Is this a legitimately terrible game?

>today

It was bad back then too.

GTA4 was basically GTA's grimdark gritty super serious no-fun-allowed reboot.

Maybe it's just me, but Liberty City feels the most dense to me. I feel it is the best game just to mess around with.
I also love the unscripted AI. The other day, I saw a shoot out between a gang member and a cop near the swingset glitch. The gangster capped his ass then walk over to him and put a few more bullets in his body. Never seen than happen before.
I also like the human body physics of this game than to GTA V

It's even worse now that you can't mod it, or at least can't continue to do so.

>>380545214

I think the tone of the game is fine, the problem is that the game feels really unfinished, almost every element feels incomplete.

>>380544809
I refunded it this last weekend. I really wanted to like it, but the driving was bollocks.

I still think GTAV's driving is shit but GTAIV managed to be shitty slow.

I middleground of these two would be nice, but I dont see Rockstar backing away from this.

It was great for the time it came out. Recall that it dropped in 2008.
And even then, most of the opinions were about how impressed people were at the size of the open world ingame, the level of interactivity in that open world, and the graphics. None of which hold up over time.

>>380545059
fpwp

>>380545431
>Maybe it's just me, but Liberty City feels the most dense to me.

I agree, but that's what makes it so disappointing. I think that Liberty City in IV is one of gaming's most astounding overworlds, to this day. Sometimes I like just walking around and seeing every street and their peculiarities. The city feels like an meticulous diorama.

But there's just nothing to really do in it or interact with. I think they should have used the overworld for some kind of dating/life sim. It feels like a waste to design such an incredible, dense city and have most of the game ignore 95% of it.

>>380544809

it is terrible when you go back and play it. even the camera feels stiff and weird. niko moves like a 400 pound woman with cum in her eyes, the driving is bad, and this is coming from somebody who defended the driving for years. it's not realistic. it's just clumsy. the vaulting and climbing animations are stiff and terrible. it's hard to believe it's actually a rockstar game. it is rough as fuck. let's not also forget the fact the game inexplicably didn't have parachutes

gta v improved everything

Also driving was fun and ragdoll physics were better

>>380545809
>niko moves like a 400 pound woman with cum in her eyes
How did you do it? How were you able to put it into words like that? It's poetic.

It wasn't that good even for its time. It stripped all the fun stuff SA had and replaced it with clunky driving and an annoying friends system.

>>380544809
I'm still asshurt over this trash to this day after fucking GTA SA they followed up with this, a game with so much content i can still enjoy it now followed up by a city that was more dead than GTA 1 on the PS1 with a story that took itself to seriously to the point where characters that were ment to be San andreas style funny were just out of place and NO ONE was likable....

I just fucking hate this game so much for so many reasons I enjoy playing sonic 06 more than this dumpster fire, no scratch that I enjoyed Hong Kong 97 more than this pile of fucked asses they called a GTA.

the main flaw is that all of the side content is dog shit. off the top of my head

>roman taxi missions (should have just been normal taxi missions)
>"odd jobs" for jacob (just boring, repetitive drug deals that just involve loosing cops or shooting 5-6 dudes)
>collecting cars for brucie
>collecting cars for stevie
>assassin missions, which again feel very repetitive

None of the sidequests really expand the immersion, its just doing boring repetitive tasks. I like the "random character" events, there should have been like 20 more of those.

>>380544809
The way I test whether a game is shit or not: run around in the tightest circle you can
GTA4 is shit

>can't rape children
>can't smoke weed
>can't torture animals
>can't put gas in my car
>can't enter every single building

it's shit

>>380545809
yeah this, the controls are clumsy, from the driving, running/climbing/vaulting, to the cover based shooting especially. The most egregious thing for me are the lack of mission checkpoints too.

It's also unfortunate how the city look/design is busy but uninteresting. So much time is spent driving around, and I'd barely developed a mental map for many of the areas. That's one reason why I love RDR because after playing you can vividly picture the different areas in the map in your head and how they fit together. GTA4's map is just a blur.

>>380546173
The other main flaw is that you never really feel rewarded for anything you do in the game, even 100% completion. The largest payouts aren't really necessary, and the game giving you any sort of payout after the Revenge ending doesn't make sense considering how much they wanted you to know revenge is a depressing and ultimately fruitless pursuit.

Yeah I know that Niko never being able to really feel satisfied with his life in America is basically the theme of the game but it doesn't translate to a fun time, and this is coming from someone who loves this game.

