GTA IV
I'm very dissapointed
This is the first time i've ever played any GTA game, which is surprising since it's one of the most popular videogame franchises in the world, I knew kinda how it operated and what it was about, but never actually played it, so now that i've played, I don't think it's a very good videogame
First of all, the GTA IV PC port fucking sucks, The 100% legal download I took for this game already included a modpack that supposedly fixed most of the bugs, but even with that, I've still faced crashes, graphical issues, and i've clipped through the floor once, all of these things have made me have to restart the mission. Although, it's still playable, annoying, but playable,
GTA IV has a plot, it's about this russian immigrant that goes to the united states and tries to pursue the american dream with their cousin by doing all sorts of illegal activities. The start of the story is actually not bad, the first 5-6 missions or so, but after that, the games open up and problems really start to show up
There are A LOT of quests in GTA IV, and, you can kinda pursue any storyline that you want in any order in any moment, this sounds great in theory, but in the practice, that just means a super important plot point happens and then it's not acknowledged for 10 quests because the other quests you have pending to do were available before you even got that quest with the important plot point, so you kinda go back in time when you do a lot of the quests, there isn't really a clear chronological order in most of the quests
there isn't a pacing with the story, so it just feels bad, the story kinda did lose me halfway through because in order to actually keep pursuing it I had to do all of these other missions from secondary characters I just didn't care much about
The story itself also has a lot of problems, a lot of plot holes in fact, this is something that applies to more videogames but I find especially frustrating in this game, and that is, death only matters if it happens in a cinematic. There is a part at the start of the game where you kill someone who in the grand scheme of things is just a crook, but, you now have to face the consequences of having killed them, the loan sharks that guy had are now going to seek you, which makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the rest of the game, and that is, even in story missions you kill hundreds and hundreds of people with gang affiliations and other stuff, where are the consequences for that?, the only kills that end up mattering are the ones that happen in a cinematic
The game is also very contrived in order to make the game work, for example, in a lot of story missions the game won't spawn police, is the police not showing up when it normally would not a plot hole?, when you're on a mission and you're chasing a car, that car doesn't follow the same rules yours do, it has different collisions, in fact, a lot of NPC on vehicles are completely immortal unless you reach a certain point in the route. Shooting a enemy, them not dying, shooting them again but in a different point in a road and dying, isn't that a plot hole?, there a clear disconnect from the gameplay and the story, they feel made by two entirely different dev teams
But I mean, if you're playing GTA, you're not really doing it for the story most of the time, GTA is a power fantasy, you run around, kill people, steal cars, create chaos, etc. I don't think they pull this off either.
Most time in GTA, you're going to be inside of a car or a vehicle, in fact, the game doesn't really have an OST in the general sense, but radios you can turn on and switch while on the car, the ideal scenario is that you're escaping from all these cops, maybe shooting back, doing all of these cool tricks, with the song you like playing, it's supposed to make you feel badass and unstoppable, you're supposed to feel like baby driver
but sadly, the mechanics just doesn't really allow for any of that to happen, the car controls feel like you're drunk, the drift is basically useless, the ideal way to deal to police is to NOT shoot back, so if you can avoid fighting with cops at all, you take that chance, even if you have a helicopter chasing you, do not shoot back.
The way you escape from police is to get out of their vision range and then just wait 5 seconds, idk, waiting still hoping that RNG wont spawn a police car in my face is not the coolest way to escape from police?, it's very boring
This game is not polished at all, even if you exclude all the bugs, a lot of things in this game seem to have been made without much care at all. Again, immortal NPC, enemies having different laws of physics, very clear rubberbanding, loading screens while changing clothes without a menu to choose directly what you want to wear (like come on, at least give me a way to save outfits).
There is actually one part of the game that really annoyed me, and it comes down to a lack of polish. There are two or three points on the game where the story mandates you use a helicopter, this is fine, in the tutorial that shows up when you first mount an helicopter you can either use WASD or the numeric keyboard to control the helicopter, I decided to use the numeric keyboard since it was easier for me. I reach the last mission and it gives me a helicopter, but this helicopter isn't like the ones you've piloted before, this one has weapons, and you shoot your weapons with left click. Can you see the problem?, i've been controlling helicopters with my right hand on the numeric keyboard, and you're now expecting me to put my right hand on the mouse, it's impossible, you MUST use WASD to fly the helicopter, so in the time I need to get used to the WASD controls, the enemy flies away and I have to restart the entire mission once again. That death did not feel fair at all.
So yeah, the story did not engage me, there were bugs and a lack of polish, it did not live up as a power fantasy, haven't even mentioned it in the post but I feel al ot of the minigames are a bit mid, so yeah, this game sucks.
Placed in D tier. Or at least would, tiermaker still does not work.
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