Grand Theft Auto IV Boring?

[Stan RedGuard]

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.

*Is a teenager surrounded by stereotypes*

Los Santos was boring... booooorrrrriinnnnggggggg. And so was that entire section of the SA map. IV actually does get a lot closer to the twisted stereotypes of what cool is to impressionable idiots. Now, take a slightly OLDER stereotype which only a few teenagers still adopt... yeah then Los Santos covers it.

Anyway, GTA IV = boring. SA = CJ had enough motivation to come back to his hometown, and when his family started falling apart and becoming corrupt in front of his eyes, I'd have to say that added motivation to fix the situation... okay that was a really opinionated view of CJ's character motivation etc, but SA as a game just had more options. Even if they weren't all completely realistic, they were still realistic within their own sphere of possibility. Can you imagine a somewhat average gangster-at-heart NOT being scared out of his mind doing the Mike Toreno missions? I think not. Or... it'd never happen in reality anyway. You'd have to have a few loose screws in the head to not be scared witless doing some of those things without knowing why.

All in all... my favorite part of GTA IV is driving. Although the handbrakes don't quite work realistically... it's too hard to spin a vehicle around without DRASTICALLY slowing down, running into something, or spinning the opposite direction you intended to. And what's this nonsense about not being able to do a backflip on a motorcycle? Most of the time, unless I start a wheelie AFTER I'm going up a ramp, I get half-way around so Niko is ready to bash his back into the pavement, and then the bike turns sideways instead of continues on its flipping path. Lol... but driving is still the best part of the game to me.

In SA (and VC, and III)... the story was just more fun. As Tourist said, nobody plays to enjoy the depth of a GTA story, they play for the fun of it. If people can enjoy the depth of the story too, great, but GTA just isn't the kind of game I can do that with. I liked that the story had depth to it... I just can't enjoy it.

I was in high school when SA came out. Believe me, nearly every single teenager I talked to at the time more or less thought that the "gangsta" lifestyle ad the way it was depicted in the game was God's gift to gaming. Maybe that is because when I was fifteen, I was in an urban environment and therefore the kids I knew may have been more inclined to think that was cool, but still now that I'm in a rural area kids I know still think SA=The epitome of cool environments because of teh gangstaz!!!11

CJ had motivation to come back- but not to stay and get involved in a gang war that he had left. He came back to bury his mom- after that, why does he feel the need to get involved in a gang war that he had left? Sweet wasn't corrupt, his sister wasn't corrupt...his neighborhhod, the one he had fled, was corrupted by drugs and his gang was weak. If anything, that would have been even more of a reason to stay away, not a motivation to stay.

I can imagine a gangsta being scared during Torenos missions, but the fact is this:
Those missions never should have existed, and the VTOL mission made no sense...CJ learned how to fly [&@%!] airplanes and al of a sudden he should be able to fly a jet fighter? Seriously...

Maybe SA's story was more fun, but to me the fun comes from the missions and I watch the story for the story. I enjoyed the story for SA(sadly) more than VC, but I liked the missions for VC more than SA. For IV, I like the story and missions more.

[Alien]

[quote="Stan RedGuard"]
CJ learned how to fly [&@%!] airplanes and al of a sudden he should be able to fly a jet fighter? Seriously...

[quote]

Well for the record, I couldn't figure out at all how to get out of "helicopter mode". So I guess that I made it realistic.

[The Tourist]

Character motivation was/has never been in any way important to the series. The creators knew this, the audience accepted this and the dynamic was happily maintained (a mix of suspension of disbelief, and the developers never intending to craft true characters amongst a narrative). All you needed in GTA to do something was a basic set-up, an excuse for a heist, a reason for an assassination. That's all. Then you had fun on the way.

Not once in the entire series have I felt real sympathy for any of the characters, simply because that was never the point. The 'characters' were nothing but [colourfully subverted] pop-cultural references: Short Fat Angry Coke Baron wants to kill me with a chainsaw; Neurotic Jewish Lawyer doesn't want to get whacked; Comedy Rockband want to get to a venue. The entire thing is set up around simple facilitators of set-pieces and goals. The referential characters are then draped in their localised environ (80's Miami, 90's LA etc), and are there to provide (mostly comic) punctuation, and act as links in a chain of events.

Trying Too Hard
GTAIV dismantled this dynamic, and without the vivid humour, necessarily exagerated characters, and OTT missions (in a perfectly contextually OTT world), GTA's simplicity was laid all too bare.

With a pretense of 'motivation' and character development, and a hardening of the game world's humour, the highly unlikable characters became even more so. Then they expected me to repeat (put up with?) the same missions I'd been doing since GTAIII? That's one step too far.

For me, IV got almost everything wrong; setting, characters, [less] gameplay, humour, the lot. The fact that they improved the driving physics isn't quite enough to make me like it, especially when the Sleep function of that frikkin' mobile phone doesn't actually do what you want it to... GTA was always a sandbox world, where you picked and chose. If I have complete and utter imbeciles phoning me up, with nothing more to say than "waaa!! why can't you come out and play?!?" - and I get punished for telling them to go to hell (because I'd rather just ride around a nifty looking city), then that's no longer sandbox gameplay.

