GTA IV First Thoughts

* might be spoiler alert*



I haven't finished the game yet, The last mission I did was the boat (picked revenge over money) so I am assuming I am really close.

One thing that sucks is I can't call dwayne up now (get his VM), and he is the only friend who's like level is under 80% (its 75%) so I am thinking I won't unlock the achievment to have all 5 friends like me more than 80% when I complete the game.

If I picked playbox instead of dwayne, would playboy have been my friend?

The choice missions I can think of off the top of my head:

1) the rooftop guy early in the game you could kill or let live
2) kill playboy x versus dwayne
3) the guy they bring to the airport in the van for you near the end of the game you can kill or let live
4) the money versus revenge mission at the end

I think there may be one other, but I can't remember right now.

I wanna no what happens if you kill your first girlfirend as she is part of the story. My mate said he killed her on their first date(bad driver) but he hasnt played since.

Anyone know??

I think the game will force you to load from a save point if you kill any characters that are important to the story.

Playboy gives you 20,000 and is pretty annoyed when you call him aparently - can't believe you did it.

For Dwayne I've found he likes the restaurant at the top right of the middle island best and each contact you've just got to catch them at the right time for them to pickup. Finally got all mine over 90% but it took ages!

That could be cool (taking out the 1st girlfriend) - she becomes part of the story, so that might remove about 6 missions doing that but I'm not sure.

ohh yeah they were on here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV - shows some info of the alternate missions...

They make a big deal out of several things in the game like "decision making" and "shimmying along horizontal ledges". They went to all that trouble to write shimmying code and mocap and all that and you get to use it ONCE in the whole game and that's during the tutorial about how to shimmy. What the hell is the point of that? Maybe it features much in the multiplayer?? Doubtful.

And yeah, there's maybe 5 decisions to make in the whole game. Hardly worth the effort of designing it that way. Weird.

The only useful "Friend Special" I have seen is the one from Patrick McReary. All the others are basically useless. Patrick's one is pretty decent so it makes up for the rest.

I use jacob all the time to re-up on ammo and guns before a mission. I find that pretty useful other than the fact that he doesn't carry a few types of ammo (like the better pistol, and the rocket launcher)

I also hate the fact that if you use all your rockets, you have to pay another 15K just to buy the launcher again.


I agree with u wossy, that they should have made at least 50% of the missions have 2 outcomes, even if they all tie into the same end result in the long run. Makes the game more fun and increases replayability. The game takes long enough to complete as it is, I want to feel like im getting something good for playing it through a second time.

I'm on XBL in a minute if anyone wants a game.

I won't be on until about 7:30 EDT. Working till 5, then mowing the lawn.. fun...

wossname's and kleinma's comments (posts #326-327) are exactly how I feel about the game, especially kleinma's comments about making 50% of the game decision based. I was on, since this was a new GTA, that things would be vastly improved.

Ive got alot of uni things going on this week, but it all ends for the summer on THURSDAY (:eek:), then i'll be able to play on XBL more often.

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Originally Posted by kregg

wossname's and kleinma's comments (posts #326-327) are exactly how I feel about the game, especially kleinma's comments about making 50% of the game decision based. I was on, since this was a new GTA, that things would be vastly improved.

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well you have to remember that this is the FIRST GEN of the NEXT GEN of these games.

Even though you could argue that they learned a lot between GTA3 and GTA:SA, much was back to the drawing board for this game, and I am sure that consumed a lot of time.

So I feel good that Rockstar will leverage the game engine and the success of GTA4 into at least 1 more GTA game, and I would expect to see it within 2 years on store shelves. Hopefully they will have more time to put into enhanced game play elements since much of the game design and engine will simply be from existing code.

In the mean time, I guess we can hope that maybe the XBL exclusive content coming later this summer will have some decision making plot lines.

I'm sorry, but given a time frame for any generation of consoles, I can say it is the "first generation of next generation consoles". Simply put, it's another generation of consoles. Or better put; the seventh generation consoles.

Besides that, I pretty much get your point and agree with you, although it was a shame that I expected so much from IV that I feel like it couldn't deliver. I just hope they really do improve the next GTA.

I just meant it was the first time they were making a GTA game for an HD console, and many things had to be redone engine wise and game wise to get this thing out the door. The development time frames in between GTA3 and GTA:VC and GTA:SA were much smaller windows, because there is less development involved. I could see the exact thing happening with whatever GTA game comes next to the PS3 and 360. Since we aren't getting new consoles from Sony or MS any time soon, I am sure we will see another GTA game, even if its not called GTA5.

People with framerate issues, what kind of display are you using? I was thinking that it probably plays mostly smooth on a regular tv but hi-def requires more processing power from the video card.

BTW: (A little to the previous topic of the thread...) There another decision to kill Dwayne's old girlfriend. (Just as you start his missions) I let the girlfriend live, though I doubt it makes ANY difference in the game.

Also:

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Originally Posted by Lord Orwell

People with framerate issues, what kind of display are you using? I was thinking that it probably plays mostly smooth on a regular tv but hi-def requires more processing power from the video card.

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I have never experienced framerate issues except for on Gears of War, though that was because of a scratched disc. In GTA IV my framerate is always good and I'm running on 1080i.

I call it AHD. (Almost HiDef :afrog: )

That's another one who aparently comes back as an extra character later in the game too for 1 or 2 side missions. There's 14 total if you let everyone live / make different decisions, or I think it was 11 if you go all Tony Blair/George Bush on everyone's ass and play a "kill everyone there" game.

Im wondering: I seem to have completed the 'Liberty City Newspaper' stories ages ago(*SPOILER* The ones where u find out about Michelle being evil). They then said they would find the person i am looking for...Its been ages and they haven't come back to me. Will they ever?

