I started and finished my Grand Theft Auto experience the other night with GTA 4. I really don't understand how this game is so highly rated...I got annoyed and quit about 3 hours in.
I will say that the developers aimed for black humor and they absolutely succeeded. This is the second funniest game I've ever played (second to Portal). There were points where I couldn't play because I was doubled over from laughing -- usually at the various talk radio stations they included, but sometimes at just the banter between Niko and his cousin Roman. But mostly from the radio stations. The psychic network...oh my God. And that right-wing talk radio parody. I even sat and watched TV for a minute, and saw the most hilarious political advertisement spoof that I've ever seen in my life. Too good.
That's where the game's good points start and end, though. The biggest problem for me has to be the driving. The controls are total shit, unresponsive, and extremely difficult to get used to. Also, the camera blows and is always defaulting to this location where it's impossible to see what's going on ahead of you. Now, I've played driving games before and they didn't have this problem; in fact, driving was pretty easy. Games like F-Zero GX and...well, F-Zero GX is the only driving game I've ever played, but my girlfriend's brother assures me that Midnight Club does this excellently as well. You'd think in a game where half of what you're doing for the entire game is driving, they'd at least get that done right. But they didn't.
That actually brings up another point, and that's how hard it is to do something as simple as drive and not break the law. Simple shit like breaking, turning, and not running red lights is almost impossible, and when I'm just ferrying a guy around (especially on a criminal mission) I really don't want to be attracting attention to myself by breaking traffic laws. But the game wants you to break traffic laws, and makes it next to impossible to not do so.
The combat is also sluggish, and the minigames are annoying and boring. Do I seriously have to take Roman, Michelle, and who the fuck knows how many other people out bowling and dart-throwing and whatever for the rest of the game? Wow, no thanks.
The 'open-world' design in Grand Theft Auto 4 is a total crock too, something that should be immediately apparent to anyone who has played something like, say, Morrowind. With Morrowind, I can explore the landscape, and suddenly and randomly uncover a castle. From there I can embark on a quest to figure out why the fuck it's there, and why there's nobody there / everyone there is a dog / the place is infested with ghosts / who the fuck knows and go on to own the place or whatever. Morrowind is hardly perfect and his its own restrictions in terms of options, but with Grand Theft Auto the only thing going down the city brings is another horde of human-shaped automata whose only purpose is getting run over. Yawn.
I'm willing to grant that 4 might be a bit of a black sheep in the later GTA family (3, Vice City, San Andreas, and 4) and perhaps I should go back a couple years to San Andreas and see if that game is to my taste. But my first foray into the GTA world has certainly not been a good one.
I will say that the developers aimed for black humor and they absolutely succeeded. This is the second funniest game I've ever played (second to Portal). There were points where I couldn't play because I was doubled over from laughing -- usually at the various talk radio stations they included, but sometimes at just the banter between Niko and his cousin Roman. But mostly from the radio stations. The psychic network...oh my God. And that right-wing talk radio parody. I even sat and watched TV for a minute, and saw the most hilarious political advertisement spoof that I've ever seen in my life. Too good.
That's where the game's good points start and end, though. The biggest problem for me has to be the driving. The controls are total shit, unresponsive, and extremely difficult to get used to. Also, the camera blows and is always defaulting to this location where it's impossible to see what's going on ahead of you. Now, I've played driving games before and they didn't have this problem; in fact, driving was pretty easy. Games like F-Zero GX and...well, F-Zero GX is the only driving game I've ever played, but my girlfriend's brother assures me that Midnight Club does this excellently as well. You'd think in a game where half of what you're doing for the entire game is driving, they'd at least get that done right. But they didn't.
That actually brings up another point, and that's how hard it is to do something as simple as drive and not break the law. Simple shit like breaking, turning, and not running red lights is almost impossible, and when I'm just ferrying a guy around (especially on a criminal mission) I really don't want to be attracting attention to myself by breaking traffic laws. But the game wants you to break traffic laws, and makes it next to impossible to not do so.
The combat is also sluggish, and the minigames are annoying and boring. Do I seriously have to take Roman, Michelle, and who the fuck knows how many other people out bowling and dart-throwing and whatever for the rest of the game? Wow, no thanks.
The 'open-world' design in Grand Theft Auto 4 is a total crock too, something that should be immediately apparent to anyone who has played something like, say, Morrowind. With Morrowind, I can explore the landscape, and suddenly and randomly uncover a castle. From there I can embark on a quest to figure out why the fuck it's there, and why there's nobody there / everyone there is a dog / the place is infested with ghosts / who the fuck knows and go on to own the place or whatever. Morrowind is hardly perfect and his its own restrictions in terms of options, but with Grand Theft Auto the only thing going down the city brings is another horde of human-shaped automata whose only purpose is getting run over. Yawn.
I'm willing to grant that 4 might be a bit of a black sheep in the later GTA family (3, Vice City, San Andreas, and 4) and perhaps I should go back a couple years to San Andreas and see if that game is to my taste. But my first foray into the GTA world has certainly not been a good one.