Tbh, i'm not that impressed - GTA IV

weeder

its a decent game but not a 10/10 game

DarkJager

If GTA 4 isn't a 10/10 game, I don't know what is. I find it amusing that so many people are trying to pick holes in it and it seems to be because of the hype its recieved. Yes, the graphics are not the best at times but thats already a losing arguement. What happened to the old days of enjoying a game simply for the entertainment it provided you and not for shiny graphics?? Having only played 10 hours so far and still only at the start of the story, I feel its already the best gaming purchase I've made since the last one (and yes that includes COD4 )

TheGreatOne

What a typically annoying thread title, which was inevitable as some people are so quick to jump to conclusions on here it's ridiculous and expect way too much.

I could not be more impressed to be perfectly honest, I've never experienced anything even close to this before on any gaming platform, ever!

I haven't actually played more than 5 hours up to this point because I'm stuck down the country for the week, but there's so much I love about it already in this short time.

The City itself is so alive it's actually creepy, it's as if there's a real living world inside my TV screen that I can jump in and out of as I please and just cause mayhem and get away with it.

I love the story so far, I know its the typical GTA rags to riches tale but why change a winning formula that's worked so well in the past. The character's so far are very cool, voice acting is top drawer as usual and of course the in-game sound is amazing with Dolby surround. I actually like the soundtrack so far, it's definitely growing on me, and as always the radio shows are bloody entertaining.

The mobile phone is an absolute genius idea, so many uses and could not be easier to operate.

Only played a wee bit of MP, but have to say it was probably the most fun I've had online since Battlefield II, this is where I think the real value in the game will be realised.

I just can't wait to open up more map's, I'm dying to get to Liberty City's version of Times Square and go comanche bones on the general publics ass.

miju

basquille wrote: »

Was I playing you in multiplayer last night miju? Was playing someone called kdac (who I thought might be KdjaC).

quite possibly , I remember playing with kdac alright and you might have been the fooker who shot me out of the sky with an RPG

Lord Nikon

TheGreatOne wrote: »

What a typically annoying thread title, which was inevitable as some people are so quick to jump to conclusions on here it's ridiculous and expect way too much.

What do you mean, "annoying thread title", it says what it means.

I'm not jumping to any conclusions, i have been right about the graphics being crap, and many have agreed. Jumping to conclusions would say that I think the graphics are ****e, yet have not played the game, which is untrue.

Tbh, i do expect some bang for my buck. Not all games should be based soley on graphics, but come on, this is PS3/360 graphics, not Sega Megadrive.

Why have a high-end machine at all, if it's not delivering hi-def graphics?

Desent gameplay can be played on any console or pc......GTA IV should have both.

DirkVoodoo

Personally, I like GTA a lot but am not in the 10/10 camp either. I have tried to remain impatial in the following, but after my game crashing on me during a heated pursuit, I am slightly miffed!

Anyway, I remember picking up GTA3 on launch day and being blown away. GTA in 3D, wow! And a live, breathing metropolois as your playground. I remember the firt time I saw the day-night transition and the daytime commuters were replaced by pimps and hookers on dodgy street corners at night. Cool. Next was the story, which lay the foundation for the GTA formula we now know. Start out small and gradually work your way from the bottom of a criminal group until a moment of treachery on someones part moves you to the bottom of another gang.

Then Vice city came along, a great nostalgia game that was an 80s mash-up of miami vice/scarface and a couple of others. In came new gameplay mechanics, and more innovations and tweaks that made you wonder how you played GTA3 without them. San andreas repeated this again: bigger, better but still familiar. Its evolution has reminded me of the football manager series. Every so often a big change comes along that will define the series for a few years. After that we get games offering incremental improvement that make it difficult to imagine playing the preceding entry. That may be harsh, as GTA's improvements are slightly bigger than FM's, but you get my drift.

