What was it that people disliked about GTA IV?

GTA IV seems to get a lot of hate here on SW, and I have never been able to understand it. What didn't people like about it? I personally thought it was on par with San Andreas, because I really liked the more serious approach that it had. So tell me SW, what is wrong with GTA IV?

EDIT: Keep in mind that I am comparing it to other GTA games, so leave RDR out of this :)

lack of outskirts like mountains, deserts, countrysides etc.

Characters, setting, realism were great.

It was heavy repetition, lack of mission variety, having tons of money with nothing to spend on, and virtually nothing to do in the end except rampages and bowling.

Characters, setting, realism were great.

It was heavy repetition, lack of mission variety, having tons of money with nothing to spend on, and virtually nothing to do in the end except rampages and bowling.

mccoyca112

I agree with having too much money, that was a bit annoying.

The environment wasn't as interesting and the stuff you could do was not as fun. SA was a blast. But now that I can play the game on my PC at max settings I am going to :).

I thought it was the best in the series in terms of pure gameplay, but it also did some things that made it lose all the charm I used to identify with the series. The pretentious story, the unfunny, forced humour, the superficial criticism on society, the paradoxical personality of Bellic, the lame moral choices: it all felt like it was forced into the game to make it come across more serious. GTA, for me, has always been about zany, over-the-top humour and action that doesn't take itself too seriously. GTA IV sent the series into another direction: That of a functional yet pretentious and soulless action game that, in the end, just wasn't as fun as its predecessors.

The environment wasn't as interesting and the stuff you could do was not as fun. SA was a blast. But now that I can play the game on my PC at max settings I am going to :).

NaveedLife

The gameplay is just getting old and repetitive.

It was incredibly boring. I mean, really boring.

my biggest gripe was that the city felt pale and lifeless compared to something like Saints Row 2, hell even RDR. Other than that, the constant interruption of phone calls asking me to carry out trivial games with annoying characters became incredibly.....annoying.

-Girlfriend is insanely annoying savebattery

this was one of the best games ever made in my opinion......which it is....an opinion

[QUOTE="savebattery"] -Girlfriend is insanely annoying Skittles_McGee

lack of things to do, very very very repetitive missions.

Mission design was really lame for the most part. Way too many of Drive here to talk to somebody, They ask Niko to drive here, Kill five guys, Drive somewhere, End. There were some exceptions (like Four Leaf Clover, which was goddamn amazing), but too many of them are just the generic package delivery, mob killing, or car chase.

Story was kind of weak for me. Characters were introduced and then forgotten way too quickly, and the main story of the game kind of seemed to drop in and drop out amongst all your changing employments. It was pretty good when it actually got going in a direction, but moments where it actually did that were kind of few and far between, mostly concentrated towards the very beginning and the very end.

Controls are as bad as they've always been in R* games.

The extra stuff that you could do like hanging out with friends, racing, optional side missions, etc. wasn't awful, but a lot of it was pretty repetitive, so I didn't really feel like it added much to the game.

I still got quite a bit of enjoyment out of the game, mostly due to the Online **** Around With Friends mode, but I expected more from a Universal 10/10 GOTY Winner Top Ten Highest Rated Games of All-Time game.

In their pursuit of realism and giving a next gen experience, they took out alot of the fun factor previous GTA games had.

It was okay but I'm not ashamed to admit I was too bored to complete it. The biggest problem is that the GTA games have been the same since GTA3 with a few more features added here and there to enhance the experience. With GTA4, the big feature addition was mostly new graphics. Graphics don't mean squat if the gameplay and story start to drag a little.

GTA3 was GTA3, the first time most people had really experienced that now commonly copied 3-D sandbox drive 'n gun gameplay style. It's understandable why so many people loved it. Not to mention it was the first game I remember to ever be so blatant about giving a certain finger to the censors and unabashedly glorify drugs and crime. (along with a great in-game story :P )

GTA Vice City had by far the coolest story. Who DOESN'T like to machine gun down a drugged out Columbian crimelord coming down his mansion steps Scarface style or cruise around in a motorcyle in a beach shirt to classic cheeseball 80's tunes?

