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Flogger23m
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2009
- Messages
- 14,373
Recently decided to give GTA IV a try after having it for a few years. It got a lot of high reviews so I figured I would play it. I had no idea just how bad of a game it is in every way possible. Can someone explain to me why people give this game/series such positive reviews? It is down right broken in most areas. Quality is low throughout and there is absolutely nothing fun or well done in the game. After managing to get it to run (a pain in itself) I found the following shortcomings:
- Heavy DRM. Three layers, two client programs. I assume three if you use Steam.
- Horrible driving mechanics. If you drive over ~20 MPH and try to turn your car will skid around in circles. I assume the developers never drove a car before...
- No functional or practical fast travel. You can flag a taxi, but when you attempt to enter you just pull the guy out and steal it. Making the whole flagging mechanic pointless. There is a train, but driving to a station (and avoiding cops) takes just as long as driving to your destination.
- No save system. Game partially saves occasionally, otherwise you have to spend 20-40 minutes going to a safe house to save your game.
- Trigger happy cops. With such poor driving mechanics you often bump into police cars. Or another car pushes you into one. As much as scratching the pain results in 20 officers swarming and shooting at you.
- Trigger happy cops when walking. Accidentally rub shoulders with a cop? Repeat of above.
- 1/5th of the cars on the road are police. See above two points. Enjoy waiting around for all cops to leave so you can steal a car.
- Some of the worst shooting and fighting mechanics in history.
- No pausing of cutscenes. No replaying of cutscenes. No save system means if you missed one, prepare to replay 1-2 hours of gameplay if you want to see a cutscene that you missed.
- No real story. Some background is given, but otherwise it is just dumb characters swearing and rambling about meaningless stuff that adds up to nothing.
- Terrible weapon/inventory management system. Actually, there isn't one.
- 4-5 cars can be chasing you, dumping bullets into your car. You'll drive past cops and they'll do nothing. But then you'll accidentally rub against a police car. 20 cops spawn and chase you around ignoring your attackers.
- Missions are really poorly done. A good portion of them are you moving you a yellow arrow, the screen fading to black, then reappearing outside. If there is more to the mission it tends to be poorly done. Move here, avoid cops, follow him, bumped into a cop, got too far from target trying to evade cops. Mission failed.
- No place to buy/store cars.
- Whenever the game does choose to "save" and you want to revert to it, you'll find that the game did not actually save everything. Your location is reset, as is your money, weapons, and car.
- Slow controls. What you enter the map? Watch the screen fade to black, but the game continues going for a few seconds while you loose control... and your character may accidentally run or crash into a cop. Exit the menu, evade cops...
- Odd default control layout.
- Really bad graphics. They're more similar to a PS2 than a PS3, and absolutely terrible for a game released in 2008. Other games from the era like Far Cry 2 and Crysis simply blow the game away graphically.
- No point in using silent weapons like a baseball bat. Because the cops will detect you if you hit someone with it. Even if you are alone in a building with only your victim.
- No real depth to anything.
Just some things off the top of my head. After finally getting the game to work (required some work around that modders figured out) and installing a mod to disable one of the clients (ICEnhancer) I found out how terrible the game was. But I really was just amazed at how bad it was. So much so that I continued to play it just to see how bad it can get. It continues to amaze me at how poorly implemented just about everything is. At about ~8 hours in I think I am done with the game because I don't think there is much else to see.
So I ask those that enjoyed this game, what was it that you liked about it? If you managed to read the whole post, then I applaud your attention span.
- Heavy DRM. Three layers, two client programs. I assume three if you use Steam.
- Horrible driving mechanics. If you drive over ~20 MPH and try to turn your car will skid around in circles. I assume the developers never drove a car before...
- No functional or practical fast travel. You can flag a taxi, but when you attempt to enter you just pull the guy out and steal it. Making the whole flagging mechanic pointless. There is a train, but driving to a station (and avoiding cops) takes just as long as driving to your destination.
- No save system. Game partially saves occasionally, otherwise you have to spend 20-40 minutes going to a safe house to save your game.
- Trigger happy cops. With such poor driving mechanics you often bump into police cars. Or another car pushes you into one. As much as scratching the pain results in 20 officers swarming and shooting at you.
- Trigger happy cops when walking. Accidentally rub shoulders with a cop? Repeat of above.
- 1/5th of the cars on the road are police. See above two points. Enjoy waiting around for all cops to leave so you can steal a car.
- Some of the worst shooting and fighting mechanics in history.
- No pausing of cutscenes. No replaying of cutscenes. No save system means if you missed one, prepare to replay 1-2 hours of gameplay if you want to see a cutscene that you missed.
- No real story. Some background is given, but otherwise it is just dumb characters swearing and rambling about meaningless stuff that adds up to nothing.
- Terrible weapon/inventory management system. Actually, there isn't one.
- 4-5 cars can be chasing you, dumping bullets into your car. You'll drive past cops and they'll do nothing. But then you'll accidentally rub against a police car. 20 cops spawn and chase you around ignoring your attackers.
- Missions are really poorly done. A good portion of them are you moving you a yellow arrow, the screen fading to black, then reappearing outside. If there is more to the mission it tends to be poorly done. Move here, avoid cops, follow him, bumped into a cop, got too far from target trying to evade cops. Mission failed.
- No place to buy/store cars.
- Whenever the game does choose to "save" and you want to revert to it, you'll find that the game did not actually save everything. Your location is reset, as is your money, weapons, and car.
- Slow controls. What you enter the map? Watch the screen fade to black, but the game continues going for a few seconds while you loose control... and your character may accidentally run or crash into a cop. Exit the menu, evade cops...
- Odd default control layout.
- Really bad graphics. They're more similar to a PS2 than a PS3, and absolutely terrible for a game released in 2008. Other games from the era like Far Cry 2 and Crysis simply blow the game away graphically.
- No point in using silent weapons like a baseball bat. Because the cops will detect you if you hit someone with it. Even if you are alone in a building with only your victim.
- No real depth to anything.
Just some things off the top of my head. After finally getting the game to work (required some work around that modders figured out) and installing a mod to disable one of the clients (ICEnhancer) I found out how terrible the game was. But I really was just amazed at how bad it was. So much so that I continued to play it just to see how bad it can get. It continues to amaze me at how poorly implemented just about everything is. At about ~8 hours in I think I am done with the game because I don't think there is much else to see.
So I ask those that enjoyed this game, what was it that you liked about it? If you managed to read the whole post, then I applaud your attention span.