So GTA4, to me, is just another incremental improvement in the series. Bigger than 3 to vice city and vice city to san andreas perhaps, but i dont think its as big a leap as GTA2 to GTA3. So much of it is familiar, especially the missions and story. Technically, with multiplayer and creating a realistic city its big, but the missions are still very much the same. And the story, while Nico is a more likeable and human protagonist, is the same tale of crime and betrayal sprinkled with humor from some interesting characters.

I would have given it 9.5/10. Like Halo3 or half-life 2 its the best of the series and an improvement over its predecessor, but it doesnt take the series in any bold new directions.

Patricide

Ok, to anyone here who thinks this game is 10/10, your wrong. This game is far from perfect, if it was there wouldnt be so many opinions to the contrary.

Now onto my rant, got my copy of the game earlier.


THIS GAME FEELS LIKE THE BASTARD CHILD OF THE GETAWAY AND VICE CITY.

Gta has never been about rock solid simulation it was about fun breaking laws, letting off steam and basicly just doing stuff you would never do in real life. The car handling is GOD awefull, it might be realistic but its taken on this new found realisim and thrown the fun side to the wind.

The layout of the city is a pain too, id pay to see someone know where the hell they were going without the map. No landmarks to realise where your going, the whole city feels the same.

Also the missions havent been updated one bit its just go here drive, shoot and the a.i. is still reminisent of goldeneye, shoot go behind corner wait for bad guys to appear and shoot some more. Now i know rockstar have made some major additions to the game with gfx, sound and especially the physics(there friggen sweet) but i kinda expected them to fix the already broken bits before they started messing with things that were already perfect.

Also the songs on the radio are mleh to say the least, by far the worst soundtrack since gta2.

Thats my rant for now, hopefully as i play things will improve....hopefully.

Royale with Cheese

Would agree that the 10/10 reviews were going overboard. I think the graphics look fine considering the size of the game area and the amount of things needed to load on screen. It's not fair at all to expect it to look like a racing game or cod4.

However I've come across plenty of rendering problems, crashing into invisible objects that appear after you've wrecked your car on them. Exact same things that happened in the previous gta's. Draw distance for sky scrapers etc. is excellent, but for detail it's rubbish. As in if you're flying in the helicopter things will look like they're still miles away until you hover right over them.

Graphics aside, it just feels like an updated version of the ps2 era gta's. Missions are all too familiar, game engine feels quite similar. I've even noticed the same problem occuring, where once you're driving one particular car, millions more of the same type will spawn around you.

It's definitely fun, they've improved many of the little things about the game, but the core game remains the same (although multiplayer is a very welcome addition). It's not revolutionary like nearly all the reviews made out. It's a very good game, and probably will be game of the year, but it's not done enough to warrant the best game of the past 10 years tag.

Rb

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

Graphics aside, it just feels like an updated version of the ps2 era gta's. Missions are all too familiar, game engine feels quite similar. I've even noticed the same problem occuring, where once you're driving one particular car, millions more of the same type will spawn around you.

Yeah, even though I only played it for about 3 hours, I couldn't help but feel that I may aswell have been playing San Andreas on the PS2.

There are a few cool new things but I just didn't find it as "fun" as when I first place VC/SA etc. Perhaps it was because I was skeptical as to whether it would live up to the hype surrounding it and therefore more critical of it, but regardless I certainly wasn't overwhelmed/amazed by it like I was when I first loaded up COD4.

orestes

Call me nuts, but I still think Vice City is the best of the series

miju

orestes wrote: »

Call me nuts, but I still think Vice City is the best of the series

your nuts, San Andreas is by far the best release of the series so far including GTA 4 (am sad to have to say that :mad:)

Ciaran500

neuromancer wrote: »

I'm not jumping to any conclusions, i have been right about the graphics being crap, and many have agreed. Jumping to conclusions would say that I think the graphics are ****e, yet have not played the game, which is untrue.

Tbh, i do expect some bang for my buck. Not all games should be based soley on graphics, but come on, this is PS3/360 graphics, not Sega Megadrive.

Why have a high-end machine at all, if it's not delivering hi-def graphics?

Desent gameplay can be played on any console or pc......GTA IV should have both.

So what do you think R* should of dropped from the game just to get it looking better?

