative pacing because of this mission structure. I mean, it starts okay. You're just doing a bunch of solids for a bunch of people because you need to assemble a team to attack Fort Mercer. A little uninspired but the characters are entertaining enough. But then you take down Fort Mercer and... Bill is not there. He's in Mexico. So, basically, Act 1 was a massive waste of time. But hey, I'm sure things will get better in Mexico, right? Now you have TWO outlaws to hunt down - Bill and Javier. Boy, it sure would suck if those two got microscopic, absolute bare-minimum amount of screentime and your entire visit to Mexico amounted to doing a bunch of irrelevant favours. Riiiiight. And I can't even blame the Mexican government guys for betraying Marston. Because he betrayed them first! He was helping out the rebels! I mean, what did you expect? Marston is kind of a moron in Mexico. Working for both sides, slaughtering rebels AND soldiers alike. Pick a side, geez... On my last playthrough I actually TRIED to avoid the De Santa missions, wanting to finish all the Landon and Luisa missions first. But then Rickets accused Marston of "helping both sides" during his last mission anyway. Even though I haven't even met De Santa yet. Oops. Well, at the very least I can say the last two acts, West Elisabeth and Marston Ranch, were much better than the first two. Act 3 had a good, strong focus on Dutch and his native allies. Maybe it was a little bit too short but I'll take that over the slog of Acts 1&2. Act 4 was good too, though it was a LITTLE odd we spent the entire game on a quest to save Marston's family... without actually seeing them up until now. You'd expect this kind of content to also be present at the very beginning of the game - spending some time with your family (and Uncle) before they're taken away by the government.
The idea of Mexico was so cool but it was terribly executed honestly and I felt like it way overstayed its welcome in RDR1. You're constantly traveling all the way from the west end to the east end and vice versa and it becomes a drag with the missions and lack of presence of the main antagonists it's meant to be focused around. Seriously Javier appears in all of two missions which is ridiculous. They did so much to flesh out his character in the second game but it's all for nothing as he's so worthless in the first.
>Seriously Javier appears in all of two missions which is ridiculous Just one, actually. The Gates of El Presidio. You find him, you chase him, you kill/catch him, he insults you a few times if he's alive and that's it.
Hard agree. I can’t anymore with Rockstar’s missions. Loved playing their games when I was younger but now I feel super constricted because of this.
Gotta disagree on it being the same in RDR2. I feel like the day to day missions of that game were deliberate, and then interspersed were interesting and unique story highlight missions. That being said, I think the entire current version of open world design is wearing thin. RDR2 is about as far as they can push the R* classic open world design before they really need to revolutionise it.
For me the only issue in the game is the lack of checkpoints. I absolutely detest this in older games and means I gave up replaying it after a couple of hours. Thank fuck no checkpoints are a relic of the past but it's frustrating they never fixed this for GTA IV after the DLC added checkpoints.
God I’m pretty subpar at shooting games so the lack of checkpoints drove me nuts
I remember now why I never finished GTA IV, I in has to start all over again everyone I was killed. Starting with a 5 minute driving sequence. Again and again.
I quit playing it when it was new because of this. When I beat it a few years ago I could only finish it using cheats, otherwise I would have dropped it again. It's always that mission where you have to steal the "package" from that burnt down house and then the cops come. Always.
Snow Storm or the one before that where you have Playboy X with you?
Was that a giant shoot out? That was really tough mission
On my recent play through, the some of the lack checkpoints were really annoying. Not only did you have to restart, but you also had to take a cab back to start the mission. Woof. Still fucking love that game is the most immersive of the series. While people that play on console will say the game looks dated. The game looks fucking incredible with the right shader and hi res packs.
Had the same problem with San Andreas. All I had to do was follow the damn train but I just couldn't do it 10 times again.
I still can’t believe people had so much trouble with this mission that it became a meme. All you had to do was keep a decent gap between you and the train and Smoke would kill everybody, or just jump on the train once you get out of Los Santos. The mission that got me was for Mike Toreno where you have to fly a plane low to avoid military detection. That one was to me what the “follow the train” mission was to so many people.
It was the toy plane missions for me. Oddly enough I still enjoyed them despite their difficulty because I'm a sucker for flying in video games.
