The Tourist wrote:Stan RedGuard wrote:The combat system is much better, and I have yet to get into a situation where I'm being shot at but instead target a homeless guy.
Yes, but it's not quite
Gears now is it? I've been quietly hankering after an FPS mode in a GTA for a while now
(it could go along with that in-car cam like the trailers lied at... ), and until they do something magical - or use an FPS mode - the combat in GTA's is always going to feel broken and wrong.
The missions I like more. San Andreas was too damned stupid- breaking into an Amphibious Assault Craft and stealing jets? Breaking into Area 69? Jetpack? Two gangsters breaking into a national guard depot? Seriously, the game was rife with really insane and, honestly, stupid missions.
Whilst I am not - I repeat
not - someone whose stance is
"Oh, jeese! It's a GAME! If I want realism I'll go outside" (like waiting for a bus in Shenmue... man, I loved that game), that was the
point of SA. And frankly, it's no coincidence SA coincided with being the most diverse GTA to date with regards to actual, y'know, GAMEplay (flying being one of the niftiest things I've ever done in a GTA. base-jumping being my second).
Mike Toreno - my fave character in any GTA - getting you to steal a military VTOL craft is up there with my most memorable missions. The absurdity was just genius (CJ's absolute horror and fear, and Toreno's casual insistance that it was no big deal), and it was immense fun.
Story? Inarguably better than in previous games.
Yes, but do we really play GTA's for their stories? I thought it was for their gameplay, their characters, their OTT take on life? I'm no bible bashing muppet, but I am a 'moral' man; and the GTA universe is filled with scum, frankly. I've never found much sympathy for any of the characters in any GTA, I don't particularly find the idea of pushing narcotics through three whole games to be very fulfilling. But it's never been a problem because of GTA's humour, and the sheer fun of the missions.
I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but
GTAIV was too dark. I haven't played through to the end (because of the whole bored-to-tears thing that stopped me playing), but in a more superficially 'realistic' context the actions of a few scumbags, in Virtual New York version 20.7, isn't something that keeps me coming back for more.
GTAIV gets close to the current sterotype of what teenage gamers perceive to be 'mature', which is: random violence and too much swearing. It's not big and it's not clever. Now I can swear with the best/worst of them, but IV cut it far too close with certain words I don't think should be in ANY game. And as idiot parents allow idiot children to play 18 rated games, even Rockstar should tone it down (just a little bit).
One thing that goes down to taste is customization- people want that. And, if Niko was like CJ, I'd understand how this is a problem. But the day Niko walks around in an afro or jerry curl is the day the main character has no respect from me and, therefore, I can't respect what they do or the story.
Yeah, but it's a game. I want to walk down the Vegas strip as an obese African American in a purple pimp suit - with a 'Will Smith' cut - with a desert eagle, popping off rounds in the air if someone calls me "fat" (after I've just parked my helicopter in the middle of the road... ).
In San Andreas, I can laugh at a CJ come-back line just walking around (another thing they took out of IV, the brilliant user responses).
I guess it just comes down to the fact that they're two different games. Well, it
would if they weren't still using 10-year-old mission structures and characters... so no, they're not two different games - IV has less stuff in, less humour, is smaller, and (for me) is less fun.
If I can drag myself to do so, I'll finish off the story before trading it in for
Lost Odyssey.
Gears of War=/=Grand Theft Auto. By that logic, I could say, "Bahh, Gears of war isn't like BioShock!" Or, "Bahh, BioShock isnt exactly Final Fantasy Seven, isn't it?!". Two different and games and, in all honesty, genres as GoW is a linear game.
Oh, and a GTA FPS would be the worst thing ever.