GTA San Andreas kept people happy because it allowed every suburban white boy to fulfill his secret fantasy and be an OG in the hood, although that was the start of some of the more mundane repetitive gameplay that we see all over GTA4. Who really plays GTA to go work out in a gym or pick up a date? If it has something to do with the storyline, cool, but no... people want to drive cars at high speed, lose the cops and gun down everyone in their way. These fedex missions that try to simulate life just a little bit too much started to get overboard in GTA4. Add that with probably the most boring story and characters of all the games since GTA3, and then the aforementioned point about people just starting to get burnt out on the GTA sandbox style, and you have great sales but disappointing experience. Just my two cents.

I didn't like the more realistic approach.

-Horrible and repetitive mission structure -Dumb as ever auto-targeting system, crappy manual aiming (who came up with the idea of holding a trigger half way down?) savebattery

In my short time with the game (played it at a friends house) I thought the graphics were ugly, and I really didn't care for the auto lock snap thing in gunplay. Like I said, though, I didn't play it for too long. (About an hour.)

GTA IV was such a massive step backwards for the series it's just embarrassing. It's not just the lack of content. Less content than SA I could deal with if the gameplay in general was at least better. It was the entire package that SA had that was so good. Taking a a bunch of little things out for GTA IV wouldn't be such a big deal in the grand scheme of things if the overall package still offered what SA did. Not having the jetpack, parachute, car and character customisation and planes didn't kill GTA IV. GTA IV isn't in the same league in almost every single area. The game wasn't anywhere near as fun. Plain and simple. The controls were seriously messed up. The driving was awful. There actually wasn't much wrong with the driving in SA. It was simple, fun, but also didn't feel completely unrealistic or "off" like the driving in Saints Row 2 for example. GTA IV made driving way too annoying and chases weren't as fun because of it. More skill required, perhaps. It also was very annoying and very counter productive to what a GTA game should be.

Even the controls on foot were worse. The movement controls were extremely slow and clunky. The combat also felt much slower and less "actiony". The inclusion of a cover system with combat built around that is possibly a reason for this. Just moving around the world was a chore, with annoying little things like cars making you fall over when hitting you at the tiniest speeds whilst walking in traffic. The whole crashing through your car when you crash thing also got old quickly. The physics were more annoying than anything else. Slightly smoother aiming controls, but not in a massive way. You could manually aim fine in San Andreas, and it's not like GTA IV doesn't rely on the lock on system still. Oh yeah and melee combat sucked hard. Seriously, what the hell Rockstar? It makes the melee combat in SA look amazing.

The story missions have nothing on San Andreas. There was only one memorable mission in GTA IV. That was the bank robbery mission. The missions in GTA IV got tedious very quickly and didn't offer nearly the fun or variety SA did. Many of the missions in SA were flat out crazy! Missions constantly made you go wow. They were much more creative in SA. Plus the storyline in general was also worse in IV. Less memorable characters and it just lacked the GTA charm. I lost track of what the hell the story was about in IV by the half way point.

Of course the biggest thing about IV that sucked was what you could do in the open world itself outside the missions. Messing around, causing chaos, messing with cheats and playing with all the toys in the sandbox is the trademark of GTA. San Andreas offered so much here. I won't list every little thing here, but we all know it's a pretty long list. More weapons, more vehicle variety, tons of awesome cheats etc. GTA IV isn't even as fun to mess around with as GTA 3.

In terms of actual side missions and activities, GTA IV was severely lacking as well. There was very little to do after the story. The game also has the worst soundtrack of any 3D GTA. Plus the city itself is grey, dull and samey. SA had such a great variety in the environment. We go from 3 very different cities plus countryside and desert to one city. Lame.