With CJ in San Andreas, your contacts were few and far between - you didn't have a whole group of Billy-no-mates who couldn't find someone else to 'hang with'.

but the fact is this: Those missions never should have existed, and the VTOL mission made no sense...CJ learned how to fly [&@%!] airplanes and al of a sudden he should be able to fly a jet fighter?

"Those missions made no sense"? When did flamethrower Rampages make sense, or stealing a tank in III, or selling drugs to hookers from an Ice Cream van? Or almost anything else that ever happens in the world of GTA?

It's...
a...
game.

Or at least it was.

[Stan RedGuard]

Character motivation was/has never been in any way important to the series. The creators knew this, the audience accepted this and the dynamic was happily maintained (a mix of suspension of disbelief, and the developers never intending to craft true characters amongst a narrative). All you needed in GTA to do something was a basic set-up, an excuse for a heist, a reason for an assassination. That's all. Then you had fun on the way.

Not once in the entire series have I felt real sympathy for any of the characters, simply because that was never the point. The 'characters' were nothing but [colourfully subverted] pop-cultural references: Short Fat Angry Coke Baron wants to kill me with a chainsaw; Neurotic Jewish Lawyer doesn't want to get whacked; Comedy Rockband want to get to a venue. The entire thing is set up around simple facilitators of set-pieces and goals. The referential characters are then draped in their localised environ (80's Miami, 90's LA etc), and are there to provide (mostly comic) punctuation, and act as links in a chain of events.

Trying Too Hard
GTAIV dismantled this dynamic, and without the vivid humour, necessarily exagerated characters, and OTT missions (in a perfectly contextually OTT world), GTA's simplicity was laid all too bare.

With a pretense of 'motivation' and character development, and a hardening of the game world's humour, the highly unlikable characters became even more so. Then they expected me to repeat (put up with?) the same missions I'd been doing since GTAIII? That's one step too far.

For me, IV got almost everything wrong; setting, characters, [less] gameplay, humour, the lot. The fact that they improved the driving physics isn't quite enough to make me like it, especially when the Sleep function of that frikkin' mobile phone doesn't actually do what you want it to... GTA was always a sandbox world, where you picked and chose. If I have complete and utter imbeciles phoning me up, with nothing more to say than "waaa!! why can't you come out and play?!?" - and I get punished for telling them to go to hell (because I'd rather just ride around a nifty looking city), then that's no longer sandbox gameplay.

With CJ in San Andreas, your contacts were few and far between - you didn't have a whole group of Billy-no-mates who couldn't find someone else to 'hang with'.

but the fact is this: Those missions never should have existed, and the VTOL mission made no sense...CJ learned how to fly [&@%!] airplanes and al of a sudden he should be able to fly a jet fighter?

"Those missions made no sense"? When did flamethrower Rampages make sense, or stealing a tank in III, or selling drugs to hookers from an Ice Cream van? Or almost anything else that ever happens in the world of GTA?

It's...
a...
game.

Or at least it was.

1- You're right- character motivation, characters, plot, and setiings before IV were just there to facilitate a sandbox. Question though: How many times can they do that before it gets really stale? How much time can they stay a single cell organisim before we ask them to evolve?

2- IV:
Setting- IV Liberty City is the first vidoe game city that actually feels like it could be a city. IV's setting > Previous GTA Settings.
Characters- Much better than previous games, as they are well developed. IV > Other GTA games.
Gameplay- Took out the stupid crap, improved the driving, and improved the shooting. IV > Other GTA games.
Likability- I like Niko a lot more than I liked previous characters in the city. IV > Other games.
Humor- Agreed, though the series has been slipping for a while here. VC > III > SA > IV.
Cell Phone- You can turn it off, so that complaint is moot.

3-
"When did flamethrower Rampages make sense, or stealing a tank in III, or selling drugs to hookers from an Ice Cream van? Or almost anything else that ever happens in the world of GTA?"
They don't make sense. I didn't like those things, nor did I even bother with the rampages(I can kill well enough anyway, why do I need to get a rampage?) or the ice cream truck.

It is a game. And GTA IV is, like I said before and in my opinion, a much better game than any previous game in the series.

[The Gray Box]

I cant say that playing GTA has changed me, the only game that has really changed me is Assassins Creed.
It's especially visible that it changed me, when i try to assassinate my friends with a wristblade.

On assasains creed, i killed that guy that you goota assasain guards for information or collected flags for information after i was done his task i hit him a few times somehow and he died

[The Gray Box]

I prefer saints row probally 'cos owning cars is more realistic how you can customize it and if it blows up you can pay $500 and it's repaired

How in the hell is that realistic?

well it's not really to realistic with cars blowing up and fixing them for $500 but eh