Patricide wrote: »

Ok, to anyone here who thinks this game is 10/10, your wrong. This game is far from perfect, if it was there wouldnt be so many opinions to the contrary.

Opinions aren't wrong no matter how many people disagree with them :rolleyes:

Plug

orestes wrote: »

Call me nuts, but I still think Vice City is the best of the series

+1

Star Lord

I gotta be honest, I've not been this blown away by a game since first running around as young Link in OOT all those years ago!

Basq

orestes wrote: »

Call me nuts, but I still think Vice City is the best of the series

Agree with that also!

Vegeta

Wertz wrote: »

Not got my copy yet but read through this thread with interest...
I have a question for those with display brightness issues....what type of TV are you playing on? Some HD LCDs, especially older and/or cheaper models have problems at the darker end of the colour scale, especially doing blacks and dark greys...on some sets, it can be impossible to distiguish several shades of dark grey and black from one another.
I've noticed some people saying that they have no problems are playing on CRT.
Anyone playing on plasma with problems?

32" Panasonic LCD over HDMI, not old or cheap

Big_Mac

Vegeta wrote: »

32" Panasonic LCD, not old or cheap

42' Samsung Plasma screen, running on HD. Only 6 months old I'd say. Certainly not cheap either

Vegeta

Ciaran500 wrote: »

So what do you think R* should of dropped from the game just to get it looking better?

The shockingly poor lighting effects perhaps

Big_Mac

basquille wrote: »

Agree with that also!

If you're going for Nostalgia and the soundtrack, then yeah it has to be VC. I loved it. One of the reasons I liked scarface so much, I thought they were pretty similar. Great games 'dyou no?'

unklerosco

I agree on Vice City being the best so far...

As for 4, picked it up last night for the 360... From what i've played its not a 10/10 for me. Only thing that miffs me is that I find the streets ain't too populated, from what i've read the PS3 version has a higher count due to the fact it can handle it n the install etc.. I find that at times the city does be empty...

Ciaran500

unklerosco wrote: »

As for 4, picked it up last night for the 360... From what i've played its not a 10/10 for me. Only thing that miffs me is that I find the streets ain't too populated, from what i've read the PS3 version has a higher count due to the fact it can handle it n the install etc.. I find that at times the city does be empty...

Have both of them and the traffic/pedestrian densitys are exactly the same, it gets alot busier around rush hour. Maybe you were just playing at the wrong time of the day.

SoulRock

charlie mchugh wrote: »

+1

You have just described everything, to a T, that is annoying me about Grand Theft Auto. I thought my sound system was borked because car noises were so loud, yet dialogue is so low.

it's not the graphics per se (I can deal with jaggies and resolution issues), but it is the colour pallet that is doing my head in. I have been tweaking in-game and tv settings all day, and yet it still looks all wrong. I hate that whole orangey hue that seems so prevalent during the day time, or how washed out and ghost like the screen looks when its overcast. This has never been an issue for me in previous GTAs.

i Totally agree the Orangey hue off everything is doing my head in also, i've just played a few hours and have'nt unlocked any other areas so hopefully thats just the style of the starting area, and the whole blur effect when mixed with the colour pallete is VERY Distracting..
drivings a bit tough at first but its one of those things you get used to, except the Camera angles Suck Big time.,.
but i do miss those big Highway/Countryside Police Chases from San Andreas.. the big open roads and countrysides where Excelent fun especially on a dirtbike!!
overall ill reserve judgement till i've played a bit more of the game
Peace

r3nu4l

Big_Mac wrote: »

42' Samsung Plasma screen, running on HD. Only 6 months old I'd say. Certainly not cheap either

Is that the LXD70 or LXD700? I have the LXD70 and a PS3 but haven't got the game. Reading this thread is making me want to play it right now, just to see what all the fuss is about!

Charlie

OK, I thought I should post an update on my situation.

I feel like I am starting to turn a corner with the game now. I finally managed to get the display of the game to where I roughly want it to be, I don't think there is much point in posting the settings as everyone's HD setup can be so different, but I would say try reducing saturation by a good bit.