GTA IV did make some improvements. Obviously it has better graphics(albeit with less colour) and less technical issues. Things like the waypoint feature and automatic save when you beat a mission are welcome additions. Not that these are all that revolutionary. Both of these are things Saints Row did two years earlier. The fact you don't lose your weapons when you die makes things a bit less annoying. Though one of the perks for a girlfriend in SA also gave you this ability. The multiplayer is a welcome addition too. The taxi feature is also cool. GTA needed a feature like this. The problem is that for every one improvement, I can list 50 things they did worse.

GTA IV just wasn't in the same league as SA. SA has more tools to play around with, has better basic gameplay, better controls for the most part, more creative and fun missions and a hell of a lot more content. Rockstar dropped the ball with GTA IV. I do not expect them to do it again. I still have high expectations for the next GTA game and will buy it on release. Rockstar have got a lot of criticism and they'll listen to it. They won't make the same mistakes again.

Lack of Everything that made San Andreas Awesome.

Lack of Everything that made San Andreas Awesome.

LegatoSkyheart

Me wants my Jetpack!!!

:P

GOOD:
-Kick ass graphics.
-Kick ass physics.
-Kick ass multiplayer.
-Kick ass cell phone & social system (tho it's a bit annoying when Roman calls me in the middle of a gun fight).
-Cars & Bikes finally look good.
-City is awesome. Same for all the other GTA's but this one is just epic.
-Tons of awesome minigames.
-Cover system (tho it's better to just run and gun at multiplayer, that sux)
-A lot of improvements to details.
-Swing glitch!

BAD:
-Vehicles (all) handle like total crap. It's still great compared to other games but not older GTA's.
-(for PC) Some controls are f*cked up and for some reason (correct me if I'm wrong) you can't set the keys the way you want to (personally I haven't been able to, sorry).
-Fighting system is retarded. I feel like I'm fighting in slow motion. The one in TBOGT is better but still not perfect.
-Some kewl vehicles and weapons were removed. For what reasons I don't know. (Hunter, Phoenix, Rhino, Minigun etc)
-No more customizashun for cars.
-Multiplayer is easy to cheat.

[QUOTE="LegatoSkyheart"]

Lack of Everything that made San Andreas Awesome.

dercoo

Me wants my Jetpack!!!

:P

GTA IV seems to get a lot of hate here on SW, and I have never been able to understand it. What didn't people like about it? I personally thought it was on par with San Andreas, because I really liked the more serious approach that it had. So tell me SW, what is wrong with GTA IV?

EDIT: Keep in mind that I am comparing it to other GTA games, so leave RDR out of this :)

UnrealLegend

at the end of the game, you should have around 1 million dollars...but where can you spend them? you cant! because there is nothing to buy...you cant buy houses, cars, you cant gamble, everything is **** cheap...I want to have 1 million dollars to buy properties and LOTS of clothing...not waste it on hot dogs which are worth 1 dollar... the clothing...there were just like 20 pieces in total, and they were all HORRIBLE.

and the biggest flaw (for me at least) liberty city is way to small and it lacks forests, mountains, outskirts, countryside...everything that SA had... I remember in SA, I would start a rampage on ganton to get at least 5 stars...then I would go look for a NRG-900 (fastest motorcycle in the game, it was close ganton) and I would travel to Mt Chilliad (biggest mountain in the game) while being chased by the FBI (and sometimes the army) it was awesome, once I reached the mountain top, I would just jump from the ramp and well...look for something else to do...it was lots of fun

its not exactly that it sucks...its just that it didntt deserved a 10 at all...GTA IV and SMG2 were the worst games to receive 10 score in GS

Option two for me. The game was very boring with not much to do.

-only problem i had were the lack of variety in the missions.. like seriously all i remember was the heist mission..

-and also i didnt like how u couldnt buy properties and stuff like that which vice city had... that was fun..

- u cant DO anything with the money... i have 500k and what to spend it on? NOTHING

• Much less fun missions
• Much more repetitive missions
• Same old crappy plot of climbing to the top and being betrayed
• A lot of content from SA taken out

Mainly for me though it was the missions. in SA i actually found myself creating seperate save files so I could replay certain missions that I found to be really fun. Didnt have that in GTA 4.

oh my god where do i begin?

