GTA IV First Thoughts

I think I remember that game, it was sort of along the same lines as hexic if I recall... I have been a long time PC gamer, so I even remember such titles as duke nukem (no not the 3rd shooter, the actual original 2d platform game).

One game that got likely as much if not more bad publicity than the GTA series, was the game postal. I don't know if anyone has played that, but I worked for CompUSA at the time postal was released, and the head of the company made the call to yank it from the shelves within 2 days of its release. The fact that you actually got more points for shooting people who begged for their life was the breaking point I think. However that was a top down style game, and Postal 2 is a FPS game. If you can get your hands on postal 2, I suggest trying it (if you like GTA), its not the same kind of game, but its at least as violent, and very "free world" type of wandering around.

Just to give you a sample of what the game is like (and yes it really is this raunchy), you can pour gasoline on someone, light them on fire, then knock their head off with a shovel, and pee on the corpse.

Definitely rated M for mature.

Must.... get..... postal.... 2.....

if you can find it.. im lucky to still have my original disc, it is still a ton of fun to just pop in there for a few minutes from time to time and just cause havok.

Yeah, now you can be turned into a sheep. (World of Warcraft). BIIIG Improvement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_2

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Originally Posted by Lord Orwell

Yeah, now you can be turned into a sheep. (World of Warcraft). BIIIG Improvement.

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You mean "world of wasteoftime"?

I would sooner get a 10 dollar monthly subscription to gametap, where I can play a few 100 games (even if many are old school), versus 10 dollars a month to play one game that is endlessly repetitive point and click.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

I think I remember that game, it was sort of along the same lines as hexic if I recall...

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Hexen, actually.

I recently dug up a copy of Rogue, which is REALLY going back in time. Still an awesome game, though. Few games manage to balance playability like that these days.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

Hexen, actually.

I recently dug up a copy of Rogue, which is REALLY going back in time. Still an awesome game, though. Few games manage to balance playability like that these days.

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yeah you are right, i think hexic is a newer "gem" type game.. probably why that name popped into my head..

i have a game demo of postal 2. Just to give everyone an idea of how sick it is: One of the mob bosses in the game is Gary coleman.

One of my most memorable game bits: You unzip your fly and people start running from you. A female cop shows up. You pee on her while she's holding a gun on you. If you manage to hit her in her mouth she gets sick and starts vomiting everywhere. Now is the perfect time for the shovel decap.

Other parts of note: An early mission is "buy milk". You go to the milk store. If you forget to pay at the counter the guy jumps the counter and beats you to death with a baseball bat.

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Originally Posted by Lord Orwell

One of my most memorable game bits: You unzip your fly and people start running from you. A female cop shows up. You pee in her while she's holding a gun on you. If you manage to hit her in her mouth she gets sick and starts vomiting everywhere. Now is the perfect time for the shovel decap.

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How the hell would someone even come up with a concept like that, let alone find a second person who would agree to pay him to code it into a game?

I mean seriously - how would either of those happen?

yes, although if you read the wiki entry, you can actually play through the game with VERY little violence, and if you are really good, you don't even have to kill anyone.

Similar to GTA style, the game is very "free will" based. So you can go around in a rampage if you want, but it isn't what is required by the game. Just like real life, you can follow the rules, and for the most part you are left alone, break the rules, and you will have lots of people after you.

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Originally Posted by Tom Sawyer

How the hell would someone even come up with a concept like that, let alone find a second person who would agree to pay him to code it into a game?

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I don't know but they sound like my kind of people :cool:

should have been "on" her. and yes violence wasnt necessarily necessary. If you paid for your milk for example, no baseball bat.

http://www.gamershell.com/download_1851.shtml for the demo

http://www.gopostal.com/postal2/screenshots/sickfun.jpg

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Originally Posted by Lord Orwell

If you paid for your milk for example, no baseball bat.

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That just sounds funny!

While we are on the subject of old skool games...
I could never understand why they never continued the Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital series. Did something terrible happen to Bullfrog???

Aaahh, Dungeon Keeper. Now that brings a smile to my face as I sit here and reminisce about happy evenings spent slapping my chicken <sigh>

Yes chicken slapping and imp slapping and bile deamons. What happened to those wonderful creatures??

I think I'll buy GTA4 for my Xbox360 on monday...at first I was determined to wait for a PC version, but..who knows when that'll happen, or IF it'll happen.

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Originally Posted by mrmojorisin

While we are on the subject of old skool games...
I could never understand why they never continued the Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital series. Did something terrible happen to Bullfrog???

