GTA4 Finished But Not Completed
by beck ~ May 8th, 2008. Filed under: Microsoft, Reviews, high definition, next generation, ps3, video games, videogames, xbox 360, xbox360.After 39 hours of gaming in just over one week I have finally finished the main storyline of Grand Theft Auto 4. It has been a long slog and I have been playing it at every opportunity because it has been so addictive.
I would imagine most people who play the game muck about and do side missions before trying the main story, however I find it hard to do that. I do the reverse and play the main story first. The GTA series has never been known for its great storylines with most of the games having a mediocre-been-done-before plot. But I felt this storyline was much stronger than before. It was not about rising up the ranks of some mafia-style family, the game is all about survival and revenge and there are no ranks to climb. Niko Bellic the main character has a dark past. He comes from Eastern Europe somewhere and had a harsh time during “the war”. They do not state which war, this is down to the imagination of the gamer.
I had to make some decisions during the game. I will not go into what these decisions are as they may spoil it for you. Needless to say, some decisions were easy and others were quite hard to decide on a path.
Visually this game is very impressive. It looks good, there is some amazing detail and it is very much the next (current) generation that I expect. There were some graphical issues like texture load and occasional slowdown sometimes but I enjoyed the game so much that these issues did not distract from the game at all.
Apart from the new hiding-behind-cover system and the unarmed combat, GTA4 did not bring a lot of new things to the table, but what it did do was improve on previous GTA games. My only complaint was the unarmed combat. This in my opinion was the worst aspect of the game. It was slow and cumbersome and whilst it was supposed to improve on the unarmed combat I felt it just made things far worse.
A fantastic game which I am sure have many more hours of fun and I await the downloadable content mission pack due in the Summer.
As for a score, well I do not think this game deserves a 10/10 like the majority of reviews out there have awarded it. I think maybe some reviewers got caught up in the hype and ignored the fact that this game is not perfect.
This is of course not a review but based on my experience with the game I think it deserves a solid 9/10. As far as I am concerned it loses a point for its horrible unarmed combat and the few graphical issues it has, even if they are minor issues.
P.S. This was the Xbox 360 version I played.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I very much enjoyed the game. I spent about 70 hours over just under a week playing it, completed all the missions and some sidestuff, such as the export cars for Brucie, the assassinations, about 20 pigeons..
I was looking forward to the Stevie text messaging car missions, but they glitched on me on the first one.
My opinion on the game changed while playing it. There are a variety of things that annoyed me, such as the city that initially felt like a living, breathing city turning into the same old thing and places such as Star Junction that seemed far too empty. This is in the context of GTA IV being the best game ever though.
I never utilised the cover system [even though the stats say I spent 11 minutes in cover?!] and just strafed back and forth behing boxes with the Assault rifle.
I love how the shooting controls have improved. I never actually used melee apart from the missions that require you to.
The graphics are not just impressive, but there are parts in the game where I actually felt like it was real. Like driving along in a car in Bohan with the sun coming through the above subway tracks or having a mission that had a big shootout outside in pouring rain and thunder and lightning at night with the lightning changing the whole look of the scene.
The missions were so, so, so much better than any of the previous ones, there was not one mission I felt bored with after the initial ten which effectively were just the GTA type tutorial the previous games had as well. Missions such as the bank mission were incredible.. and also incredibly difficult!
And this would’ve almost warranted my own blog post on it! I’ve not yet written a review on what I thought, although there are some things on my tumblr blog - cat on tumblr [Careful, spoilers!]. Yep shameless advertisement!
Did you go and see Ricky Gervais?
It’s a shame I didn’t get round to playing it on Live, but I didn’t really have the urge to, especially as I wanted to finish the story first and now I’ve had to [temporarily] sell my 360. I hope you still have the game in a few weeks, so we can explore Liberty City together.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Good god. 39 hours. 70 hours. There was me thinking I’ve played it loads at 5 hours…
May 8th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Sparky, I guess there are different opinions on ‘loads’! GTA IV isn’t like other games really!
May 8th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Yeah, but it’s only been out a week!!! 70hrs = 10hrs a day on the xbox!!!
