Grand Theft Auto IV sucks.

Yesterday night, I finally managed to finish the last mission. I’m now 70-something percent through the game, only having side missions and other stuff left. But I’m not gonna play that anymore. I am so damn bored from the game!

I’ve played GTA. GTA II. GTA III. Vice City. San Andreas. I enjoyed them all, except San Andreas, and after reading some reviews of GTA 4 it became clear that I would love it. And I did, for the first three days or so. I really enjoyed driving around Liberty City in 1080P Full HD listening to cool radio stations in Dolby Digital with awesome music and all.

Don’t get me wrong, visually the game is absolutely gorgeous, the best there is at the moment probably, the radio stations are great as always… There’s only one problem, and that’s a big one: The missions are so boring. So unbelievable boring.

They keep repeating themselves too much. GTA 3 and Vice City had missions that rocked so hard, they were always different and tough but yet manageable. GTA 4 has some cool missions, the bank robbery for example, or the last one. But 95% of the missions are in the end like this: You drive 5 minutes to the contact mission point. Then you drive 5 minutes to point A to pick something up. Then you drive 5 more minutes to bring it to point B. Then you drive 5 minutes back to the contact mission point for the next mission. And so on.

C’mon! One helicopter mission with shooting? And I don’t even shoot myself? Where are the tanks, the military? Why is there no mission to blow up a landing or starting airplane? Why do I only fly that idiot Brucie around all the time? Why are there 50 car pick-up missions that take hours to complete and that are not different at all?

Do young people nowadays enjoy simply driving through huge digital cities all the time?

And the police is a goddamn joke in this part. One star is like no star. Two stars are easy to get rid off, too. Three stars? Just drive fast on a long street. Four or five stars? Get to a paint shop. Boring! Too easy!

And then there’s some five missions that are so unbelievable difficult that you wonder who the hell made them and why he didn’t invent all of them. The best mission anyway, in any GTA game, was the golf club mission in GTA 3. That mission was difficult, funny, challenging, rememberable, it could be solved in different ways… Now that was a mission that you’ll never forget. I’ll remember GTA 4 as the game where I had to drive around 95% of the playing time. And that’s just sad, isn’t it?

You failed to impress me, Rockstar. Sorry. It’s great to see that you’re using all the technology to create these wonderful, colorful, vivd worlds for players - but next time, increase the budget for those who develop missions. Then it’ll be truly great.

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2.8 (3 people)

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COMMENTS / 7 COMMENTS

[...] - bookmarked by 5 members originally found by noahcyrus on 2008-08-03 Grand Theft Auto IV sucks. http://jakob.montrasio.net/2008/07/15/grand-theft-auto-iv-sucks/ - bookmarked by 5 members [...]

Bookmarks about Gta added these pithy words on Aug 26 08 at 1:30 am

While I agree with you about the not very depth mission design - boy, this virtual city has soooo many different and unique possibilities, like you mentioned a few - I don’t agree with you about not being impressed.

Maybe it’s because I don’t play games too often (I haven’t played any of the GTA IIIs for example) and thus I’m more easily impressed when it comes to games. Still, it’s not I had been “flashed” instantly as I wasn’t hooked up when I started to play GTA IV. I didn’t like the comic-like graphics, the cheesy controls, and the “serbocroaticrussianitalian” mix too much in the beginning.

It took some time. As the game progressed, it really drew me into it, not only for the great music. It’s the way the game is presented, with a very good story telling, overdrawn yet very appealing characters, the sarcasm and subtext in almost all of the dialogs. The love for details; like window washers, people talking on their phones, arguing - this whole lively microcosm that takes place completely unrelated to you and your actions (until you choose to force them); places you can visit that have nothing to do with the story. The media in this medium! Radio stations talking about events you just attended (and mostly caused), writing about them “online”, the making fun of existing things in our reality. (Also, you could sit for hours and watch television.) There is so much going on! So many things and so many details that are so incredibly witty.

Maybe you’re right about it being some kind of a “living in a city”-simulator, but it does so amazingly well. It’s not just running from A to B anymore, this is what game designers always dreamt about: actually living a story, in its truest sense (there’s still some compromise, of course), in a (sandbox) open world, and this requires some kind of movement and actions (I even got used to meeting my “friends”).

