the pc port of san andreas was rubbish. i spent ages trying to kill invisible characters who would shoot you but could only be run over if you wandered off to tag walls for an hour and then came back. hoping your ‘homies’ hadn’t accidentally shot themselves or something. also making the AI integral to parts of the gameplay (such as the gang-wars bits) didn’t work because they’d always walk in front of your line of sight, and you’d get shot trying to avoid shooting them. also most of the games humour was irritating rather than funny, and somehow the radio sucked and had no atmosphere in spite of some great music. you may also notice the atmosphere of the 90s is ruined by things like, modern cars from today, like scoda octavia’s in the current model/shape which did not exist during that decade. also ebay billboards everywhere, for example. the dialogue was poor. the hugeness of the game, rather than adding atmosphere somehow just made it irritatingly sprawling so that you would have to drive for hours to do such fun gangsta things as ‘take your girlfriend for pizza’ or lift weights at the gym. and again here probably your girlfriend walks infront of one of the constant absurd car pile-ups and runs off. even the stoner-geek humour of parts like the dope-farmer, which should have been easy cheap humour is somehow ruined by the script-writers. the game had it’s moments for sure, but compared to vice city, which was utterly fantastic, and indeed the other GTA games, San Andreas was a huge let down.
it’s just a matter of perspective i guess. my memories of san andreas were of staying up all night w/ friends and smokin’ out, not having a care in the world. yeah, you have to drive a lot, but that’s LA. the countryside/desert is no diff’t, so of course it’s gonna take a while to drive from vegas to frisco or what not. you can buy real estate (save points) all over the map to prevent driving, though. we’d rent the shit out of that game. then i bought it for computer, and have maybe played it 20 minutes since i got it. it’s not the same when you’re playing it alone on a computer. i’m curious if gta4 will be city to city or borough to borough. i’m guessing the latter.
We’re going to pick it up tonight, I’ll add my 2 cents after I get a good play on it. For the record, I’d rather play the PC versions of any GTA game rather than console. Though controlling the airplanes and heli’s is a bitch, It was easy to get around with them on the PS.
when i played mafia on pc, i did all the on foot stuff with keyboard & mouse, and the driving parts with my gamepad
it was awesome though, and the only game of its kind i’ve enjoyed. every time i’ve tried to pickup a gta game after playing mafia i’ve been sorely disappointed
Took some getting used to, everything is more realistic. The vehicles are harder to control but it’s acceptable only because it’s realistic.
There are so many minor details in the game that it blows my mind, the designers are obviously still in the same mindset they had from the first game “What kind of game would I want to play” they nailed it again.
Personally, I’m going to sell everything I own so I can get another PS3 and this game. Waiting in line for 2 hours was worth it just to check it out at a friends house.
I tried it briefly on my friends 360, really nice but it mostly just filled my minimum expectations. It doesn’t seem possible to pick up, say a trashcan and throw it trough a window. The amount of places you can enter doesn’t seem that huge, I would have liked to see more small shops with no particular purpose. And car surfing is too hard, you’ll just fall off like a dummy after a while. I was hoping for better “balance” programming, kinda like in Shadow of the Colossus. Hopefully you can skill up balance or something. But still looks like a great game so far.
I preordered mine off play.com and amazon to see which would come first amazon wont come until may 20th so i cancelled that play said it was sent off the 28th april by first class so i should have received it by now but havent so i think royal mail have f****ed up so now i have ordered it off game and it should come this monday i am so eager to play it even though i have so many uni essays in! been playing the metal gear beta demo which is pretty damn good, to keep me entertained until the russian car stealer arrives!
oh yeah i own ps3 and i heard people are experincing online problems
Just play 2 days ago…
… not so a big deal, really. Don’t expect to discover as much things as in San Andreas…
In fact it seems like san andreas with better graphics.
The map is smaller, we can’t use planes, no 2 player mini-game … not cool
In 1 day of gta 4 i’ve seen more bugs than in 1 year of san andreas.
Apart from that, very nice graphics … what more can I say ?
I only try it few hours, so maybe there are some incredible things later in the game … but for now I’m desapointed. I was expecting something incredible and it’s only really good.
Now that I’ve got quite far through, got used to the controls, and my eyes have got used to the graphics, I’m starting to see how immense this game really is.
the direction that was made by sanandreas was fresh and appealing.
but the successor shows that everything is the same old mission - sandbox - thing we love since gta3.
ok its not a real linear storyline, so you can have a ‘small’ impact on the process but all in all its the same bs:
new guy in town is taken all over. why cant we choose the way we want to make money, as cop, dealer, killer or even as a driver…
afaik, not a single car is customizable. ~ 3 goodies: 200 pigeons and 50 stuntjumps, (not to forget the minigames).
back to gta3 with new graphics.
GTA: Intravenous , a new title from Rockstar Games
You’ve had the fun, now deal with the consequences. Stuck in a criminal rehab hospital being treated for dug addiction, your only friend is the methadone needle in your arm. Climb the social ladder by trading medication with other patients, prostituting yourself to the abusive nurses, and pulling “natural causes” hit jobs. Beat up guards for fun, but watch out, you might find yourself strapped to a bed or receiving electroshock therapy, followed by solitary confinement… or worse yet, maintenance duties. Your goal, to acquire as much heroin as possible, to regain your street cred, and to escape the complex before you end up lobotomized.
