I have played GTA3, Vice city, San Andreas (maybe others) and they all seemed to get better and better. The best was San Andreas...I loved the ghetto feel and story ALOT.
(no I am not black either) I liked the flying of planes and helicopters and the motorcycles added alot.

NOW the question is I bought GTA4 and was soo excited and played it for a while and just couldn't do it after like 30 minutes of play...it has since laid on my shelf collecting dust for months.

Is the story that boring?
Do I need to play more?

Somethings that turned me off... (if I remember right...its been a while)

Story
Controls
saves online (pain)
heard they took out helicopters or other vehicles

So what do you all think? Did I miss something? Should I try again?
What was so great about it?
What WAS bad about it?

Thanks everyone for your input!

I think GTAIV is a game you have to really work to get into. I still have to do it myself.

If you want a game that really captures the fun silliness of the PS2-era GTAs, though, I'd suggest picking up Saints Row 2. I just finished it, and it's a lot of fun, with enough stuff to separate it from being just a GTA clone like the first one was.

And there are helicopters. There's a whole multiplayer game where one person drives a car around while the other shoots them with a helicopter, which is much lolz.

The controls are about as bad as previous gta games.
No they didn't take out helicopters, go to the airport.

Themaster032 wrote: The controls are about as bad as previous gta games. No they didn't take out helicopters, go to the airport.

Umm, I am reading all over the internet you can't fly planes in it.

I wasn't asking if you could see them...I want to fly them!!! And wasn't sure what vehicle I heard they got rid of...planes I guess.

(still don't know for sure)

You can't fly planes but you can fly helicopters, for some reason they're at the airport

So THAT'S where they are.

And here I was looking behind laundromats.

I figured it out pretty quickly, i kept jumping out of them into really tall buildings for fun.

I agree about Saint's Row 2 being much more the style of older GTAs. I liked GTA 4 overall, but it just wasn't as much fun as the previous games. The story isn't bad, but the mini games were pretty weak, the music sucked overall and the cutting of several features that were in SA hurt GTA 4. SR 2 was a ton of fun even with the glitches.

Oh, and my order of preference for GTAs is - Vice City, San Andreas, GTA 3, GTA 4 and then the PSP ports to the PS2. Tossing in the Saint's Row games would be - Vice City, Saint's Row 2, San Andreas, Saint's Row 1, GTA 3, GTA 4, the crappy PSP ports.

Just my opinion though.

Edit - GTA Chinatown Wars on the DS was surprisingly awesome. I highly recommend that if you have a DS.

great input guys thank you

I will try Saint's Row 2...I saw it had "fair" ratings on the internet (6.5/10 gamestop) but it looks fun anyway.

Saints row 2 is a lot more fun than gta 4

gameplaya101 wrote: great input guys thank you I will try Saint's Row 2...I saw it had "fair" ratings on the internet (6.5/10 gamestop) but it looks fun anyway.

I played SR 2 on the 360, I see the review that gave it a 6.5 was for the PC. No idea how bad the glitches/bugs/technical issues were with the PC, but on the 360 they didn't see more numerous than the GTA 4 glitches and problems. The 360/PS3 versions got 8.0 ratings, I would bump that to 9.0 in my opinion. I would put GTA 4 at a 7.0 probably.

Dreammosaic wrote: gameplaya101 wrote: great input guys thank you I will try Saint's Row 2...I saw it had "fair" ratings on the internet (6.5/10 gamestop) but it looks fun anyway. I played SR 2 on the 360, I see the review that gave it a 6.5 was for the PC. No idea how bad the glitches/bugs/technical issues were with the PC, but on the 360 they didn't see more numerous than the GTA 4 glitches and problems. The 360/PS3 versions got 8.0 ratings, I would bump that to 9.0 in my opinion. I would put GTA 4 at a 7.0 probably.

Wow that's great! You guys don't work for that company do you? lol

Geez ...just looked into buying it... checked out Amazon for some reason and 13 of 21 gave it 1 star out of 5 OUCH! maybe it is bad on PC

Anyone like Saint's Row 2 on PC?

Probably DRM. If there's a bunch of 1 star reviews, DRM is a high possibility for why.

Oh, apparently it's just a really bad port. Same as GTAIV, I guess.

GTA IV is a horrible port on the PC. With that said though, the controls are top notch for what they needed to be. (GTA IV did take the franchise into a more realistic approach). No planes, but there are helicopters. Remember, you're in a single city, not a county or state so airliners wouldn't make sense.

Personally, I can't comment on the PC version of GTA IV having never played it myself. Most of the reviews I've read however have been generally negative. The majority of those cite controls as the biggest issue.

On the other hand, the PS3 version ROCKS. I've been playing it for a couple of weeks now and IMO, this is my second favorite GTA behind San Andreas.

I couldn't even get the PC version to run correctly. A run-down of problems I encountered in my short time before returning it to Amazon and getting the 360 version:

-DRM
-Having to have Games on Windows Live AND Rockstar's network to play online
-The inability to set the game to my correct resolution, which caused it to constantly crash (that was a major arrrrrrrrgh)
-The fact that all the graphics were set to about -20, even though my system can run Bioshock fine and I know GTAIV doesn't look THAT good (hell, I would've settled for average if it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't set it to the correct resolution because it said it would be too much on my system)

So yeah.

Quote: -DRM

I still don't see why people hate DRM so much. Maybe I'm missing somthing obvious but the only reason I can think of to hate is if you're having a LAN party and only one person has the game so you have to install it on multiple computers.

Themaster032 wrote: Quote: -DRM I still don't see why people hate DRM so much. Maybe I'm missing somthing obvious but the only reason I can think of to hate is if you're having a LAN party and only one person has the game so you have to install it on multiple computers.

I shouldn't have to authorize online for a singleplayer game.

As far as performance issues, it's namely a CPU bottleneck on GTA IV for the PC guys.

So is DRM the same for players who purchase the Steam GTA IV? Or do they have to put up with the same BS of those who purchase the dvd? The DRM alone is making me not want to purchase this game. Although if the DRM doesn't get in the way, or restrict how many times I can download the game (I'm always tinkering with my pc), I wouldn't have a problem with it.

bryteco wrote: So is DRM the same for players who purchase the Steam GTA IV? Or do they have to put up with the same BS of those who purchase the dvd? The DRM alone is making me not want to purchase this game. Although if the DRM doesn't get in the way, or restrict how many times I can download the game (I'm always tinkering with my pc), I wouldn't have a problem with it.

I don't know if the DRM is the same, but it has all the other problems. I think I read that Steam actually openly allowed refunds for people who bought GTAIV through them.

GTA IV for the PC still uses an online activation (though unlimited) for GTA IV. It also requires all three services to be running in order to play online.

Steam
GFWL
R*SC

Quote: Steam GFWL R*SC

That seems like a bad decision by the people who ported it...

I'm now convinced not to buy this game for the pc. Since I don't own an xbox360 or PS3, I won't be playing this game for some time.

It's not bad if you can get around the poor performance at times..

GTA4 was the first GTA I REALLY got into. I quickly sunk more hours into that game then all the others combined. I felt a lot more detailed and interesting. I preferred the more realistic approach.