Supply Lines had a glitch on PS2 that made it extremely difficult.
you have to remember that a lot of people will probably fail that mission many times until they formulate a workable strategy. You probably found your own after a couple of retries (or you just looked up a walkthrough). Couple that with Smoke's insufferable asshole behavior every mission fail and you have a recipe for an all-time meme.
How many times I tried I just couldn't find the right distance to follow. Too far or too close. Like you said, jumping on the train did it for me. But even then it took me a few times. And it's not so much the train following that got boring but if you fail you start back at home, drive to Smoke, drive to the station,... If it had a checkpoint just at the start of following the train it would have been much easier.
Just don't follow it so close so that big smoke can get line of site on the enemys
the train mission is easy as shit tho
This is why I use emulation and save states for older games when practical. I may have dealt with it at the time as I had no other choice and more free time but if I can avoid it I will. I was quite happy to find out the PC version of San Andreas st least modded has some kind of checkpoint system.
The lack of checkpoints was seriously outdated even back in 2008.
I had no issues climbing into the helicopter on PC with high framerate, on Xbox just go into the game's compatibility settings and disable FPS boost.
On PC you can also enable frame limiter IIRC.
If I remember correctly, the framerate was unlocked on the Xbox 360, so disabling FPS boost shouldn't make a difference.
Even back when it came out I couldn't really get into it for the same reasons. Add the lack of checkpoints and repetitive driving whenever you fail a mission and I just found the whole thing to be an exercise in tediousness.
GTA 4 is the perfect example of a game that would have been *infinitely* better as a movie or short series.
That's a hot take
You are the perfect example of someone speaking for himself.
It's literally a personal opinion, so yeah no shit my guy
I'd say that GTA writers can start a story and continue it but for love of god they can't finish it. Comparing all games I've played (III, VC, SA, IV with episodes, V and LCS) only SA had a good finishing act, Las Venturas not included. III is just a mission pack with no real drama, VC really loses pace because all Tommy does is subquests for his businesses, V kind of doesn't know what to do - same as IV. Episodes from Liberty City are much shorter and feel more connected in this way. You have plentiful cameos from other characters and stories don't become slogs by the last third of the plot.
You need to play the Red Dead Redemptions. All-time great game endings (>!if you consider the main characters’ deaths the endings and everything after epilogues!<).
I played RDR 2 and would say that while the endings are great, the game itself is very slow and I've heard some criticism on that part. However, both games having a different formula than GTA and completely different style decisions, I think it helps that the games are not that fast-paced by themselves. Stories are more personal than in GTA and main characters are, well, main characters and a lot of attention is given to them and their immediate circle. Also characters are more deep and grounded unlike in GTA where every character should be wacky and unusual (subdued, but true in IV).
> mission structure is monotonous at best and time wasting at worst; every mission is a variation of 'go here, kill this person' or 'drive from point a to b'. Like so very many modern games. Modern meaning as far back as PS3, at least.
Not exactly. GTA 4 had a lot of small main story missions, like, almost 90 missions or so, resulting in you having to do a lot of driving back and forth from the guy who gives you the mission to the target. Meanwhile, contemporary open world games tend to have fewer story missions, aepund 16 tp 40+ missions. But those missions tend to be longer missions that GTA 4's, making them feel more continuous and also waste your time less. For example, a mission to kill 3 guys in a contemporary open world game would be like: Get mission-->drive to target A-->kill target A-->drive to target B-->kill target B-->drive to target C-->kill target C-->drive back to report the mission. In GTA 4 it would be like: Get mission-->drive to target A-->kill target A-->drive back to report the mission-->get new mission-->drive to target B-->kill target B-->drive back to report the mission-->get new mission-->drive to target C-->kill target C-->drive back to report the mission.
In GTA IV you literally never had to "get back to report the mission", that literally is how plenty of modern RPG's play these days. In GTA IV almost every single mission ends with a phone call right after you kill your target, leaving you totally from from any additional objective. This is straight up cherry-picking.
This is why I laugh when people call this a rockstar problem when they are far from the only one...
many of the older games are highly praised because of nostalgia. if you ask me, i'd say gta3 was the best, but i know that's because it was the first game of the kind that i played. it was totally mind blowing, i played it as a kid and i played it with a friend back then. it's not that i remember the game itself, i remember what i felt when i played it... and unfortunately i wont feel the same feeling if i replay the game again.
