woohoo, second island open.

Waiting for a show the wife is watching to be over so I can play again some more. Also, not a whole lot planned for tomorrow except updating the local real estate source pages and updating my wife's website. Other then that it looks like an easy day of GTA tomorrow. woohoo.

If I was still working on the truck, I would be going insane not being able to play this except a couple times every two weeks or so.

Judging by the complete % someone said they were at earlier when they opened it up, I am pretty close. Hope I get it open in a bit.

I was a bit further along than that, but not a ton.

Yeah, I am a couple % points past it now and still not over in Algonquin.

LOL, it's pretty terrible. I had to turn away from the screen to avoid getting sick. I won't be venturing into bars unless I absolutely have to. I'm just praying that there's not a mission that involves driving drunk.

I haven't been drunk in the game yet, but I saw a gameplay video of it. While I was watching it, I thought that the camera man needed to learn how to work a video camera, but from the sounds of it, what I saw may actually be the game.

I think its funny that MADD has protested that you can drive drunk in the game... but I can't think of a better don't drink & drive message than trying that in GTAIV.

Wife is going with kid and grandmother to the shopping center, long GTA IV afternoon awaits for me!

Dola, out of curiosity about each of your characters, how do you have your guy dressed?

Mine is wearing a pair of blue snickers, blue jeans and grey fly jacket.

Mission/Story spoiler

I'm having the HARDEST time keeping up with that guy on the motorcycle. i must've replayed the mission 10 times now.

I retire what i said about police being dumb, i'm now just playing to kill a random cop in the street and then trying to scape, and so far no way in 4 attempts. They bring in the helicopters, hummers, tons of cars and all them are like suicides crashing me.

i agree. once you get up to the 2nd star wanted level they start to bring the thunder. if you got a helicopter on you (that comes out in the 3rd wanted level) its pretty much over unless you go inside a building and a talking scene takes place.

its just the random, average stuff that the cops let you get away with. i can crash my car into another car in front of the cops and they don't do anything. i can also bump into them and they'll just say "hey".

i've pretty much have given up all attempts to not crash my car. when i drive the apocolypse leaves death and destruction behind it.

Maybe it's a good idea to give the mission name ahead of your spoiler (as long as the name itself isn't a spoiler) so people should know whether they could help if you need it?

Really? What if you jack a car in front of them, or crash into them?

You get a one-star wanted level and it's pretty easy to evade them.

Agree, you just need to drive fast 2 minutes and the star is gone. I can scape also from 2 stars, but 3 stars, no way.

That's good to know (i haven't gotten higher than 1 star) and reasonable from a gaming perspective imo.

Just kill a cop and you will see :)

Btw something funny happened. I stole a hummer, drove a few meters and had to stop, the guy came running and took m out of the car and started to beat me, then a cop saw it, came and arrested the guy for hitting me, so i happily took his hummer and went away from the scene not waiting for the guy to explain the cop that i stole his car :D

Btw, something that i don't like is that as soon as you get into a car, you see tons of cars around like yours. I guess they do that to save load, showing more cars of the same model they don't need to have as much different cars loaded in memory. Try it, take a hummer and you will see that like 1 of each 5 cars you see in the street are hummers, take another car and it's the same.

It has always been that way.

Other drivers just want to be like you, man!

I can escape from 3 stars, although it's not easy. I think the couple times I pulled it off involved me launching my car off a bridge onto a lower level expressway that was covered from above (to avoid the choppers), and also out of the non-helicopter radius.

However, too often it is hard to resist the urge to go down guns blazing. I like to hole up somewhere and take out as many cops as possible. :D

I fixed the toll booth problem I was having (people just camping in them) by stealing a Hummer and ramming the car just sitting in the toll booth from behind. If you time it right and snap the gate with the lead car you don't even pick up the wanted star for blowing by the toll booth. Last night I rear ended a car so hard it caught on fire and the driver got out on fire as well and ran around for a bit. I find I can do that quite a bit with bigger vehicles...

I got to go into Algonquin last night right before I stopped playing, although my story was quite a bit more along then a couple others who have posted here...



Seems that you can plow through the right story lines to get there I would say, instead of doing a bunch of extras like I did.

As for Algonquin, it's perty. I am disappointed that of the three clothing stores two are exactly the same. Seems pointless to me.

Easy way to get one of the harder achievements...

I need Russian Revolution Help:

Yeah. That worked. Just got it.

Nevermind, I figured it out.

Crap, Snow Storm mission is the hardest yet for me...

I just spent about an hour and a half doing nothing but having fun. With both more weapons and Algonquin open it was a blast just going crazy like I had not done yet with this newer version. Speeding through walkways with people, seeing their head come off when I hit them just right. I found out sometimes a car just won't start again if it is too beat up. I went on a helicopter tour, a paid one. Then I stole it, died when I fell off a building I landed on, did it again and died again. Third time I landed at the airport adn everything was fine until I walked on top of the hanger and then boom, 4 stars. I took off in the copter and was trying to get away so I went out into the water. I didn't pay attention and ended up in Alderney with 6 stars for being in an unlocked area.