>>380544809
>hardly any interiors
Stopped reading there. Either you are regurgitating this from someone else, or are legitimately one of those turbo autismos who think you should be able to enter each and every building. This is never a legitimate criticism because there would be absolutely no point to that other than placating your disorder, and it would add unnecessary strain to an engine which was already struggling to run on its intended consoles. Also no other game has felt the need to do this, so seeing it as a shortcoming is idiotic.

So you enter some random building, look around and then leave because there's nothing to do inside.
What a great idea.
And I do think GTA IV was full of misteps and is inferior to V in many regards, just pointing out how retarded it is to demand entering every building.

>>380546494
>It's also unfortunate how the city look/design is busy but uninteresting. So much time is spent driving around, and I'd barely developed a mental map for many of the areas. That's one reason why I love RDR because after playing you can vividly picture the different areas in the map in your head and how they fit together. GTA4's map is just a blur.
desu they captured New York City in its prime because thats exactly what its like. If there isn't a parade or festival its a boring ass gray city

>>380545431
>Never seen than happen before.
I've seen that happen in a couple of the old GTAs, characters keep shooting at enemies after dead. It seemed like a bug more than a feature.

I will say that it had more TECHNOLOGY than V. At least on my immediate memory

>>380545612
>It was great for the time it came out.
It wasn't great back then, it being 10 years old doesn't change anything. People felt it was an enormous step down from San Andreas and its array of options.
I understand the jump in tech demanded some compromises, but what was there felt underwhelming.

>>380547115
I agree

compared to GTA4. GTAV lacks raw detail. I feel like they spent a lot of time on detail in 4 but missed out on raw activities that V has.

>>380546693
>>380546173
Although I will say that the Roman taxi missions and the assassin missions do have purpose beyond themselves; the former shows you that Niko did in fact actually try to move on from his past upon first arriving in America by helping Roman with his business, but all of that just ends up for naught when Dimitri's men burn it all down. I would argue that it does give more emotional investment to the "Roman's Sorrow" mission because not only do you see Roman's business and everything that he worked hard for destroyed in an instant, you see yours too.

The assassin missions flesh out the idea established from the story missions that Niko is in fact a hitman and that it is actually the only thing he's good and the only thing he can achieve on his own (the other moneymaking missions are unlocked through connections with friends) and also fleshes out the hypocrisy intrinsic to Niko's character, which Darko highlights in "That Special Someone."
>You killed my friends for one thousand dollars?!
>How much do you charge to kill someone?

>>380547203
Police chases in V are the worst thing ever.
Somewhere in this video, the guy shows how when a cop car rams into you, your tires automatically turn directions for a split second, causing you to lose control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qUJc20yu28

But I'm sure flip flop physics are cool too

>>380546885

This. Having multiple indoor areas works in games like Fallout in which you can actually search for items and talk to NPCs. Not GTA.

>>380547578
I forgot to add that when Roman's business is destroyed and those taxi missions completed, you can understand why Niko finds it so difficult to escape what he's done his whole life, which is kill people. The first and only time he tried was cut short by the consequences of Niko's past catching up to him, leaving his cousin horiibly depressed and both of them on the run, and Niko is presumably afraid that if he tries going straight again, the same thing will occur, so the idea of Niko having to resolve his past through the violence he does so well becomes all the more urgent.

>>380547667
I remember that shit. Thats GTAV's awful AI. Most of which is largely scripted. Until October 2016, animals could call the cops on you because animals were just pedestrians with a different skin.

Police AI is a fucking joke, so much scripted bullshit, from car rammings to blockades. Like the moment I shoot a cop, 5 seconds later theirs a road block like holy shit they form quick don't they?

Between that, cops spawning on me, and cops homing in on my position regardless if they could see me or where I went its fucking ridiculous.

The car physics are really bad. Tires are more like magnets and have an unusual property to just glue the car to surfaces. Cars are extremely light and cars have lots of torque for no reason. This makes their tires squeal so much as if theres no such thing as traction control. Then if you hit even the smallest object, your car has no inertia because its so fucking light and you lose so much speed because you hit a curb, or a wood post or a person.

Mix that with virtually no car damage model and you get a ton of shit

>>380548094
Niko gets dragged into the criminal life long before that by Roman, Brucie, Little Jacob, Vlad etc. He never tried to be normal.

Only real thing I hated about GTA4 was the fact that money was completely fucking worthless

>>380546885

I don't demand to enter every single building, but I kind of expect some buildings to be interesting and to feel like I can actually interact with the city. I mean look at Vice City, you can go in some of the homes, clubs, businesses and bars, and it actually feels rewarding to go in them. In GTA IV the only interiors are the shitty boring restuarants and the boring safehouses.