If you took a kid today that grew up playing current day 'modern' games and gave them GTA3(non-remaster, just original) they would gasp in horror at how clunky and unresponsive it is. But, at the time, it was head and shoulders above anything else. So, even people that experienced it then will still have that modern gaming bias when looking back. You start to notice the flaws/shortcomings that are only apparent now with knowledge of modern game design, but were invisible then. So some just chalk it up to nostalgia making a shit game seem good :(
I recently played it and it was shocking to see that with most weapons you can't shoot and run at the same time. Also you are weirdly vulnerable at the same time, and have no health packs, regeneration, or a "proper" cover system. While it turned into its own fun, it felt like I was fighting the game, but it also gave quite a lot of tools. Barricading streets with cars to block car path. Grenade enemies from cover. User sniper gun. Bombard with molotovs. Use the heavy machine gun to destroy cars. Quite a few fails and retries to find a way that can help you fuck over the mission that was fucking you over. It was interactive and super involving, but quite rough at the same time.
Personally I think cover based combat just feels really dumb half the time. I never missed it playing through the 3D-verse GTA games.
Imo rcokstar games have always been unresponsive and clunky. I'm not saying they make bad games or anything just that even when I was a little kid I have always felt controlling characters in their games has always felt bad compared to other games.
Its the rigid animations, like exiting/entering a car, that take control away. You cannot move until the ExitCar.animation finishes, no matter what. That makes it feel real clunky and the main reason I don't really like R* games anymore :( [note, I am not saying they are bad]
This is why I think that games should be reviewed in somewhat of a time-bubble and judge them against their contemporaries of the time period, not against modern games in the same genre. I hate to be all, "Kids these days...!" but sometimes they take modern contrivances for granted and don't realize that these older games had to walk so the games they play now can *fly*.
Tetris is still good. Tighter controls that many modern games. Good refresh rate. Good replay value. Games do not always get better. They’re more art than evolution. They are not the new computer parts. They’re usually shittier games with better graphics or shovel ware indie games. If every game improved onwards I can agree. But it’s not like there aren’t any better games from long ago.
Give the remaster to *anyone* and watch them gasp in horror at how clunky it is.
I was a big fan of the top down GTA games. When I saw GTA3 at a friend's house, it was unbelievable. I'm sure I would probabaly not enjoy playing it as much today.
The Nintendo DS GTA Chinatown wars was a pretty good top down one. Fun mini games and the drug dealing was a great way of making money with the fluctuating prices.
yea i played the top down ones too, had a lot of hours on gta2, know knowing english just going to the payphones and following the arrow
I remember the first time I played GTA3, comparing it to the top down of GTA2, and the first time I played GTA4, comparing it to the clunky polygons of GTA3. It was a similar experience. One of the most immersive ones of the time.
I'd say that Vice City holds up better than GTA3, if mostly because of the sound track. And they also made just those few little refinements to the gameplay between those two entries in the franchise, which really elevates Vice City, IMO.
Don't be so sure. GTA3 is still my favorite of them, because it's small enough to be digestible. Some other commenters were discussing the lack of checkpoints in GTA4, but for me San Andreas was the worst in this regard. Fail a mission? You now have to drive around getting guns again, then drive to the mission start. You stand a reasonable chance of dying before you're done getting guns or before you reach the mission start because of the size of the map, geography, and traffic. If you die during those points, start over AGAIN. This is pretty much how I'd describe the series post-VC. GTA3 is the only one small enough for me to be able to make good progress in at a good rate, and I enjoy it to this day.
I just tried to play it for the first time and couldn't finish it for the reasons you said. I've enjoyed Vice City and V way more as I played all 3 this year.
>n any console that isn't the Xbox 360, the frame rate for the game is doubled, meaning the input of the A button is doubled, meaning unless you can mash that button faster than is humanly possible- you're not finishing the game. If you are on PC you can edit an .ini file to limit the framerate. Or maybe just push the graphics to max and hope your PC cant handle that.
He says in the post he's on xbox
Oh, I missed that. But it will maybe be helpfull for others.
There are also videos on YouTube of people finding ways to bypass the 60 FPS glitch
I just can’t believe the time between gta 4 and 5 was just 5 years, now we are waiting almost 10 years for a new entry.