Yes.

... but you've a ton of missions to go through first, the last boss you work for knows the same U.L.Paper contact and between them they get you the guy you're after, got a while to go et though buddy I'm afraid.

I think the story's a little strange like that, sure someone else mentioned the same "I have no other choice to kill, I need the money", "I'm just doing this for the money", "I need money for me and Roman", "I'm after someone for revenge"... eh :ehh:

Cool thanks.
Im quite a bit further than that now but i was starting to get worried that they would never call. Evil.

Thanks

Last nights racing exploits...

I haven't laughed so hard in weeks, I was in a 10 player Trucks-only race at the Airport. I chose the black military truck and at least half of the other guys all had Ice-Cream vans. There's something highly amusing about racing vehicles that barely reach 50mph around an airport, it turned into a huge dodgem fest.

After 5 laps (of 6) I was about leading the field by about 60 seconds!. Then I noticed 3 guys (2 ice-cream vans and a police truck who were all 3 laps behind) all crammed into the narrow exit in the wall. They were clearly attempting to prevent me winning the race. After ramming the 3 trucks about 10 times I managed to sneak through and sailed home to victory.

Comedy.

Anyway, I have noticed that framerates do drop a lot in multiplayer games. Maybe its due to my wifi connection or maybe its just all the chaos, who knows. During a crooks and cops game last night I reckon the FPS dropped to 15 or so. Pretty distracting when your trying to run over pedestrians.

You won against ice cream trucks??? :eek: :D

[brucie]That's how you roll? Yeah - that's awesome - you are a winner, genetically different Wossy, man I'm pumped just from hearing that[/brucie]

Seriously that does sound a bloody good laugh, one of these days I'll get online

The lack of things to buy is starting to get annoying now. All he talks about is getting his money, and for what?!

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Originally Posted by wossname

Pretty distracting when your trying to run over pedestrians.

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For a moment there I thought we were talking about real life experiences... :(

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Originally Posted by Lord Orwell

People with framerate issues, what kind of display are you using? I was thinking that it probably plays mostly smooth on a regular tv but hi-def requires more processing power from the video card.

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Im using one of them regular TV's :(
I've also tried connecting it to my computers LCD monitor, and I think that the framerate got even worse.

It's not exactly bad on a normal TV, but it's just a bit better on HDTV.

Really, I think HDTV is useless now. Wait a couple of more years when the majority of content is HD (Especially in the UK). SDTV looks like crap on HDTV.

Well, at the end of July this year, DSTV (our local satellite television provider) will be broadcasting in HD. Even though it will start by being 720p for most channels, they will increase support to 1080p as time goes by. (Figures, eh?)

I am pretty sure seeing 1080p through any broadcast is pretty far off. The picture quality over 1080i or 720p just does not justify doubling the bandwidth to serve the stream. We likely need to see some advances in compression first. Possibly more powerful set top boxes for signal decoding.

I have a 50" 1080i LCD TV, and while I have seen some frame rate drops, it hardly took away from the game in any way, and didn't make anything less playable.

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Originally Posted by kleinma

I have a 50" 1080i LCD TV

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Thats not fair!

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Originally Posted by kleinma

I have a 50" 1080i LCD TV...

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Well, I have a 12" portable TV. So neh! to you.

does a wall-projector count? Only does 1280x960 but i can make a 8 foot screen in daylight with it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kleinma

I have a 50" 1080i LCD TV, and while I have seen some frame rate drops, it hardly took away from the game in any way, and didn't make anything less playable.

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That is true. If I switch the XBox to 1080i On my 37" I only notice a difference in framerates with the cut-scenes. You can see the framerate drops, but it's really not noticeable by someone who does not know what framerate is... :rolleyes: (Commonly referred to as cousins, aunts, uncles and mothers)

Have rockstar made any other good games?
Theres that one where your in school i think, never played it???
And that State of emergency one was poor!!

Aparently so :eek: - they did Max Payne, I didn't know that!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockstar_Games

They are quite lucky to have GTA by the looks of things!

My mate just asked me which was better out of SA and GTA4 and I had a hard time deciding...

GTA SA was equally good as GTA4 imho.

Comparison...

SA / GTA4

Graphics
Poor / Superb

Single Player Gameplay
Superb / Good

Multi Player Gameplay
Non-existant / Superb

Storyline (depth, complexity and general quality)
Superb / Lacking

Range of random activities
Superb / Good

Range of drivable vehicle types
SA: Cars, bikes, trucks, helicopters, boats,planes (propellor, jet and hover), trains, monster trucks, jet packs, hovercraft,
GTA4: Cars, bikes, trucks, helicopters, boats.

For me I think GTA SA's storyline just clinches it for me.

GTA4 has a lacking Storyline?? GTA4 is the only GTA I've actually managed to play and fully understand (not to mention want to complete) all of the missions.

Nothing else motivated me to continue in other GTAs should I fail a mission.

Yeah I think GTA4's storyline isnt that great...he comes to america and does all this criminal stuff even though it seems he doesnt want too, then he nags on his cousin for gambling..while he's out killing! "I need the money"<--- ever thought of getting a real job Niko?

Mah meh...bleh...

Yer, i think we can all agree the story line lets the game down!.
Something else i realised that is great about San Andreas that is missing in Liberty City, open land to just drive about. SA, had loads of desert and woodlands that you could have some great police chases and what not...

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Originally Posted by mrmojorisin

Yer, i think we can all agree the story line lets the game down!.
Something else i realised that is great about San Andreas that is missing in Liberty City, open land to just drive about. SA, had loads of desert and woodlands that you could have some great police chases and what not...

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Yeah thats what I'm missing aswell...some open areas to drive as fast as you can, then take a quick turn out into the field..wooooh:afrog: