I really miss loads of things from SA...

I really wish people would play a game for more than a few days (finish the story maybe?) before writing a review or opinion piece.

Yes the game has it's issues, which we've all read about. But for me the story was very well written and deserving of a high score. Add to that the numerous MP games, all the side missions, etc, and you have a pretty damn good game.

Now is it deserving of all the perfect scores? I thik that's for each individual to decide for themselves.

I think people forget that how enjoyable a certain type of game is varies from person to person. I love the GTA style games for not only the stories but all the extra stuff too. On the other hand, I don't care for and am not good at first-person shooters, so no matter how high it's rated (see Halo, GOW, Resistance, etc.) I usually don't like them as much as others do.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

One of the best this gen... but certainly not THE BEST GTA.

I mean i love GTA4, i really do... But still i wouldnt rate it higher than a 9.

I understand maybe there's less to do here than SA, but think about it, if they throw everything in it, wouldnt they run out of ideas when the next GTA on current gen comes ? Maybe a GTA : London or something... ?

I honestly think they deliberately reduced the depth a bit for future expansions or whatever you wanna call it.

However i do agree, the missions are less creative this time around.

Drive here... kill this group of people... cops arrive, kill cops... lose the cops... mission passed.

Repeat the process maybe about 70% of the story missions...

yeah, it gets repetitive.

GTA IV was a massive disappointment to me.
While still a good game, it's just nowhere as good as the previous three Grand Theft Autos. Multiplayer wasn't that great, either; it was extremely laggy from time to time with lots of rubber-banding effects (played on Xbox Live) and was just boring.

I'm inclined to agree with the author, honestly. The severe aliasing issues alone would knock GTA IV down to an eight for me. I can see why they kept gameplay videos from the public for so long after seeing the game in action.

It's still a good game, but by no means a ten, especially in the graphics department. I don't care how much you can render at once if it all looks like a huge wad of jaggies. :P

GTAIV in my eyes is a huge letdown. My one sentence review summary would be, "Three steps forward, 6 steps back." Meaning while the gorgeous graphics, euphoric* physics, and superb sound are better than they ever have been, everything else took some huge steps back. The sloppy character movement, construed camera, vexing vehicles, lame weapons, repetitive missions, and doldrum story should have all been slammed by any reviewer.

With everything they did in last generations San Andreas, I can't believe they couldn't just polish everything up, slap Euphoria on it, and hire a decent writer. If Rockstar went this route we'd be left with a mafioso gangsterlishous masterpiece, including the following...

1. A camera that follows the player. A MUST if your controlling said character!

2. Character movement that is responsive, not ridiculously sluggish.

3. A massive vehicle collection that would make GT:4 look puny. Complete with hydraulic Pintos, ATVs, hovercrafts, lawn mowers, *working* forklifts and more!

4. Weapons. Lots of weapons. Everything from a chainsaw, to a purple you-know-what. This is GTA for crying out loud!

5. Complex, exciting, simple but difficult, territorial missions. Drive Packie to the bar? I'm a taxi driver now? Cmon! With the incarnation of the second GTA, we saw a really cool game element that changed the way we slaughtered gang members. Kill too many Russians and the Pegorini tribe might not like you, but at the same time the Irish would be proud. Incorporating this into missions would have mixed things up a lot, making them more enjoyable and thought provoking.

6. GTA3's main character didn't talk, yet the story was easily better than this one. That should tell you how much GTAIV's story sucks. Vice City had an excellent story that transported me to the 80's. San Andreas sent me to the mean streets of LA. IV makes me feel like an immigrant retard who surprises me whenever he remembers his name. The story has two equally lame endings. Why is this? Seriously why two?

Combine all of these things with everything that they actually improved on in GTAIV, and you have a masterpiece that deserves its 10/10 rating. Better luck next time Rockstar, lets hope you can snag my attention for a little bit longer than a rental.

PS. Remember to leave the cell phone, dating, and friendship levels out of the GTAV. It's bad enough I have to keep track of those in real life.

-SS

GTAIV is good. They did take a lot out though. I think SA was better. MGS4 comes out in 3 weeks. :P

You know....after hearing how much was cut from other GTA games.....GTA IV is starting to feel a bit thin.

i got to 45% on gta before i lost the will to live. Its going back to the shop as part exchange for grid this friday so every cloud as a silver lining.

Does that mean I no longer qualify to be a gamer?

bah!

damn people who try to define a gamer based on the games they play.

A Gamer should be someone who thoroughly enjoys games despite the console it is on. He appreciates the work the developers go through and does so by buying the game.

I try to communicate objectively in these kind of arguments, but having finished IV i can't be objective.

San andreas wasn't just a bit better. it was TONS better.
people keep talking about "ambience", but i actually find myself disagreeing with that. As soon as you step into san andreas and you hear the hip hop intro and see the locale it all sorta comes together. "los santos" looks and feels like rundown LA.
For me the world of san andreas had far more of a character. It wasn't necessarily more realistic111, but so what. There were highways, that stretched for soo damn long, woods, rural villages (some you'd find months into playing the game). I think SA generally felt much more epic because there were a wealth of missions on each island. It kinda felt like the cinematic three act structure, started on the first, then the second , and then the ended on the third. It felt like playing a tv series.

here's a list no one should be able to disagree with :) :

- there were 3 sets of weapons. Now we only have one. No flamethrower, no chainsaw(I LOVED the chainsaw). The baseball bat doesn't inflict the same type of damage. It doesn't demolish cars, and people the way it used to.
- no bouquet or dildo = fail

- the handling on vehicles has been gimped like hell. I shouldn't have to handbrake, then measuredly normal brake all the time to turn a damn corner

- for all the talk about realism, they didnt really make certain elements of shoot outs that real. In SA you'd cap a dude in the head with a shotgun, That dude wasn't getting up. Now in IV sometimes i'll blast someone with a shotgun multiple times then they eventually get up holding their stomach!!!??? the F**K !?. God this has happened so many time its annoying. They should have programmed a kind of random event thing where If you shoot civilians with the handgun SOMETIMEs they'd get up, but most of the time they'd slowly crawl on their stomachs. If you shoot ANYONE in the head, they should die instantly.