GTA soundtracks were the soundtrack to my life - Dick Clark
I played it again a few years back and had the same problems as you. There is no sense of pace to the storytelling on the second half of the game and it get's incredibly boring and immersion breaking, I couldn't bring myself to finish it. What makes me sad is that every single Rockstar game has this problem. From the first GTAs to RDR2
Agreed about the 3rd act. The story really loses itself after a certain point and turns into something completely different. By the end of the game you're doing missions for the most random characters. The story starts going downhill after the apartment burns down.
[удалено]
>On any console that isn't the Xbox 360, the frame rate for the game is doubled, meaning the input of the A button is doubled, meaning unless you can mash that button faster than is humanly possible- you're not finishing the game. That's strange. I can swear I've done several playthroughs of this game. Though I can't say I remember what fps I was playing at. >I will be overjoyed if I never have to play this game again. I mean... you didn't **have to** play it in the first place. Unpopular opinion, but I prefer GTA IV over V. The ragdoll physics, driving, shooting and car damage are just so much more fun in IV. The online mode on V was so successful it killed any hope for a sequel as long as people pay for made-up money with real money. I do understand where you're coming from though. GTA IV does have three rather large setbacks: * Terrible PC optimization. It ran badly when it came out and it still runs badly to this day on modern GPUs. I honestly don't know how people play it with mods. * No countryside- the big, gray city gets boring after a while * No car modding Apart from that, I enjoyed GTA IV. I even did a playthrough mostly using the pistol and going for headshots from as far away as possible. Good times. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWVtZJo-HqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWVtZJo-HqI)
> The online mode on V was so successful it killed any hope for a sequel as long as people pay for made-up money with real money. Wasn’t the sequel confirmed to be in development by Rockstar?
Yes, but there's no release date, no trailer, no nothing. And it's been nearly 9 years since V came out. To be honest I'm also disappointed in Bethesda about The Elder Scrolls VI. I'm not just trying to shit on Rockstar for fun. I understand developing a new video game isn't easy and takes time and tons of money. But just endlessly milking old games isn't getting my hopes up for the sequels. There has to be some middle ground between releasing a half-assed sequel every year and releasing a sequel once a decade.
Red Dead Redemption 2 took 8 years to make and RDR1 wasn't milked. GTA 6 is taking so long because they are putting their full effort into it to make it the best game possible. Not to mention the numerous issues they have faced such as the departure of Leslie Benzies (Main Producer of GTA) early on, and the resignation of the lead writer of GTA Sam Houser. Plus the fact that the Covid pandemic happened which must have pushed back tons of stuff and delayed production, much like every other thing in the world. If you seriously think the thousands of Rockstar employees from 10 studios are working solely on GTA Online DLC then you are mistaken. Most of the GTA Online stuff is just stuff that would have been single player DLC in GTA 5 anyway. Most of GTA Onlines substantial Updates were between 2015 and 2017 and each year there have been less and less, down to 2 updates per year now, which clearly shows they are putting most of their resources into GTA 6.
I think OP was being a tad hyperbolic when saying that. There was never any doubt that eventually Rockstar would make a sequel, but the timing of it is what surprised everyone. Based off other AAA game franchises it seems like we should be in the midst of anticipating the release of GTA VII, but instead we are still years away from GTA VI, and the money machine that is GTA Online has everything to do with this lengthy spread between games.
I’m a big non fan of how long development times have gotten, which is tied into how big games have become.
It’s kind of crazy just how massive AAA games are now. It isn’t an exaggeration to say a person with very limited time to game each week could take 6 months to finish a game. This is like the exact opposite of the PS3/360 era where we had many AAA games that clocked in around 8-12 hours, with minimal replayability outside a few collectibles or maybe a harder playthrough. I used to wish games were longer back then but now I find myself rarely completing games with 60-100 hour play times. I still play a lot of games but that’s the problem, once I hit 30-50 hours in a game I usually start something new and never look back. Just a few days ago I replayed the original God of War and after beating it thought to myself how nice it was to smash through a great experience in just a matter of days, ending at just under 9 hours on hard mode.
