GTA IV Wrapup
Posted by: Jarod at 8:50 am, January 15th, 2009
As previously stated, I’m a big fan of the GTA series. I’ve played every PC version they’ve released since the original top down shooter. Yet GTA IV’s single player just didn’t excite me.
I put this down to the genre getting a little tired. There are only so many mission variants. Rob a bank, get chased by cops, find pay and spray, win. Chase a bad guy, shoot his car, blow him up, win. Steal a car, deliver it with minimal damage despite baddies shooting you, win. I mean, how do you mix all those up so that they seem fun and innovative every time?
What did blow me away was the graphics. Stunning visual effects made for a constantly changing environment. It was strange that you’d realise it was raining cause the pedestrian you just hit’s umbrella went flying. Only then would you adjust your driving style to suit a little more oversteer.
It was also either the first time that a GTA game had rag doll player models, or the first time they’d been implemented properly. Suffice to say that shooting people in various limbs has never been more fun.
What I’ve now moved onto is GTA IV Multiplayer. That’s right, no more stupid AI being stupid in the middle of a shootout, but real live players who have strategies and change them based on what’s going on. The multi player is all too similar to the single player though… it can be either a hit or a miss depending on how you look at it.
First the negatives. Either people are cheating their asses off, or something is really wrong with the code. There’s only so many times I can stand unloading a machine gun clip or two into an enemy player’s chest/head while they’re standing still and them not die. Whether it’s cheats or the net code, it’s just not cricket.
While I’m whinging about code and servers and such (the segue is a stretch, but stay with me), there must be only three servers in the southern hemisphere. And sadly they’re held together with cans of baked beans, bubble gum and dirt. In the in game browser (which is shockingly bad) I’d occasionally get one or two servers with a green connection (which I have no idea what ping it relates to), maybe two or three with a yellow connection and all the rest are red. Give me a few more ‘green’ servers any day.
Ok, good stuff about multi player. When you’ve got a good team death match game going, it’s nothing short of brilliant. Sadly this doesn’t happen often as you require the afore-mentioned green server, the average IQ of the players populating the server to be over 40 and for the server settings not to be retarded. If I had a nickel for every time I saw a server with death match game play mode, the whole map opened up and no cars…. well I still wouldn’t be rich… but I’d still want to punch the server admins in the face.
So GTA IV is good, but it’s not that good. It’s the same old thing, but a whole bunch prettier. The multi player is better than it was in previous versions, but only cause there was none in previous versions.
I’ll continue to play online until the green servers totally disappear or I reach the milestone of shooting through more than 6 machine gun clips into one person and them remain standing. Whichever comes first.
January 15th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
I haven’t touched GTA4 yet. I don’t have a console to play it with, and my three-year-old computer will probably chugg if I try.
But I totally agree with you about the series growing stale- I barely played San Andreas because I didn’t want to grind through all the missions again. I played Vice City and GTA3 all the way through. Same with GTA (huh? I must have forgotten about GTA2!).
I generally do not bother myself with games with huge stories as I don’t have the patience anymore. I just want to play a good game!