Biggest problem: hardly any fun easter eggs or secrets. The only cool one was the heart inside the statue of liberty.

>>380544809
What would you consider a good amount of interiors? If you do a quick search you can find lists which give you around 80-90ish different ones, not counting the Episodes, across the boroughs.
https://pastebin.com/bAx6gC23

at least it had legit dlc and no microtransaction bullshit. And online was fun you could turn off the cops and fuck around at the airport

>>380548426
He tried to be normal by helping Roman out with his taxi business, only to find that Roman's good customers were drug dealers and Roman himself was in hot water from Vlad and the Russian Mafia. The taxi business was his way of settling down, but when his first canon fare ended up with him having to escape a shootout with his customer, you can see that it will never pay off. That first fare, Niko's first attempt to be normal by being a taxi driver, is also the first time we actively see a bit of Niko's past come back: his experience with shootouts. Before that all you did was defend Roman from loan sharks by beating them up, which isn't really a crime.

anyone else think alderney was comfy as fuck

>>380550180
it is

>>380548784
What do you think about the ones in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s60FP_MDaC0

Yes. IV was nothing more than a tech demo, and because V didn't have most of the mechanics from it which don't get used beyond single missions that introduced them in the form of tutorials which made up the first third of the fucking game people believe that makes it a better game. The only important shit from IV that's missing in V is the more tactical AI and being able to cripple and disarm people by shooting their weapons out of their hands.
But who cares? When GTA VI comes out they'll call it downgraded garbage and V a flawless masterpiece just like IV.

>>380550674
Nobody here really calls IV or V flawless masterpieces though, if you do, you'll be laughed at, and even though I enjoyed both games, rightfully so. The only GTA I feel you can't actually laugh at or make fun of here is Vice City, which I personally didn't understand the hype over when I played it like a year ago.

>>380544809
It was shit.

I will say it functions very well as a sandbox due to the totally untamed nature of the physics engine that was toned down in V. That being said, the game's actual missions and main content is trash. It is one of the most boring and repetitive games I've ever played without exaggeration, both in terms of content as well as the actual world and environment itself (which was drab and boring as fuck to look at IMO). The only mission I can really remember in the game is the bank heist. Compare it to GTA V or San Andreas for example and it gets blown out of the water in terms of memorable missions and sequences throughout the game. Its fun to fuck around with the pedestrians, moreso than any other GTA in fact again thanks to the physics, but everything else is so much worse.

>>380550674
What are you referring to by ways of "tech demo"?

>>380545214

Grimdark would've been fine if "HEY COUSIN, DO YOU WANNA GO BOWLING" didn't happen every five minutes. Cars driving like boats didn't help either.

>>380551595
He's saying that the main focus of the game seemed to be placed on showing off new physics and graphics technology they were able to use, with actually fun content and mechanics put lower in terms of priorities.

>>380548626
>you can go in some of the homes, clubs, businesses and bars
You can go into your safehouses, but not your businesses at all unless you're on a mission. There's one club/bar you can go in. Any building you can enter outside of a mission, it's completely devoid of anything to do.
I don't quite get the obsession with interiors in a game like GTA. It just doesn't fit with a game where you're mostly driving and shooting.

>>380550180
It's hard to tell, all the islands look like the same shit.

>>380551843
I understand it. It helps to flesh out the world you're playing in and make it feel more alive, and when Rockstar is known for creating realistic/living sandboxes with lots of small details and effort put into things you wouldn't normally expect a major lack of interiors becomes much more noticeable.

>>380552048
>It helps to flesh out the world you're playing in and make it feel more alive
By delivering empty interiors with brain dead NPCs who don't even acknowledge you're there. It's bullshit.
Like some other anon said, it makes sense for RPGs where you can actually interact with things, provided they have hidden stuff you can find. It seems like a waste of content in a game like GTA.

>>380544809
I've been saying this since the game first released. Compared to San Andreas, this game is fucking shit and didn't include anything from the previous games. It was basically GTA 3 in terms of gameplay.

>>380552048
What do you think about this list then?
>>380548857
There should also be accompanying videos showing them off too. He counts 112, but take off some Episodes locations and places that aren't really building interiors and you'll probably get around 90ish, all accessible in multiplayer, most accessible in single player.

>>380544809
it was boring. not terrible, just so anti fun after san andreas

>>380552253
I disagree, being able to see a fast food restaurant and then actually walk inside it and order food makes the world seem a lot more seamless and cool than not being able to do that period. It'd be like if they took away clothing stores in V and just made it so that you walked up to a marker outside an interior-less building to get them. You probably wouldn't care about that either but for me it would take away a lot of the charm presented with an open world. Overall though I agree its a minor point.