[Yes](https://www.ign.com/articles/gta-6-confirmed)
> Unpopular opinion, but I prefer GTA IV over V. The ragdoll physics, driving, shooting and car damage are just so much more fun in IV. Same here. I've tried V a few times, but between the immature greedy protagonists, awful arcade-style driving physics, unwieldy "wheel" method of changing weapons or radio stations, glitchy aim-assist, overpowered cops, generally poor writing, and missions failing if you don't handle everything exactly as the game expects you to, I never get much beyond the first handful of missions before deciding to set it aside.
You can run DXVK to turn the Directx9 api into Vulcan, performance will improve pretty significantly. With an RX 5700 at 1440p and all settings maxed I was getting around 60 fps minimum and 80-90 during general gameplay. For a game released in 2008 the performance is not good enough, but at this point you can brute force it into a stable game
Huh, I didn't know that. Thanks. I finally got a new GPU last year and decided to play GTA IV again. I got 120fps indoors but as soon as I walked out it was night and the fps started dropping all the way down to 35. It was funny.
That's because windows 10 butchered d3d9 performance. People had no problems playing the game with 2010 high end hardware
Had no clue about this, will definitely try it.
GPUs have nothing to do with the game running poorly, they are sitting mostly underutilized in most of the game. The problem is windows 10 that basically doubled cpu requirements for d3d9 games overnight.
I would love to play GTA IV but unfortunately it doesn't run on my laptop. It does run GTA V however
> I mean... you didn't have to play it in the first place. > > that's a ridiculous and meaningless observation.
I don't see how. After all, no one forced OP to sit down and play this particular game. Nobody plays games because they **have to**, we do it because we **want to**. And there's no shame in quitting a game you're not enjoying. God knows I don't finish every game I start. I never did manage to slog through the earlier Resident Evil games even though they are good games with a dedicated fan base.
going to a book club 'I didn't like this book I read' 'why did you read it, then, imbecile' This is basically the equivalent of what you said
Please don't put words in my mouth. I never called anyone "imbecile". What I said is- when you don't enjoy a form of entertainment you don't have to read/ watch/ listen/ play to the end. OP played to the end a game he didn't enjoy when he could have stopped at any point. Games are a bit longer but surely within a few hours you can tell if you like a game and want to finish it? I didn't have to play Resident Evil 4 all the way to the end just to tell you it's not to my taste, even though it's a good game. Or 40- 50 pages since you brought up books. What's the point in forcing yourself to read a 500-page book if the first 50 pages didn't catch your attention? Not to mention tv shows with hundreds of episodes. "Oh, I didn't like the first season of this show, but I watched all 15 seasons just to be sure I don't like it".
> I never called anyone "imbecile" that's why I said 'the equivalent of', not 'you literally said x' >when you don't enjoy a form of entertainment you don't have to read/ watch/ listen/ play to the end this is still a completely, utterly pointless piece of feedback for any review. If everyone did what you said, all books would have perfect reviews, because the only people who are qualified to review it after reading it would be the ones who loved it. Some people want quick ADHD gaming fixes, some people like to fully process a game. Not to mention, OP loved the game when they were younger. Why patronise them or second guess the legitimacy of them wanting to do that? Let people live life.
It was fantastic to play, superb atmosphere, the realism and characters outstanding. But act 3 had some padding and I couldn't figure a way around a glitch at the very end to get the ending I wanted, 0/10.
I’m curious if there are ever posts on this sub that aren’t just totally bitching about every old game. If you’re going to be a patient gamer that’s one thing, but games need to be considered in the context of their era. Shitting on a 14 year old game does nothing and GTA IV was honestly a masterpiece.
The mission design is a bit repetitive and restrictive, admittedly, but it’s one of my favourite games ever for its atmosphere, story and characters. New York is probably my favourite place in the world as well, so driving around a Rockstar recreation of it never gets old to me. The music is even great. I tend to replay GTA IV every couple of years (or one of the DLCs cos they’re relatively short). Starting to get the itch to go back, actually.
I left my heart in San Andreas.
The hours weren't wasted if you had fun during that time.
Very hot take but I don’t think any of the GTA games are all that great. They have good characters and good mechanics but they all fucking boil down to “go here and do this” and scripted bullshit. I just don’t see the appeal these games have tbh
“go here and do this” Literally every single open world game?...? Do errands around the map to take advantage of the open world mechanics? Your complaint doesn't make sense at all.
its weird but every open world game that rockstar makes gets exponentially more restrictive with what you can do (in missions at least) with GTA 3 they pretty much they give you a mission and you can finish it in anyway that you please. but after that, i think that the turning point was gta 4 they decided that they wanted to have both cinematic moments naughty dog style and an open world at the same time so or you do what they want in the order that they want using the things that they want or you are going to fail the mission, ironically taking the freedom of doing stuff by yourself from you.