I imagine the game to be pretty boring if you only hunt from one mission to another, but if you give the game exactly what you criticise about it, to cruise around, let things happen, this is where the game starts to take off. Now playing the game for a second time, I even take more time, and although I know “what’s happening”, I only find more things I hadn’t seen before, so many places I haven’t visited, side quests I didn’t do before (they make 40% of the game and lots more of the playtime).

For me, GTA IV currently provides the highest grade of immersion and level of pleasure a computer game ever had.

Oh, by the way, about the lack of mission design: You should play this game online, as this just takes this incredible virtual city as base to generate an amazing experience. Including helicopter shoot-outs ;-)

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3.8 (2 people)

Ben (Who am I?) added these pithy words on Jul 16 08 at 3:48 am

ok gta 4 has excellent graphics but lacks in game play and design. perhaps the team is too large and disconnected. why is driving so important in missions but then the vehicle handling so poor.and what is the 200 pigeons about? ok i shoot them but i get no money nothing spawns at my safe houses. gta 4 sucks

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3.1 (2 people)

DON SMUCKER (Who am I?) added these pithy words on Jul 16 08 at 6:46 am

Dear Ben, either you misunderstood me or I didn’t make my thoughts really clear. I absolutely enjoyed the virtual reality in GTA 4 - in the first three days or so. I was amazed to hear the radio DJ’s talk about something that I had just done in a mission. The connection of everything is really, really neat, no question.

My point is, that after some time, the missions get so boring and similar to each other that there is almost no difference between driving freely around or driving around for a mission anymore. That’s what I want to say. They put so much time into designing this wonderful Liberty City, but then they didn’t really use all the cool things in awesome missions!

Why is there no mission that has something to do with the cool stadium, for example? Why is there no mission to free Gerry from the jail? Why is there no mission that somehow involves all these awesome skyscrapers downtown?

If you give me some time to drive around the city, I’ll probably find over 50 more things that are great but not being used at all. I remember that the old GTA games had much more interesting missions, they were quite different from each other and it was a joy to drive from one point to another, getting ready for the next one. Maybe you ought to give GTA 3 a try, you’ll quickly notice what I’m talking about.

I also don’t play so many games anymore, in fact, GTA 4 was the first game I finished in the last, what, 4 years? And because I don’t have so much time to play games anymore I find even more disturbing to spend the little time I have by driving around so much.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with GTA’s microcosmos, as you call it. But all the raving reviews point out way too little the similarity of the missions. This is the reason why I thought of writing about this issue at all. I hope you understand my point of view now…

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2.6 (2 people)

Jakob Montrasio (Who am I?) added these pithy words on Jul 16 08 at 1:01 pm

Jakob, I do understand your point.
The game’s diversity just draws from its details and the things that happen around the missions. If you don’t like them, don’t notice them or plainly just don’t care about them, as I said, I’d agree with you the missions being pretty lame, because for themselves, they are :-) Also, I agreed with you the missions surely would gain from more using all these settings. That said, GTA IV just isn’t a game you play just for the sake of finishing it, especially if you have little time. It does not offer at least 40 hours of gameplay, it needs them. Rather, it’s more like playing for playing it, exploring it, with the missions giving a guideline.
If you just demand a quick satisfaction and a mission driven gameplay, GTA IV is just to disappoint you.

(Yesterday, I spent nearly an hour reading Internet sites in GTA IV, like americantravelguide.net. Hillarious :-) Many things do not have a purpose, not everything’s got a meaning, not every action has a reward, but so what? It’s for recreation, not for rewarding. (Still, you can “use” any location for an online game, maybe you should give it a try.))

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2.5

Ben (Who am I?) added these pithy words on Jul 16 08 at 7:23 pm

Oh, by the way, have you considered using a taxi? Spares you the driving around ;-)

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2.5

Ben (Who am I?) added these pithy words on Jul 16 08 at 7:27 pm

Not only that, I stop playing when I got stuck in a mission in which I had to drive from Harlem to Downtown Manhattan, (like 5 to 8 minutes) only to fail the mission in less than a minute and go back to driving from Harlem all over again. Would it hurt them to save the game once you arrive to the actual mission? This is nos fun, this is just bull crap! I hope this cost them the game of the year award.

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2.5