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Dread Dragon Droom was the first game I remember from school on an old BBC (well old now, cutting edge at the time).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Dragon_Droom

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Originally Posted by mrmojorisin

While we are on the subject of old skool games...
I could never understand why they never continued the Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital series. Did something terrible happen to Bullfrog???

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maybe I am showing my age a little bit (although I am not that old) but who remembers the bullfrog DOS game syndicate? It was a top down overhead view type game where you were these couple of dudes you had to control and complete missions and what not around the city? That game was a ton of fun...

You haven't lived until you've been eaten by a grue.

don't forget the populous series. And yes there was something that happened to them.

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Originally Posted by www.MobyGames.com

Following its purchase by EA, Bullfrog continued to work in its original offices in Guildford as an EA studio, and continued to display its own Bullfrog logo on the boxes of its games. In 2000, Electronic Arts merged its EA-UK offices, which had been in Langley near Slough, with the Bullfrog offices, into a new facility in Chertsey. Around August of that year the company decided to drop all further production of Bullfrog-branded products, and the former Bullfrog employees were put onto new projects such as the Harry Potter series. The last Bullfrog-branded game was Sim Theme Park (also known as Theme Park World and Theme Park 2), released in 1999.

A few compilations of older games that Bullfrog worked on have been published since, but to all intents and purposes the brand has been dead since the move to Chertsey in 2000.

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Bummer.

Its a sad day for me

I have two questions for people who have GTA IV since I haven't gotten it yet.
1) In GTA: SA, one of the most annoying things was how the AI made turns at intersections. The cars never had to slow down and could just rip through a turn without problem. They also waited right until the last moment to do this, so they essentially made a 90 degree unrealistic turn going at fast speeds. This makes it impossible to tell if they are going to turn and often results in me crashing into them. Has this behavior been modified in GTA IV or not?

2) Cars would spawn when you weren't looking. Example: You are driving down a highway and there are two cars up ahead. You spin the camera behind your car for a moment and then put it back. There are now 4 cars up ahead because the game has spawned 2 cars that weren't there before while you had the camera facing behind the car. Does it still do this?

In Soviet Russia, cars spawn YOU!

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Originally Posted by Arrow_Raider

I have two questions for people who have GTA IV since I haven't gotten it yet.
1) In GTA: SA, one of the most annoying things was how the AI made turns at intersections. The cars never had to slow down and could just rip through a turn without problem. They also waited right until the last moment to do this, so they essentially made a 90 degree unrealistic turn going at fast speeds. This makes it impossible to tell if they are going to turn and often results in me crashing into them. Has this behavior been modified in GTA IV or not?

2) Cars would spawn when you weren't looking. Example: You are driving down a highway and there are two cars up ahead. You spin the camera behind your car for a moment and then put it back. There are now 4 cars up ahead because the game has spawned 2 cars that weren't there before while you had the camera facing behind the car. Does it still do this?

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i hate both of those when i am playing. Especially when there is a tank chasing after me :lol:

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Originally Posted by dclamp

i hate both of those when i am playing. Especially when there is a tank chasing after me :lol:

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You shouldn't be playing it. I am reporting you to your parents.

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Originally Posted by Arrow_Raider

I have two questions for people who have GTA IV since I haven't gotten it yet.
1) In GTA: SA, one of the most annoying things was how the AI made turns at intersections. The cars never had to slow down and could just rip through a turn without problem. They also waited right until the last moment to do this, so they essentially made a 90 degree unrealistic turn going at fast speeds. This makes it impossible to tell if they are going to turn and often results in me crashing into them. Has this behavior been modified in GTA IV or not?

2) Cars would spawn when you weren't looking. Example: You are driving down a highway and there are two cars up ahead. You spin the camera behind your car for a moment and then put it back. There are now 4 cars up ahead because the game has spawned 2 cars that weren't there before while you had the camera facing behind the car. Does it still do this?

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In GTA4, I have never actually seen anything spawn at all. It feels like the environment gets created beyond your line of site, as you go in any given direction, so by the time you get there (regardless of speed) there is no spawning, it just looks normal.

I also have not seen the AI make weird turns. Sometimes in missions when your job is to chase a vehicle and run it down, the vehicle you are chasing is usually a pretty good driver, so you do need some driving skills to catch up with them (fast car helps too) however most of the AI (from what I can tell) drive with the same rules you have. Most traffic doesn't go too fast anyway.

All in all, the improvements on the game engine are outstanding compared to the other versions.

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Originally Posted by visualAd

You shouldn't be playing it. I am reporting you to your parents.

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:ehh: my dad bought if for me :bigyello:

my favorite part of GTA SA is the interactive map menu. helps a lot.