1. It was incredibly boring

2. the missions were laughably similar to the last 3 GTA's

3. The cell phone was hands down the single worst gameplay element ive ever seen placed in a game... it friggin rang while in the middle of a shootout!!!! "hey nikko, wanna go bowling" SHUT THE @&^%#*&# UP!!!!!!

4. It was ridiculously boring

5. the gameplay was as close to broken as ive seen in a next gen game... proof here that the game deserved no where near a 10. to read a review that praised the controls in this game is just incredible... how can any member of the gaming media who claims to play and love video games say this game had good controls... they were laughably bad. ps1 choppy floaty, NASTY controls...

6. what was compelling about this game? the open world? mmm, ok, pretty cool. the characters? nope. a drunk frat boy on a friday night drinking binge couldve created half of these stereotypical b movie characters and probably with more substance to boot.

7, did I mention that playing this drudge of a game is one of the most boring experiences ive encountered all generation? It is.

its a terrible game and in all honesty it didnt deserve a 10, not a 9 or an 8, this game is way south of that.

Hold on, what is so bad about the controls? I thought they were fine, and definitely better than the older GTA games.

It was a badly optimized console port.

Hold on, what is so bad about the controls? I thought they were fine, and definitely better than the older GTA games.

UnrealLegend

I just got bored with the game quickly.

It felt boring, and the lack of checkpoints made completing the already repetetive missions a chore.

As for the story, none of the characters really seemed likable at all.

[QUOTE="UnrealLegend"]

Hold on, what is so bad about the controls? I thought they were fine, and definitely better than the older GTA games.

Guppy507

The only thing I didn't like was having to use the D-pad to change weapons...

1. Niko sucked as a protagonist. I thought he was gonna be cool, yet he is just an errand boy out for revenge and his story isn't even the real focus of gta IV's plot. its all about freaking diamonds. The true protagonists are Johny and Louise. Much better characters. But I'm talking about the main game. The only characters that were really up to gta standards were roman, those irish guys, and brucie.

2. lack of content and restrained to one city. don't give me "but it has more detail put into it!" no. just no. SA had random car chases (police vs bad guys) drug dealers, gangs, car jackers, suicide pedestrains, etc WAYYY more life put into the world. It had 3 very diverse citys with a desert and a mountan-forrest region, and it also had so many oddjobs and activities from car races,to horse betting to pizza delivery to triathalons to the standard police, taxi, and ambulance jobs, to car stealing to vechicle schools to etc (a lot of stuff left out) basically, it will take many many extra hours to get 100% in this game.

3. It went for a "realistic" approach which is not what gta is about. Sure some characters were goofy, (the ones i mentioned) but the darker plot just didn't fit. Niko gets screwed in the end no matter how you slice it and he never really went anywhere to begin with. the biggest plot turns for him were take the money or don't while finding the guy from his past is really not a big deal. kill him or not, nothing really happens besides different dialogue. Since the ONLY reason why the money choice matters to him is because people don't like him because he keeps unwittingly messing up people's possession of diamonds. gta games of the past would've had Niko go "f*** this" and take them for himself. and whether dimitri or jimmy or killed by him, both don't matter because they were pawns. the real guy that needed to die was that russian guy who calls all the shots and makes his life hell. all niko does is run from him.

The whole thing sounds eerily familiar to RDR. another game from these devs. Thing is, Red Dead was pretty much a new IP (revolver is nothing like Redemption) This is a followup to San Andreas or at the very least, GTA III. a

4. as for everything else, driving and overall gameplay wasn't as fun since R* wanted everything to be super serious. From no more HUD and wasted signs to lame handling for vechicles, everything was just lame. The only thing good about the physics is the ragdoll effects when Niko crashes. Bottom line is, if you actually think that this GTA game is anywhere near the quality of the others, I suggest you play one of them again right now. All it really has on them is graphics.