>>380544809
It's a good game. GTA games are like Madden games. When the new one comes out the old ones don't matter. Other than GTA 3 and Vice City.

GTAIV is kind of a chore to play through. There is just too much mundanity to the game. I spent most of the game taking taxis everywhere because the driving isn't fun, and that is cemented by shit like the toll booths.

I mean it's works well enough as a sand box, but looking back I'd rather play San Andreas or Saints Row.

>>380552273
And I disagree, the main problem wasn't the scaled down gameplay, it was the poorly designed missions, monotonous visuals and repetitiveness of it all. It could have gotten away with the lack of parachuting, planes, customization, etc. If the missions and characters compelled you to keep playing.
>>380552519
And again, that kind of immersion factor is fine for an RPG. Going to grab food is pointless when the game has health regeneration. It's not a city simulator, even though it feels like one sometimes.

I like it the best because of the mods, physics, and city.

>>380552708
>And again, that kind of immersion factor is fine for an RPG.

I think its good to have for open world games in general as well. Why even have an open world in the first place if its boring to explore and has no interesting details that make it feel more alive? Might as well make any game a linear shoot em up if it isn't an RPG.

>>380552708
>Going to grab food is pointless when the game has health regeneration

Except in GTA it helps you speed your recovery up.

I mean San Andreas, 4, and 5 had that feature. It helps in shootouts in the open now and then.

>>380552708
Oh, those were shit too, I was just focusing on how they actually went backward with this game after San Andreas. Like someone else on this thread said, the world is as dead then GTA1, if not more.

Better than V

>>380544809
I liked the story more than V

Niko >>>>> Michael

san andreas is the best gta game, but gta 4 is the second best

all those things you mentioned, the other gtas do even worse

>>380552889
I think its also important to note that more interiors and details allows for greater use of the sandbox for the game's mechanics. For example in GTA IV you can use a fast food restaurant as a way to fortify yourself during a police shootout. Giving the player more options for where to go and how to defend themselves is always a plus.

really unpopular view but i think this has the best missions in the series. it's fun when you get into shootouts. SA may have more variety but a lot of the missions are sloppy and gimmicky. It was fun in IV to shoot your way through a hotel or a museum

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>>380552546
>forgets San Andreas

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I unironically love GTA4 and have so for the near decade it's been out.

>gunplay while not the best, feels satisfying when paired with the physics engine ragdoll
>the first pistol feels extremely weak and takes +6 shots to incapacitate someone
>this makes it feel like a physics gun
>able to push people around world objects like the hood of a car, hotdog stand, railing or down a flight of stairs just by shooting at them as they stumble around

>>380544809
Wouldn't agree on the story. It's the least wacky GTA of them all, and Nico is just a cog in a vast mechanism, not the motor that drives it, which gives it a great atmosphere, unless you break it by going on a murder spree of course.
Also, best car handling. Fite me.

>>380545214
GTA IV was always a disgrace

>>380545460
>what is sparkiv?

Also fuck the guys who made openiv and pushed an update to make it unusable. Should've just taken down the website as a show of fake compliance with Take2.

>>380545809
Nailed it

I thought it was bad when it was released. Awful plot and terrible characters with all the humour of the previous games removed.

GTA 4 is the worst 3d GTA game. Even its dlc is better than the base game.

>>380545809
>gta v improved everything
Except vehicle damage

>>380545809
>niko moves like a 400 pound woman with cum in her eyes

All my keks

>>380552546
gta 5 is the most boring 3d gta, except for the shitty psp titles

>>380553525
You can beat the whole game with the starting pistol too if you're a decent shot because of the nature of the missions, which I personally think is rather nice
>>380553273
Honestly when I was playing SA, I was more taken aback by how unbelievable the missions later became considering CJ's background than having fun, like how the game started out as a rather subdued hood flick and ended up as one hoodlum takes down an entire aircraft carrier and flies a military jet (something which he learned from watching videos in a cabin–the mission marker is placed in front of a TV screen and VCR and the missions are depicted as videos from that screen) and an entire secret government installation so R* could cram the zanyness in, and then remembered they had a story to finish and brought it back to the hood in a final mission that didn't really feel as climactic as it was supposed to be because it was nothing compared to what CJ had done before.

Recently tried playing IV on my ps3 and fuck the driving is awkward. Especially the motorcycles, they can't turn without fishtailing all over the place.

IV on pc is a unoptimized mess, but the mods definitely help out a bit. Ballad of Gay Tony is the best one of the three.

