I think people are misunderstanding me. This game is VERY GOOD. I can easily see it getting a 9.0 or 9.5. But the reviews made it out to be something it's not, and I feel upset that I fell for it (both at myself as well as the reviewers). Read some of those early reviews, they really make this game seem more than it is. A week ago, I figured GTA4 would be exactly what I know it to be now, and had planned to skip it. Then I read all these reviews that made me think I was wrong and that it was vastly different and better than previous GTA games and I got sucked into the hype. I'm not blaming Rockstar... unless they paid for those reviews.

This is what I was going to write.

Look, the game is called Grand Theft Auto. Those of us who buy the game are buying it to we can shoot people. And run over people. And rob stores. And assissinate people. And break things with baseball bats. Did I mention shooting people?

That's not to say your point isn't taken. The mission was stupid and poorly thought out IMHO. The follow up missions in that story arc made a lot more sense.

I know everyone can't do this, but for me, the first little bit of the story arc means nothing. Things are done more for tutorial purposes than anything. (I heard Bill Harris complain about a guy not throwing things at you as you are chasing him up a ladder. . . what he fails to mention is this is essentially a tutorial type of mission.)

The story won't start for me until I hit about the 15 to 20% mark in missions. That's when it gets interesting. (and did for all of the GTA games, not just this one.)

the "reluctance" factor is only so we start to like our character. At the end of the day, we know what our character is going to become. And it's not an employee at Old Navy. He's going to run a large scale criminal organization. This will involve murder, extortion, car bombing, prostitution, drug running, stealing and a lot of other REALLY bad things.

If the entire game has weak stories like that? Then I think the reviewers are nuts. But I need to see a lot more of the story than a tutorial mission before making that assessment.

i'm agree.


while i made fun of the game for not having the cops be as strict as they should, in real life what Niko would really wind up doing would be as fun as cleaning the dirt out of my fingernails. it's not called Grand Law Obiding Citizen.

i believe Tupac said it best:

"Keep your head up nigga, make these motherfuckers suffer
Up in the Benz burnin rubber
The money is mandatory, the hoes is fully strapped
This criminal lifestyle, equipped with the bulletproof vest
Make sure your eyes is on the meal ticket
Get your money motherfucker let's get rich and we'll kick it
All eyes on me"

I suppose, but shouldn't he be pissed that Roman lied to him? Why would he be so easily willing to start dropping bodies for this bozo? Or, if killing people is a casual thing for him, why do they make it seem otherwise during the introduction scenes of his character?

How else is going to make cash? After all, he's an illegal immigrant it seems.

look at your wallet when you get off the ship.


look at your wallet as soon as you beat a random guy up and pick up his money.


that is why.

Oh wow that sounds sweet, I haven't got the balls to steal a cop car yet, but I think I will now!

Well, he's talking early about how when he's with his cousin, life will be easy in America. That's he's trying to get away from bad things. You actually hear him say later in the game "I thought things would be different here. Turns out not so much." or something like that. He was hoping to turn things around. It didn't work out. And he is pissed that Roman lied. You hear more about that later on in the story as well.

I guess I just don't know what as a game developer you could do in that situation. You as a player can make the choice to let them get away...the Jacob missions (at least as far as I can tell) aren't critical to the main plot.

I guess it's time to back out of this thread since people are starting to give the story away.

Agreed. Spoiler tags needed.

I didn't tag mine because there isn't really anything in there. Unless the names of the characters and stuff that you find out essentially in the opening credits is too much. If so, I apologize. I tried to keep it vague. I won't say anything else.

perhaps. what else is there to talk about? there's 10 pages in the thread so far, one can't assume it was all "the game isn't worth a perfect 10!!!"; "it certainly is, haterz!!!".

I'm not saying it's bad, just saying you won't be seeing posts from me. It's inevitable that this will happen at some point because everyone plays at a different pace.

I do so enjoy running down bikers from behind on bridges and just tapping them to watch them fly. We can talk about that.

