That was a great review zen, thanks for posting the link to it in my locked thread. I can see my opinions of the game differ greatly from yours, but i'm a GTA fan your not, as you posted in the review. This was one of the only games i have been looking forward to this generation and i felt let down, its not the GTA i love and thats a big problem for me.

But i'm also not a fan of RE or SMG or OoT, as my opinions of my time playing SMg are not very high, But thanks for beaing Honest in your review.

What were your complaints Griffin?  Mine were mostly the lack of humor, odd vehicle controls (although some people love them), and that the cover system is really really awkward indoors. 

This is what i had posted in the other thread.

"Does anyone else fell that GTA4 has not lived up to the hype, it feels like an updated GTA3, and does not feel as good as GTA:VC or GTA:SA.  The story was OK after i thought about it after awhile, it felt worse then VC and SA, the radio is better then 3 and SA but its lacking compared to VC.  There is no FBI after 5 stars anymore, there is no army after 6 stars either.  There are no police bribes and you can't enter paint spray shops when cops are around either. 

The camera and controls are not as good as they were in SA.  There are hardly any weapons compared to the other games.  There is no Tank and there is no Hunter from what i have seen so far.  Trying to exit one car and enter another one during a car chase with the cops is suicide.  After 2-3 stars all the cops have shotguns, and they just plow into any car you are near and it kills you. 

You are also forced to use cheats to get anough ammo or weapons to engage the cops for extended amounts of time.  You have almost no cash aswell.  Each time you die you lose over 10k cash, i have lost over 250k from dieing in this game so far, and spent about 150k on weapons and only have 600k or so left." 

 But i just found out from SSj12 there is the hunter but you need to kill the 200 Flying rats

i also posted this to one of the response's in the other thread

"I was expecting the game to be more like the GTA games i have played for the past 10years. Instead they have taken the fun factor out of walking around and killing stuff, this is why the GTA:SA sold 21.5mil copies. The cover system is also useless, i have spent 10mins in cover since i bought the game out of over 50 hours. It adds nothing to the game."

Ocarina is big to understand that you must think as someone being in 1998 not ten years after and only like this you'll understand how big Ocarina of Time was, is now and will be forever.

Ocarina of Time from Shigeru MIYAMOTO = Billie Jeans from Micheal JACKSON.

 It sounds like you played GTA for the same reasons I did. Sheer perverse fun and general insanity. And IV seems to mostly get rid of a lot of the things that enabled that for the sake of realism, which just seems odd since you can still get off with a slap on the wrist for mass murder, and none of your friends generally care how many people you hit on the way to a bar.

There just seems to be a huge lack of whimiscal things to do compared to Vice City and San Andreas. You can't cuztomize you car, you can't buy new property and safe houses, can't skydive, can't rob stores, no tatoos, very limited clothing selection. Yet they expand probably my least favorite add-on from SA, the girlfriend concept. Now you have an entire cast of emotionally insecure characters who constantly hit you up to do stuff.

For me the big draw of the GTA series if you can do absurdly unrealistic insane fun stuff that you couldn't do in real life while just barely resembling reality just enough for it to be a kick. IV's draw seemed more that you can do stuff that you already do in real life, like browse the net for joke sites, watch TV, and download ringtones for your phone.

As for the rest, the cover system just felt clumsy and slow compared to either Gears of War or Rainbow Six: Vegas. The story didn't grab me, I felt it starts to wander after the first act, and despite a few good scenes, a lot of it just seems to set-up for another cookie-cutter mission with everything going wrong of course.

Guess it was just a GTA for the cinematic gaming crowd and I'm more of the Time-traveling Unicorn crowd that rubang joked about. Easiest way to see the difference is just look at the different cheats for SA and IV. 

Well, Griffin, and BrainBoxLtd:

I certainly think this time they casualized the series. Made it easier. Streamline a lot of the side stuff so it's simple, and removed the un-necessarily confusing simulation portions such as owning property.

While I felt it was a huge step foward for the series, I can see how many big fans of the old game could be upset that it lost its hardcore edge.

When Brawl and more recently Kart was release there was a small group that felt the same way you did.

The game would have sold well either way. I believe Rockstar just wanted the game to be their Magnum Opus and broaden the appeal of the series, instead of simply pleasing longterm fans.

Thanks for your opinions.


Also, @naznatips


I was in the low 9's as well about 8 hours in. It just might change your mind as you grow more accustomed to the mission mechanics and see how easy it is to streamline your objectives. The game also packs quite a bit more content than I would have expected, very long, which was a big plus to me.

Gah! There's no tank!? We figured we just hadn't found it yet since we weren't that far into the game! Also, according to GTA Wiki there's no Hunter at all, and the attack helicopter only has machine guns.

Well, that info definitely put a damper on the game for me. :( The other stuff doesn't bother me much (the lack of weapons a bit. I'd already mentioned the cover system giving me trouble).