>>380544809
It was great, you just need to change your mindset. It was very technical, you had to play it deliberately and carefully to win gunfights. Driving, too, had to be controlled and deliberate. Not a great idea because the primary audience for this game is children and casuals, but I liked it.

>>380544809
Nah, played it again a few weeks ago and it's still fantastic. both single player and multi are great

>>380556359
I personally feel that GTA 5 does that better, but not intentionally; it forced you to be technical and careful because of how broken and OP the AI was and because of how little health and armor you actually had in a practical setting. You couldn't run around in the street when doing rampages anymore, you had to take cover and hide until the helicopters killed you because of their pinpoint accurate assault rifle fire. It's why I think V is actually the hardest GTA because the missions became hard due to the actual enemies and obstacles you encountered in them, and not due to wonky controls or a really short timer like in the older GTAs, which I felt were very easy otherwise.

>>380544809

Same happened to me, went back to it cuz I remember liking the story but everything else is terrible. I still come back to the ps2 trilogy and I enjoy them a lot.

everyone in this thread: waaah waaah gta should be all about shooting rocket launchers from jetpacks while beating a cop up with a double sided dildo.

Get fucked.

Rockstar just went for a more gritty and realistic approach for GTA IV. Doesn't mean It's bad. It immerses you better in the environment and makes your killing sprees seem more genuine.

Besides, the ragdoll physics alone make this one of the best GTA's. Running people over feels so much more satisfying than GTA V., and falling off a bike and stumbling across a road is hilarious. Just watch Playboy X in this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjy8RO6j8lA

Same with killing sprees, instead of people dropping dead instantly they get flung metres back, or just stumble around until they fall over. It feels way more interactive and fun.

>>380544809
>interiors
i felt they were pointless also, but they were a nice touch i hoped would get expanded on. gta v really dropped the ball on that one by not only failing to continue with boring interiors, but by removing food places all together. san andreas might have the most interiors of any gta game, even if many are duplicates. it was always fun to find some randown yellow marker and wonder where it led
>story is vague
agreed. killing petrovics son in bohan felt so fucking flat. the diamonds story in 4 was fun, but became god teir with its expansion in dlc
>orange sky
SOMEONE ELSE NOTICED. i swear after beating the game on ps3 i would always load in and have it be that ugly sunset color no matter what. it was like night and day lasted 2 minutes and sunset was an hour long.

i still like 4 more than 5

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Reminder that you could LITERALLY enter ANY NPC home in GTA SA

>>380558809
well no, you couldn't. You could purchase property which had a unique interior, but you couldn't just flat out enter any NPC's home.

>>380550180
it was

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>>380545809
>400 pound woman with cum in her eyes

>>380559127
>he doesn't know about burglaries

>>380559425
not him, but that still wasnt al of them. i was amazed there were burglary missions in fierro and venturas as well. i found out about it like last month. san andreas is witchcraft.

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>>380544809
I liked it

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>>380559425
there were like 25 different house models for the entire game and even then you couldnt enter EVERY building you saw. i tried like a motherfucker

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>>380544809
first time playing gta 4 stories?
>have wanted level
>driving full speed
>see better car
>bail out expecting to roll like every other gta game
>niko fucking bounces and flails everywhere
later
>driving normally
>hit a car head on
>fly the fuck out the winshield
the first time playing gta 4 on my firends xbox were great. he told me there was away to put on a seatbelt. liar. he also said swat guys with shields show up. lying bastard. fuck you pat

To be honest the worst thing about GTAIV is how Jersey (true to real life) is boring as fuck and you reach it last.

I knew GTA IV was a terrible game when I saw the "Beat it in less than 24 hours" achievement.

>>380544809
Needing a network connection immediately sucks the game down by many notches. Glad it can be patched out. After that, the game just isn't quite as fun as the game it followed.

>>380558493
>Rockstar just went for a more gritty and realistic approach for GTA IV. Doesn't mean It's bad.

Except it is because now instead of having some arcadey fun doing everything from selling drug Popsicle's to combine harvester hijacks we now need to sit down and make things seem more "down to earth". Meaning the game needs to do more work make it it seem like it has a reason for you to do anything remotely interesting.

>It immerses you better in the environment and makes your killing sprees seem more genuine.
Like hell it does. In fact in IV it actually feels worse because Nico's always going about leaving behind bloodshed. Having wonkey ass cars and shit wanted system didn't help either.

I do agree rag dolls where a good improvement though.

>>380554410
Have you ever seen a car accident in person? GTA IV is super unrealistic, all the cars react like they have hollow aluminum chassis.

>>380558493
Was it an uncle, friend, or cousin that let you play GTA IV when your parents still didn't buy you M rated games?