The mission you named is where I normally stopped playing San Andreas. It got
stupid. I have never been a fan of games where you end up doing something that takes you out of the feel of the game- like in True Crime where you end up fighting some sort of Dragon thing where up until then it had been fairly realistic. Mike Tereno and the Truth's missions in Bone County took me out of the game. Because, in all honesty, after you unlock the entire map why bother playing through the story if you hate the story like how I hated most of the second half of San Andreas? Crap, out of the twenty or so times I've played San Andreas, I've finished the story maybe four times because I stopped caring at all about every character and event in there. And why did I stop caring? Because the missions got so stupid that I thought, "No gangster would ever do this. This is stupid. I'm going to do some drive by shootings." and I'd do that instead of breaking into Area 69 and stealing a Jetpack.
And I like characters who have limits, backstories, and motivation for doing what they do. Claude from GTA3 has motivation and nothing more. Tommy from VC has a motivation and a tiny bit of backstory. CJ has poor motivation, poor backstory, and no limits. Niko has a believable backstory that gives him good motivation and he has believable limits. Maybe some people would rather every GTA game have [&@%!] poor characters, but I'd rather the series improve.
And if you want stereotypical cool, then why don't you mention the entire Los Santos portion of San Andreas? That
defines what your average teenager thinks is cool.
And yes, I play through a game's storyline because I enjoy it. If people didn't play through the game for the storyline, then what else is there? In every GTA game, you unlock the entire map before you beat the storyline. If you don't care about the storyline or characters, there is no reason to finish the game.
I also have tio debate people on some other forums about the story. Too many people miss the point of the game, they get [&@%!] that Niko doesn't take over the city or something stupid like that. They don't want to understand that Niko does what he does for the follwoing reasons:
1- He is good at it.
2- He is looking for someone.
3- It pays.
And they also seem to forget that there were three reasons he came to Liberty:
1- He thought his cousin was living the American Dream, only to find out through the course of the story that the American Dream is impossible for someone like him and that the dream itself is a lie.
2- He is looking for the man who betrayed his unit and left many of his childhood friends dead. This, by itself, and the fact that it has been *years* provides him with a better motivation than the previous characters combined when he arrives in the city. CJ came back to bury his mother and decided to get involved in the street life. Tommy was pure scum and was doing a drug deal that went wrong. Claude was just a petty criminal that sought revenge after being betrayed by his woman. Niko? Niko didn't come to Liberty City to take over or to even commit crimes(except after he found that special someone.). It was Roman's problems with loan sharks that started Niko down the path that you play during the game. After you kill the first man, Niko screams, "I promised myself I wouldn't kill anybody in this country!"
Obviously, is Niko a good man? But through conversatiosn throughout the game, you realize that he is not a bad man, he doesn't hate the police, he doesn't think what he is doing is justified, and he certainly realizes that he hangs out with bad people. As the game progresses, you realize that Niko is himself a tragic figure- if he had never been betrayed during the war, he would not have turned to a life of crime and he wouldn't be as obsessed with revenge. Niko could have been a normal guy, a nice guy, not a violent criminal. That is what makes him tragic: His potential for good is undone by others and sets him on a path that destroys his soul.
3- After he turned to a lif of crime, something went wrong with a man named Mr. Bulgarin and Niko fled. Besides the fact that he may or may not owe the man money, not much is known. It may be expanded on during the LIVE Content.
I you like customization, as I said if Niko was not a thirty-something Serbian with a past and history with no real desire to get different haircuts or to get bling, then it'd make sense. With CJ it made sense, so it was fine, but if my willingness to play the game is adversely affected by the fact that in cutscenes I'd see Niko with an afro, pink sunglasses, and hotpants, I think I'd stop playing.
IV may have less stuf in, but I have yet to find one thing in SA that I enjoyed that was cut in IV. Flying wouldn't have made any sense, it is one flippin' city. Base Jumping? Enjoyable, but not really a bad cut. The game does have less humour, agreed- but then again, the majority of humor that I cared about was from the radios so a tighter focus on the radio would have aided me. The game is smaller agreed, but none of it wasted. Lots and lots and lots of SA was wasted completely. And as for fun, I'm having more fun with IV right now than I ever had with SA, VC, or III.
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