It gets annoying when you have to eat every once in a while. and like every 5 minutes one of my Hoods' are under attack. I always get my hood back. I just land on top of a building and nuke them. :D

There isn't as much the concept of owning property in this game, at least that isn't how it has been so far. Not sure how it ends up. I think it will be more like the regular GTA games, where you get a bunch of save places and garages to park your vehicles in and repair them, but not really like SA in the way the game was layed out.

The map is pretty good in GTA4. You have GPS, so you can plot any point on the map you want, and then the mini in game map will highlight your route in the fastest legal way. Sometimes there are quicker ways by driving through the park or down an alley, but the GPS works really well and makes it a lot easier to get around properly.

Bought GTA IV today...its good, but not amazing. Slightly overrated imo.
Though still a great game.

its all opinion of course, but if you don't consider this an amazing game, then what do you consider one? I didn't really think Halo 3 or Gears of War was all that amazing, but those seem to be the ones people claim to be the "best" games to date.

COD4 is a lot of fun, so long as its multiplayer.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

its all opinion of course, but if you don't consider this an amazing game, then what do you consider one? I didn't really think Halo 3 or Gears of War was all that amazing, but those seem to be the ones people claim to be the "best" games to date.

COD4 is a lot of fun, so long as its multiplayer.

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Good question, I dont really know...It was long since I played a game that I would call amazing :( . I dont own Halo 3 nor Gears of war so I dont know about them...

well what game would you call amazing that is old then?

The only games that come to mind that I personally played, and can really call amazing, were probably from the SNES era.

Zelda a link to the past and super mario world for SNES were/are 2 of my all time favorite console games.

If you take all other GTAs out of the picture then GTA IV is utterly amazing. Once you bring those other GTAs into the picture GTA IV, in my opinion, becomes lack luster and more of the same.

GTA IV has some stunning visuals and great physics but gameplay is what makes a game fun and GTA IV has the exact same gameplay as all of its predecessors including some of the issues that plagued previous versions of GTA.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still enjoying my way through GTA IV but I find myself getting bored, going on a killing spree then playing something else until I feel up to it again.

I was hoping there would be real gameplay innovation in this game but it seems like they stuck to the tired and old formula and slapped some better visuals on it. Why was functionality that made San Andreas a deeper game not included in GTA IV (property ownership, fitness, and even the amount of cars and weapons)? Where are the gameplay enhancements?

You didn't ask me but I gave my opinion to you anyway because I'm a typical American!

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Originally Posted by kleinma

well what game would you call amazing that is old then?

The only games that come to mind that I personally played, and can really call amazing, were probably from the SNES era.

Zelda a link to the past and super mario world for SNES were/are 2 of my all time favorite console games.

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Aaah those two games are the best there is. Funny you should think that too.
Games that I've really enjoyed..lets see...Diablo 2, System Shock 2, Half-Life, Half-Life 2 (not opposing force :sick: ), The zelda series..Golden Sun.

The metroid series :eek:
"Skate" for Xbox360 and PS3 is amazing aswell...thats probably the latest game that I've really enjoyed.

I've probably forgotten a whole bunch:blush:

Edit: I might also add that I suspect that I like so many old games not only because they where good, but more because of the nostalgia...so perhaps I'm being unfair to new games. :)
Edit 2: How can I forget Doom and GTA 1.

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Originally Posted by kasracer

If you take all other GTAs out of the picture then GTA IV is utterly amazing. Once you bring those other GTAs into the picture GTA IV, in my opinion, becomes lack luster and more of the same.

GTA IV has some stunning visuals and great physics but gameplay is what makes a game fun and GTA IV has the exact same gameplay as all of its predecessors including some of the issues that plagued previous versions of GTA.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still enjoying my way through GTA IV but I find myself getting bored, going on a killing spree then playing something else until I feel up to it again.

I was hoping there would be real gameplay innovation in this game but it seems like they stuck to the tired and old formula and slapped some better visuals on it. Why was functionality that made San Andreas a deeper game not included in GTA IV (property ownership, fitness, and even the amount of cars and weapons)? Where are the gameplay enhancements?

You didn't ask me but I gave my opinion to you anyway because I'm a typical American!

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Well you have to take a few things into account.

If you look at the top 20 console game list on wikipedia, the older GTA games have 3 of the 20 spots.

So you have to consider the fact that these guys likely see no reason to mess with success. Any major drastic change to the game play could hurt the game not help it. Maybe you haven't gotten far enough to fully use it, but the new fighting system is worlds better than the previous games. You can use a duck and cover system to hide behind almost anything that will shield you from bullets, and you can move around between cover spots similar to gears of war. It does take a bit of getting used to, especially if you are used to the previous games, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes a lot of fun (especially when you blindly shoot your gun from under cover).