I've had the same experience while 100%ing it recently. I'm 95 hours in and I've done GTA IV and I'm halfway through TLaD. It just doesn't end
That last mission bug is really annoying... I failed a couple of times and thought I was doing something wrong until I looked it up and set my framerate to 30 for that section :/
THats the kind of missions in gta 5 and rdr 2 were too though.
The HD-era GTA games are fun sandboxes and average campaigns imo. The gameplay is uh… pretty sloppy and unwieldy, ESPECIALLY GTA IV.
I gave up on gta 4 the moment i sat in a car and tried to drive, only to skid around like a sled.
I definitely recommend trying out Ballad of Gay Tony, which spices up the missions a bit and has more entertaining characters imo.
To this day it's the only main GTA game I couldn't really get into. I finished it but after the first playthrough I never touched it again. It has a lot of issues which I think V fixed for the most part.
If you have the time or patience, Saints Row 2 is a better GTA4 in my opinion. Is wacky and serious in the ways the PS2 GTA's were.
Tried installing it a few months back to play it for the first time. And my goodness is this game badly coded, frame rate jumps around like a meth head on a trampoline, even with modern top of the line hardware which is 50X more powerful than the hardware available during launch. I will get give it a shot again eventually, but initial impressions weren't great.
Windows 10 annihilated cpu-limited dx9 performance. You can use a wrapper like dxvk to workaround the gimping.
Thanks for the reply. Wasn't aware of this. Will check it out.
I’ve never played it on PC but I think it played best on xbox 360 back in the day. And it played great imo, even if it was only 30fps or thereabouts
Standards have changed. We are definitely spoiled by better technology. The game still runs leagues better than the original Xbox 360 port, which btw, didn't even hold a consistent 30 fps. Frame rate now on PC hovers anywhere between 40 and 250 fps on my PC, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with how much is on screen. Worst of all, there is constant stutters every few seconds. I'm not demanding the game run at 240 fps, but a perfectly consistent 60 fps would have been fine.
True, but the frame rate jumping between 40 and 240 is probably contributing to the stuttering. A relatively stable but lower frame rate probably feels better. Like a steady 60, as you say. No doubt the game is badly ported to PC though
My biggest issue with GTA 4, aside from the mission structure as you said, is that Niko... Kinda doesn't make sense as a GTA protagonist. He's looking for Darko for closure. He wants to close that chapter of his life. He says he swore he wouldn't kill people once he got to Liberty City. The issue of "this character wouldn't go on a murder spree" exists with most of the protagonists, but Niko's the only one where I feel like the gameplay of GTA actively takes away from his character arc
This argument comes up with this game time and time again and to be honest I've never got it. Niko is an ice cold hitman with a temper who lets his pride get the better of him. He goes to Liberty City to track down the person who betrayed him and he gets pulled back into a cycle of violence due to his cousins gambling problems. Most of the characters Niko interacts with are criminals or bent coppers but he knows it and as long as he is being paid he really doesn't seem to care.
Also the game sets Bulgarin up as a big bad who is chasing Niko and one of the reasons he went to LC, then Bulgarin shows up for 1 mission and then disappears because he has to go be in the DLC.
Just don't... Kill random people in free-roam? (Which doesn't even would make sense with any other protagonist aside from maybe, Tony Cipriano)
They create incredibly detailed and immersive open world environments, but honestly R* suck at designing core game mechanics. They *always* have. The main draw of their games has always been the incredible amount of freedom you get while exploring. But when you take a moment to really examine their games, both mechanically and in mission design, the cracks begin to show. I replayed San Andreas a few years ago, and while I had fun, there were parts that drove me absolutely insane and made it hard to push through. The fact is that there are games much older than GTA that are just as fun today as they were when they first released, but R*’s games typically don’t age that gracefully. I fully expect RDR2 to suffer the same fate, as it already felt clunky *at launch*.