With the display sorted, I am finally starting to notice all the small details (I think the initial poor visuals were distracting me) and they really do create a seemless environment to play in. Further, I have really gotten use to the combat system, and am loving it, have had some great shoot offs. I also love the fact that if you aim a gun a a driver they will exit their car and flee, whilst everyone else panics, really creates a real world enviornment.

I always knew the game had all of the above in it, but the fcuking around with the visual settings really stalled this process. By the looks of this and other forums, alot of people have had this difficulty, and I think Rockstar did themselves a great disservice by setting the visual settings to the default levels that they did.

Branoic

I find the colour scheme and the graphics stunning, and the Euphoria engine is an absolute revelation, the way Niko moves if he's hit by a car, gripping on to the bonnet etc. I shot a person in one of the restaurants last night and they stumbled around clutching their stomach, placed their hand on a table, and then on the back of the seat. That type of subtle world interaction is amazing.

I hate when people say "This game is not a 10/10 - it's far from perfect!" Of course its far from perfect - you're never going to *get* a perfect game. Every game would always be scored 9, or 9.5 or whatever, and you'd never get any 10s, so what would be the point of having a 10 point scale? Indeed, reading most of the scoring polices of the various review sites, you'll see they don't consider a 10/10 game to be perfect, but something outstanding and exceptional.

The game can have a couple of flaws and still get a 10 due to all the other things it does remarkably well.

NotorietyH

I think the game really comes into it's own when you get to the "A lesson in deconstuction" mission, it's brilliant fun. Every GTA starts off slow and you kinda wonder what all the fuss was about, it's only after a good few hours playing, when the game really kicks in and you become totally absorbed in it.

silvine

I played it for the first time a few hours last night. Personally I like the gritty graphics and the hue effect - I was never a big fan of the cartoon style of the previous games.

I spent the first few minutes running over pedestrians before pulling in to start a mission. The camera zoomed in onto Nico and my car. The front was all manged and there was blood dripping onto the ground. Now that is the attention to detail I like.

Nico seems like a good character too. I found myself laughing out loud at a few of things he was saying to his cousin, "**** you", "you fat ****" etc

I also played the multiplayer. I'm less sure about that but then again didn't know what I was doing. Although there was one satisfying moment where I walked up to player sitting in a car pulled a gun, shot him in the face, sending glass and blood everywhere and then and ran off. Oh the realism!

0ubliette

unklerosco wrote: »

I agree on Vice City being the best so far...

As for 4, picked it up last night for the 360... From what i've played its not a 10/10 for me. Only thing that miffs me is that I find the streets ain't too populated, from what i've read the PS3 version has a higher count due to the fact it can handle it n the install etc.. I find that at times the city does be empty...

No way. GTA3 was always the best one until GTA4. Vice city just had such a boring map, it was so flat and dull. The best thing about it was the soundtrack and 80's vibe. San andreas was muck, completely unlikeable characters, storyline, and too much faux rpg elements (the gym and all that ****e), and an overlarge, confusing sprawl of a map.
GTA4 is classic gta, its not the revolution R* promised, as in its STILL not as big a leap as the leap from 2d to 3d was in gta3. But its as big a leap as possible until someone invents virtual reality goggles. And not the virtual boy.

Zombrex

Seemingly there are a large number of people on the Introweb who are getting headaches and sore eyes from the Depth of Field effect, myself being one of them.

The problem is that when driving you naturally look ahead to where you are driving to, not at the car itself. But because of the DoF and LoD (level of detail) algorithms Rockstar are using to mask the low textures in the distance they blur the f**k out of anything about 100 meters a head of you. The car is in focus, but the place you are driving to isn't.

What happens with some people is their eyes are trying to focus on this out of focus picture. No matter what their eyes do your brain still sees an out of focus in the distance. Your brain doesn't realise that it is actually the PS3/Xbox that is making it out of focus, it isn't your eyes.

Patricide

orestes wrote: »

Call me nuts, but I still think Vice City is the best of the series

+2