How awesome would Road Rash be today with online multiplayer? That would be sweet!

No one is saying the game is bad, it's quite good. But you can't deny that it's more or less the same gameplay as the previous versions with a new storyline, better physics, and better graphics.

My only gripe is really the AI. Not just the cops and criminals who seemingly are the dumbest human beings alive, but civilians and drivers. The other cars on the road are clueless and get stuck easily. Instead of being parts of the city that operate individually, they are just obstacles. They had talked a lot about upgrading this area of the game, but it hasn't been.

Example: I'm on the bridge coming back from a mission. I come up to the toll and don't want to run through it and start a chase. There is a line of 3 cars. I get behind them. The car at the front is taking forever and the 2nd car tries to go around him for some reason and ends up blocking the whole toll. The third car just kind of veers to his left and stops. No one moves again, they just sit there content with their positions. This sort of thing happens at lights and intersections constantly. I would have liked to have seen more go into their driving to make the road more realistic (especially considering driving is a huge aspect of the game).

I just don't see how that can get a game a 10/10. It's a solid 9 to a 9.5 in my book.

This thread is turning into spoiler central.

close your eyes and back away from the thread.

Bought it yesterday. Loving it so far.

But I'm having the weird graphical pixillation and blurriness I saw mentioned earlier. It was fine for the first 3-4 hours of play and then it got noticably blurry and pixillated.

Does anybody know of a possible fix for that? 360 version, BTW.

My favorite thing so far is to bust through the fences of the airport and drive as fast as I can down the runway towards the 747s that are rolling down the taxiway and then driving my car between the 2 engines on the wing while the cops are chasing me. It's funny seeing the cops try to catch up to you and they don't navigate underneath the plane correctly.

Found some of the stunt jumps. The best part about them is when you don't have a fast enough car or you didn't build up enough speed and you fall short of where you're supposed to land. The crashes are awesome.

Has anyone else noticed that there are 200 pigeons you can kill throughout the city?

The freezing and pixelation problems are supposed to be resolved by the patch being released for both the 360 and PS3 either today or tomorrow.

Yeah, I mean one person posted vague plot points and the whole damn game is ruined. Damn you Aylmar!

Yeah, I mentioned this is one of my spoiler posts already...

WHY ALL THE SPOILERS!?!?!? IT'S NOT FAIR!!! LIFE ISN'T FAIR!!! TALKING ABOUT A VIDEOGAME IN A THREAD DEVOTED TO THAT VERY VIDEOGAME IS BOTH UNEXPECTED AND SHOCKING!!!! I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

For some reason I can't get online. It might be the same reason that I can't "host" online games in NBA2k. I don't know what that reason might be, though.

I saw yesterday that someone mentioned (and I believe this was the correct word used) that you could "collect" those pigeons. I found one yesterday and tried like hell to figure out how to pick the damn thing up. I'll have to go back and shoot the fucker.

Are they pink?

Yep.

Cool. I saw the post about the patch, but only saw that the freezing issue is fixed. Good news that the pixelation is too.

From what I've read, the pixelation problem is somewhat like a near-freeze on this game. It doesn't load everything as quickly as it should, but it doesn't completely freeze either. I guess we'll find out for sure relatively soon.

I'm on your side on this man. Almost everything you said was from the opening movie of the game. So you ruined the first 4 minutes of someones game who hasn't started playing it yet, 4 minutes out of 30-40 hours....oh NOOO!!

You did hint about something later on, but big deal since you gave no details really.

As far as the AI not being upgraded, I disagree some. Yes the star system has been made easier, I haven't even used a Pay'N'Spray once yet. The pedestrians are more intelligent though. If you bump the wrong guy he will want to fight, while others try to move on with their artificial life. I have also been in a fight with a random guy on the street with other people around, none who wanted anything to do with it. Quickly after the first few punches though I see a guy getting out of a stopped car and walking over to take up the defense of the guy I was fighting and try to beat my ass. That never happened before that I remember. Around the park are joggers, two chicks when I noticed them last night. I pulled along side them and honked, to which they stopped and made a short comment before starting to jog again. I don't remember getting reactions from so many non-story people before, almost all of the people will respond to your actions in some way.