May 8th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Yeah, but I was trying to finish it before the internet spoils the story for me and I kind of expected I’d have to sell my 360, so I wanted to make sure I finished it.
And yeah, I did ‘kind of’ go into a GTA IV overload! In all fairness though, I hadn’t played a game since January, so there was a lot of time to catch up on!
May 8th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
I did see Ricky Gervais but I could not shoot him as I wanted to as it was a cutscene. Oh and he “act” was truly awful as expected.
Sparky, 37 hours is not bad. There is an achievement for finishing under 30 hours, so expect a long game. lol
Something else which annoyed me about the game was the level of darkness at night. Its okay in strongly lit areas, but in some missions there was little or no street lighting and it was impossible to play them at night. On one mission I spent over 20 minutes looking for a stairwell to chase a guy. Putting the brightness up did not help.
Therefore I do recommend any missions are played during the day and I resorted to saving at my safehouse several times in one go just so I could forward many hours to daylight.
Thinking about it now, I think my 9/10 score was a little on the generous side.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I did think you might be disappointed you can’t shoot him! I thought he was funny, but hey, I liked him all along.
The brightness was fine for me, I changed the default settings slightly, but didn’t see any problems after that and I played at all times of the day.
Do you feel it’s lived up to the hype?
May 8th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Fortunately for me I did not get too much involved with the hype this time round. I avoided forums and the like and just waited for the game.
The only time I did get hyped for it was a couple of days before release.
The problem I see is that because of the major hype around it on the web and in reviews, reviewers seemed to have ignored the issues the game has. I feel it is very wrong for any reviewer to mark a game up as a perfect 10 when clearly some people are having problems with it. Its like they have a fear that if they admit its not perfect then it will invalidate any hype they had for it in the first place, so despite it having flaws they still have to go ahead with their perfect scores.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a great game and I really enjoyed the bank heist level but at the end of the day it is still the same old GTA with a bit of spit and polish and the same old issues and generally on the whole, the same old missions.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:39 am
But the issues aren’t with everyone. The worst issue I had was a glitch with the Stevie text message missions and getting into the wrong car a few times when there was loads of police around.
Sure, other people have problems, but it’s the same as it was with Mass Effect. Many people I know where complaining of glitches, but I didn’t have any.
It is a 10/10 for me.
As for the hype, I tried to not get too involved, but in the buildup from the very last trailer until the release I just couldn’t help it any more!
May 9th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Cat - fair enough
Regarding the hype, I’ve never been interested in GTA games and pretty much ignored it completely. Then the day before release I thought - what the hell - and gave it a go (picked up the last copy in asda the next day). So far I’ve just met Paulie? around 5-6 hours in, and tend to agree with most of the reviews. Saying that, I would probably mark it down a point due to the constant fuzzy haze that is a constant annoyance – especially when moving.
Beck - IMO If you play a game for 40 hours then it must be pretty damn good to keep you wanting to play. A lot of people keep complaining about 10/10 scores being perfect - but no one claims games to be perfect, it’s just a way of rating a game as one of the best available. Movies occasionally get reviewed with five stars but they are never perfect - It’s just one of the best films available.
Nothing is ever perfect… and as a developer, nothing is ever bug/glitch free. Ever. Apart from my stuff, obviously
May 9th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Packie is great. I loved him as a character and he is hilariously funny on some missions.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I completed teh story line afta 16hrs of gameplay but wt da hell am i supossed 2 do now????
June 18th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Hello Matt, it depends whether you like doing side stuff, personally I really just play the story and thats all.
You could do the following:
Insane jumps (50 jumps)
Pigeon shooting (200 to collect)
Car delivery missions
Drug courier
You could also do the random people missions, check a walkthrough for where to find the random people and their missions.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
ok cheers
how u do the car delivery mission with brucie and who do u do the drug courier missions wid?
June 18th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
The car exports should be an icon on your map somewhere, I cannot recall. When you open it up its near the end of the game via a text message.
Drug courier is through Little Jacob. Give him a call on the mobile and select job on the menu. I think there is other stuff to do aswell, I just cannot remember now. lol