GTA IV

I beat it at some point earlier this week, so I can put it to rest and give Halo the attention it so deserves.

Overall thoughts? Way, way over-hyped and far too inflated game scores. If not for the fact that this was the first GTA on the next gen consoles, I don’t think it would have gotten nearly the love it has.

It’s not as good as GTA: San Andreas, and in fact reminded me much more of Vice City. While I didn’t necessarily mind the smaller scope of being back in one city, it was the loss of variety that really killed it for me. San Andreas had some incredibly fun and diverse missions that varied form hijacking a plane and parachuting out, robbing a vegas casino, to piloting remote controlled helicopters.

GTA IV had nothing of the kind, they were overwhelmingly chase X or Kill X, or chase then kill X. And for the really annoying ones, chase X on a motorcycle then kill X.

The work that went into creating a living breathing city is fairly awesome in this one, but it just has no payoff. I kept waiting for a mission that involved riding on the roof of a subway, throwing someone off one of the skyscrapers (they TOTALLY missed opportunities here, other than the helicopter, you’re always at ground level), or anything original and fun. But they didn’t come.

And the story and acting? Please. The only reason anyone says anything about the “high quality voice dialogue” is because the bar is set soooooooo incredibly low in other games, that ok passes for amazing. Particularly bad are the lines/dialog of women you date, and the character of Packie. This is george lucas level dialog: terrible.

I found myself getting really bored playing this game. Yes, the sandbox style meant that at any given time I could do a variety of different missions, but that’s not nearly as interesting as it sounds since ALL the missions are basically the same, just with different cut scenes.

Cars and traffic are the other annoying thing in this one. There’s not enough cars for a city this big, the traffic patterns made no sense, and whether its a bug or a way to save some system resources, the fact that whatever car you’re driving appears suddenly starts appearing everywhere. Kinda takes the thrill outta finally scoring that Lamborghini, and makes the need to get repairs pointless…..just jack a fresh car!

The whole dating/friendship thing is just plain annoying. The time investment said relationships take are NOT worth the payoffs.

The last annoying thing……it didn’t really feel like my character went anywhere in the game. Compared to getting the sweet mansion in Vice City, and the sheer length of moving from the Hood through 3 cities in San Andreas…….IV just didn’t feel that special. I had a shit load of money, nothing to spend it on, and well thats it.

I’d give it a 7.5 of 10. Definitely nothing more. Will be giving multiplayer a spin soon..

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