That stuff helps make it more of a living world to me. Do their actions always make since? No. I can also go out in the real world right now and find 40% of the population who to me have a few glitches and do stupid things, I can look past the dumbass GTA car driver that gets stuck.

Thanks to you bastards I sold my books back today and went to Gamestop and picked this up! I had to hold out for finals to get over or bad things would have happened!

I don't know, I was playing GTA 2 last night and I swear a guy hit me back, while most other guys just run away.

Some of the stuff you mentioned was in previous versions (bumping the wrong guy). In fact, in San Andreas, I remember pulling out guys who were packing and would start firing on you.

The other things you listed are nice extras, but not part of the grand AI. I can deal with dumb civilians walking the streets to be honest. But the police is absolutely atrocious. That kills the "criminal" element of the game as you really aren't going to get in trouble ever. And the horrible driving makes the roads unrealistic.

The game is still fun and the previous versions had these same issues. I guess I expected a little more from the AI in this game after 4 years of development. I didn't expect the police to get dumber and the gameplay to be almost identical to previous versions.

So I wish the reviews were more honest about this. This is San Andreas/Vice City gameplay ported to the next generation with a new city, new physics, and new extras. You are completing the same kind of missions that you did in previous games (follow the bad guy, chase the bad guy, shoot this guy). I'll still play the hell out of this game and enjoy it, but I expected more improvements in gameplay and AI and less in the extras (TV stations, etc).

So I got a pretty good lead on a cop car, ran into a dead-end, reversed full speed into the oncoming cop car. The cop flew through his windshield into the back of my SUV leaving blood stains on the trunk. I love this game.

Has anyone opened up the second island yet? I'm curious approximately how far through that happens.

This is my beef. The reviews I read seem overly glowing and failed to mention some obvious detractions. I can't help but wonder if this suffered from some Kane & Lynch type 'marketing'.

I'm not sure where exactly the reviews were misleading? It seemed that some people were thinking this'd be another game entirely? Did some reviews make it seem like the game wasn't going to be a GTA like game?

Yeah, it seems that the people most disappointed with the game are those who either a) bought into all the hype, or b) were apparently expecting a GTA game to be something other than a GTA game. Based on what I read, I expected a GTA game, possibly with better writing, better graphics, better physics, and a multiplayer mode - and I'm loving the game so far.

The same thing happened with Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect - people got all hyped up for it based on media coverage, and then were disappointied by what were apparently very solid games (I've never played AC, but ME had perhaps my favorite story of any game I've played).

Same here. I have seen exactly what the reviews talked about.

Yeah Fidatelo I really don't follow where your problems are coming from. Not saying you shouldn't have them of course, but I don't see it...

I find it funny how I twice agreed today that the police are easier to get away from, and then over the last couple hours had my 3 hardest police chases yet and finally had to use the Pay'n'Spray. They seemed to do a pretty good job on those ones, it was odd.

Wow this game rocks. I'm on the subway right now waiting to get to my station. I'm sitting here with the big subway map trying to figure out where to go. I love it.

Holy crap. If you have any issues at all with even the slightest levels of motion sickness with this game, I would recommend NOT getting drunk. UGH.

You still stuck shorty?

You should try what I did on my first time at the Subway... I pushed a guy waiting for the sub onto the tracks, and then the sub ran him over. It was hilarious.

I tried to play some multiplayer tonight with a friend. After 45 minutes of being unable to match up with him or even join a match on my own (kept disconnecting me and sending me back to single player), we finally managed to get into a team deathmatch together... against one other guy.

Still, MP looks to have some potential. You can turn off the lock-on targeting, which I think is good, and it was fun driving around in a car together with one guy shooting.

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%.