- The story isn't paced well and lacks the epic feel SA had. With Cj you start off defending the hood, which is an understandable and fun task for him to do. Then steadily things kick off and the story grows and you eventually end up with the Casino and an airstrip. But from point A protecting the hood, to point Z the end; there are so many plot points and funny characters i.e. The spaced out hippie dude "The truth", Jame's woods as the FBI guy, Catalina.
who could ever forget the mission where you have to set fire to the marajuana then you get high driving the hippie truck?
Or the mission where you've gotta retrieve the jet pack from the underground military bunker? that was some awesome right there!

You get why CJ does what he does, more than you do with NIko. Niko is irritatingly vacuous a lot of the time. He barely asserts any real will throughout the game. I dont see him as that tough. he actually looks quite sad the way he just does stuff for everyone like their little b*tch handyman(btw they could've made a point with this. made him as intense but also as fragile like travis bickle in taxi driver. made you feel Real sorry for nikO).

OK he wants to find that man. But c'mon that's not much of a mission statement. people who'd say "well less is more and maybe they were trying to be more subtle and poignant this time" . to that i say, they failed.

- no jetpack (F*CK realism. i want me some jetpack)

- No F16's

- Meh characters. I liked roman and mallorie, but everyone else seemed so darn one-dimensional. I can't remember the dude but there's the guy you end up killing at the end of SA, who's aspirations of getting out of the hood, ended up making him betray everyone "big smoke" was his name .
Mad dogg and especially OG LOC were funny as hell.

- they've utterly gutted vigilante missions. Man i think about a third of some of my SA game saves was me just doing vigilante missions. On the bike(no longer features) and sometimes in the police car.
Now you have to bring up the missions on a computer which removes the FUn of just rushing down a highway then bam getting the call and speeding the other way. they killed the momentum.
It also removes the kinda crazy taxi on acid bonus thing; where you kill 10 then you get i think money or at least an award. then if you rack up 50 kills in a row you get more stuff. but by then you've got 4 cars filled with psycopaths shootin the hell out of you, speeding on a highway. This was FUN. *Cries again*

- Rampage skulls (that was fun) Cries some more

_ are there parachutes?

-radio stations ain't as funny and the music is repetitive.

The sad thing is i know i've probably missed certain things out. sigh.
rockstar shouldn't claim gta is aiming for more realism (only the graphics are more real) when the game is full of glaringly unrealistic features, like the inexplicably superhuman citizens who can take handgun bullets to the stomach and keep walking, or the utterly rubbish cars that handle like the drivers on drugs. ONly the infernus and the mafia and police cars drive well.

fix your connection.

everyones entitled to there opinions but if over 41 reviewers gave it 10/10, then maybe your opinion may be wrong? those guys know a lot more about scoring games then normal guys like us

Bah, if he cant enjoy the amazing game that is IV, then just more for me too

well i agree somewhat the game is great but a perfect scorer?? thats hype for ya! it reminds me of the dynasty warriors series which has been getting bad reviews for repetitiveness as this is basically the same as previous title with new stuff thrown in. The driving system is terrible (which many games have got bad reviews for alone!) and compared to SA it has tons of features cut out this is more of a pregen than nex gen in the series.. its good dont get me wrong but its a 9.2 and nothing more it doesn't even touch Halo3, MGS4, Ocarina Of Time or any other 98-100% scorers.

This guy hit it right on the head!

I played GTA San adreas and would also give it a near perfect score!

I agree with just about all his points.

This iteration of the series hits Me in all the right places. So Tight !!!

I played SanAndreas for over 800 hours .......... but I have a feeling this new one will NEVER get tired. It offers to a creative player an unlimited experience ...........

The difference in gamers taste is a fascinating reality .

One thing I forgot to mention That I wish they would have fixed by now is the camea following you when you are in a car, It always drops to a low behind the car view, I like to see what is ahead of me a little so like the camera up a bit, but I have to constantly hold the camera in place the entire Time or it falls down! why cant i move it up and have it stay?

Also they dont let you listen to your own music as a station because they want to sell you music now, through ZIT! Those A++Holes!

As a game GTA IV is pretty sweet!, If it was not a GTA Series game, but as the newest installment to the series it was a little dissapointing do to all the small stuff they took out.

When GTA 5 comes out, I will be renting it first, No more preordering for me.

Putting my own opinions aside for a moment--and whether or not I agree with this guy--I just have to say, I'm sick of reviewers coming out and saying, "Gee, am I the only one with any guts to say I didn't like it?"

No! He's not the only one, so stop acting like a freakin' martyr about it and just review the game.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

Otherwise, he has some good points, and some misguided ones. The story is pretty good--maybe not as engaging as I'd like right away--but good.

It seemed, to me, that his problem with the game is what most people love, which is the open world aspect. If I remember correctly, one of the highest rated games before GTA IV was Oblivion. Also an open world game.

to me-the game is a 9.0