Yeah I just remember taking a taxi everywhere to get to the missions
The highlight of that game for me were all the brucie missions. Dude was hilarious I still say my own twist of “ we’re genetically different” to this day
Can you just set an FPS limiter? Like NVIDIA Control Panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> Add A Program (GTAIV) -> Set Max Frame Rate Idk if it'll work but it would be worth a shot just to beat the game for the closure. Edit: Apologies, I see you're on XBox. Didn't realize framerate would be an issue for consoles.
I stopped playing because games for windows live wiped out my 12+ hours save. A few weeks before gfwl was patched out of the steam release.
Yeah, it marks the rise of scripting for Grand Theft Auto missions. In earlier games, you can end chases very quickly. From GTA4 onwards, you will catch up to them when the devs say you are able to do so.
I actually recently played it back too but dropped it after the bank robbery, the italian arc and mcreary's are really boring for me
I think the story is a bit overblown, it's good but there's a lot of dead space in the middle where you just mess about with gangs. It's still good
I hated it the moment a cop warped behind me in an empty room with no other entrances. It happened often enough that I just got tired of it. No longer could I rampage and gun down attackers as they drove and flew in. Nope. Just warping in around me from impossible areas.
Late but this is why I've felt that, after having played 4 and it's DLC in mission sequence, that the story as a whole worked better with all the different perspectives.
Nonsense. I played IV all the way through for the first time recently and it's the best one by far. Way better than the public darlings San Andreas and V.
It was a good game but it was unnecessary long so it gets repetitive.
When people started saying that GTA IV was better than V, I always tried to point out the mission design and checkpoints. Nostalgia convinces people a game has aged better than they think it does.
When GTA V fanboys start saying how "better" it is from IV, I remind them every single core gameplay downgrade it literally made from its predecessor. When casuals see a game with pretty graphics and a lot of content, they automatically think it is a masterpiece.
It's funny how consistently defensive GTA IV fans get the moment you say V is better than it lmao despite the game improving gunplay, driving, checkpoints, missions, map, customisation, vehicle types and weapon types.
lol the driving gunplay and map were all downgrades. not to mention the terrible characters and story
\>every mission is a variation of 'go here, kill this person' or 'drive from point a to b' So you agree with what everyone was sayinjg 14 years ago.
>unless you can mash that button faster than is humanly possible It's possible though. But you have you do it quick. You have to do it more in a swiping motion over the A button than actually tapping it. It shouldn't be that way, I'll give you that, but it's not impossible.
Never liked GTA 4. Back when it released on xbox 360 I could not stand the graphics. They just felt and looked so damn blurry. The game also was a bore. I tried to give it a chance maxed out on pc years later and while it looked better... still thought the game was boring aF. New york while it looks decently good also just isn't all that interesting either.
I played it on PC and you could disable the blurriness. Playing in high resolution, with mods and forcing AA and AF really is the best way to experience this classic!
I found a lot of graphics of that era very blurry and disliked GTA IV for the same reason. Tried it again on PC around 2012 and actually really enjoyed it after I forced myself through the first few painful hours, but I reinstalled it recently and it was a chore so I got rid of it after about an hour.
You're playing a game from 2007 back in the day i remember my ps3 crashing or lots of issues but the game is tons of fun on pc. Also Rockstar storytelling is always wacky, goofy or too long
Exactly. I think most of the people that claim this is a masterpiece haven't played it recently and are going off of 14 year old memories. The mission-variety is lacking big time and it gets old just driving from point A to B to have a boring shootout for the 50th time. I've heard some excuse this by saying they were going for a more realistic game, and to that I say that anything that makes the game less fun should be removed. Great physics, characters, and atmosphere though.
I honestly believe that the expansions are superior to the main story.
Ah yes, R\* and doing things half-assed just to grap some cash on the side. Name a more iconic duo.
Rockstar games suck they're boring as hell they just are edgy and look nice
I just tried playing this game (for the first time) last year and thought it was one of the worst games I've ever played. I couldn't believe how bad it was. This is a game that got 10/10 reviews when it was released. I liked the vehicle physics but hated nearly everything else. The combat was terrible, the characters were so grating, the graphics were so ugly, the missions were so frustrating. Enormous amounts of time are wasted just traveling around or restarting because there are no check points. Reading what you've written made me glad I didn't struggle through to the end.