After that I flew back to Algonquin, landed on one of the taller buildings with 6 stars still. Figuring I had little chance on the ground I went ahead and jumped, falling 100 floors or so. The coolest part was on the way down a police helicopter went right under me and I just missed it. I wish I could have seen what would happen if I had hit the blades while in free fall still 500 feet from the ground.

I found a jump in Algonquin that I tried 5 times and everytime was told "Not good enough." Just couldn't land that jump in any vehicle.

I took a motorcycle past the barricades into Alderney once again. Made it a ways until my shot out tire killed it for me and I fell off the side of the freeway. There was a ladder on the side and the cops all stopped and the bastards started climbing down after me, shooting me until way past dead. I got a couple and my death animation was super cool with cops sliding down a gravel hill with bullets in them.

I went to Happiness Island to see the Statue of Happiness. And when there I...

Finally, as I made my way back to my safe house to save and quit, I went to the roof of my safe house just to look around. I then remember I still have a sniper rifle. One of my favorite past times in GTA games is sniping people from rooftops. :D I started doing that, got the cops pissed, shot a cop and got 3 stars. The helicopter came and I shot both gunmen and the helicopter flew away. As I started shoting more civilians a ton of cops came running through the door to the stairs and blew me away eventually. I think the cops actually are better/more intelligent.

Did some cab rides/subway rides with the movie shot view on just to enjoy the views. Loved that every time.

Fun night with GTA baby.

I can't wait until I get moved to AZ so I can see what GTA IV has in store first hand.

I don't think this is a spoilerish question (just mentioning a mission name, but I imagine the answer might be). If I do the Uncle Vlad mission, will I lose him as a source of missions for the future?

Edit: Nevermind. I see according to my stats, that I have finished 100% of the Vlad missions.

Ughh, had my first freeze and of course it was towards the end of a mission I was kicking ass on and have failed a couple times before. Aggravating.

You know, with all the things they borrowed from Saint's Row I wish they had taken more of their side missions. I'm finding the side stuff to actually be pretty lacking in this game compared to the past ones. The insurance fraud stuff from SR would be awesome with this engine.

I've found the cops to be pretty challenging. I had a really fun escape just a bit ago that took a long-ass time, and that was with only 3 stars. 1 and 2 stars are pretty easy to get away from, but 3 stars and above is tough.

What I think makes the game seem easy is the fact that they don't give you a 3 star wanted level unless you go pretty nuts. I've run over cops before and only gotten 1-2 star levels. Same with jacking a car and killing a civvie right in front of the cops. Those kind of actions should probably give you a 3 star level automatically.

I got a 4 star level accidently, and it was extremely difficult for me to lose them. I agree that the cops become much tougher to lose once the stars increase (which increases the search radius as well as the number of units responding.)

And don't forget about the ^*#&^ boats and the &^*$ chopper! I gotta say, it's extremely fun getting chased over a bridge and then jumping off of it to get away...but then extremely frustrating when you see two police boats coming your way!

I believe they call that the Pac-Man Jones mission :D

Just played my first multiplayer game, played Team Mafiya and it was a thing of beauty.

Great mix of racing, deathmatch, and everything between. Had a blast.

I think the side missions are pretty good. The random 'blue guy' on the street missions are my favorite of the side missions. What I mean by blue guy if you don't know is that once in a while a blue icon of a man appears on my radar, you pull over and end up talking to someone who wants your help. You still have the vigilante missions, the car-jacking missions. I am yet to see how you can do the ambulance or firetruck side stuff yet though.

Also, I have to have a good 20 hours of game play in by now, and no lock ups.

i found the random crack head on the side, but he just gave me $100, he didn't ask me to help him on a mission or anything.

3 stars is friggin tough, i had one great police chase with Little Jacob in the passenger seat and i forgot what i did but the heat was on my ass. i was getting chased and hit the highway along the coast, and then put the Pay 'n' Spray on my GPS to try to escape. turns out the Pay 'n Spray was in the complete opposite direction - where all the cops were. LOL. i somehow managed to make it in without being spotted by the helicopter. so far that's been my favorite chase.

you don't even understand how much this game looks like NYC. i can completely spot all the real places this game is based on - remarkably on point. they got the Bohemian Beer Garden (called "Steinway Beer Garden" in the game, which is funny cuz i lived a couple blocks away from steinway street), Jackson Hole (the oldies looking diner), Long Island City...wow. great job. you start the game off basically where i was born and raised - in Queens. can only imagine what Manhattan will look like in the game.

Playing on line and it's pretty freakin fun.

I'll be playing for a bit for anyone that wants to join in.

I had a 3 star chase, where I left them all behind, and was IN a cop car... but the Pay N' Spray said it was too hot. So I had to ditch it and take one of the cars parked next to the Pay N' Spray, but by the time I was about to swing that in, the cops showed up... I had to slam and push over like 5 cop cars and then did a circle to get back to the Pn'S and get out of trouble.

spoiler on friendship/relationship stuff that a buddy of mine discovered:

I hit the 2nd island earlier to day at 22.14%.