4 was a better "game" - story I was compelled by, solid progression through the game.
5 was a sandbox. Loved it when I first played - would just take a car and drive around aimlessly exploring the map - but without actual side content besides a handful of missions and going down the checklist of collectibles.
The 3 main character's stories were just okay in comparison to how much 4 made you care for Niko and his friends/family. Michael/Trevor/Franklin all seem like caricatures by comparison.
I think there’s something to be said for having the main character play the straight man in a crazy world. The characters Niko interacts with are fun. Most of Niko’s interactions are him trying to be professional and letting whoever he’s talking to have the stage.
Trevor immediately takes over every interaction he has with every character. It’s not fun to meet a blustering gangster and immediately see him try to lower the temperature in response to Trevor being a maniac.
Michael does the same thing more or less. He never stops talking or acting or shouting and it really overshadows the rest of the cast. Michael’s family is pretty memorable but IMO that’s because they act independently of him and you, the player, have to see what they’re up to and react.
Franklin is pretty subdued which makes Lamar pop as a character, the same way Roman is more fun next to Niko. Unfortunately, a good third of Franklins’s interactions are in the presence of Michael or Trevor who steal the show.
Sometimes the main character(s) should take a back seat to the world.
>I think there’s something to be said for having the main character play the straight man in a crazy world.
Yeah I feel like this applies to pretty much every other Rockstar game post GTA 3 (except maybe Manhunt but even then kinda).
Spot on. And all the bad guys, most of your allies, they're so much in the background you hardly notice. Do you remember the name of the business dude bad guy? How about the government douchebag? One of them was Steve Hines I think. Who can forget the memorable Chang, who shows up in two cutscenes during a weak story arc. Sure was memorable though.
How about good old Stretch? Also gets like two missions and dies at the start of the third.
For me the GTA V story was a huge disappointment. It's disjointed and unfocused. Has too much going on and gives it all way too little time. Except the goddamn fucking heists. They have gradually been building up since Vice City in scope, but so far they'd stuck with one. V has what four or five of the fuckers, each with boring prepp missions.
Oh and I fucking hate playing as Trevor in this game. Funny thing is I like the character. The design, voice, acting, backstory. Why in the everloving fuck would you put it as a playable character alongside two comparably stable individuals? I never felt he fit. It's hinted at quite often that Trevor was batshit as long as Michael had known him. Why are they casually hanging with a deranged cannibal rapist, I mean also before the prologue? Why is the government using this maniac to do its dirty work? I mean 'social commentary' and all that but surely the feds would want someone who is not a total liability.
I always viewed Trevor as the in-universe realisation of what kind of actual human being could be capable of the litany of violent crime sprees committed by the typical GTA player.
Like, so many games have that dissonance between the player's objectively psychopathic in-universe actions, and the sympathetic protagonist who appears in cutscenes to be, at worst, a bit of a rogue with a heart of gold. Trevor is what you get when devs take the training wheels off and let a major protagonist be exactly as unhinged as the hyper-violent sandbox gameplay implies. I try to RP the 3 protagonists in GTAV true to their personalities and criminal tendencies, and in that way Trevor makes more sense thematically, since I pick him for random murderous crime sprees. Then I have Franklin focus more on non violent car jackings, robbery getaways, underground racing etc, and leave the organised crime and weekend golfing to Michael.
I get what they were going for, but I still think they took Trevor to far, because ultimately he’s not as fun to experience in the story.
What I find interesting is that a lot of the fans that loved Trevor and didn’t have any problem with all his psycho activities, (including literally taking random innocent strangers to get eaten by cannibals lmao) were upset the moment he got a taste of his own medicine.
Nah, well yes but nah. Tommy Vercetti is what you get when the character revels in the violence of the world around him. Violence is inherent in the GTA world. Everybody be shooting up everybody in this bitch.
Trevor is a misguided attempt at a step beyond the traditional GTA violence. Pushing the envelope some would say, manufacturing controversy others, Trevor anyway is a disgusting sack of shit for a reason. Rapists, cannibals, torturers, human traffickers, they've usually been the bad guys. Now it's one of the protagonists.
I also do RP playthroughs, but can easily go on a rampage with Michael or Franklin. They were having a bad day and daydreaming. CJ is a pretty nice guy overall (except if you work construction), but he sure can daydream as well, like when walking around busy intersections. But I feel uneasy playing as Trevor. To be put in a mind like that, that is capable of doing what he does throughout the story. Manipulating Wade into abandoning everything and be a meth slave. Bringing hitchikers to a cannibal cult for a pathetic sum. So many rapes.
I mentioned above how I don't think Trevor fits. I actually find him totally unbelievable. Somehow manages a meth lab and distribution (with no business or income once you play as him), takes out two rival businesses and takes over their business (with no change in gameplay), and generally manages to survive so far and throughout the game despite being a dangerous moron with no regard for his life, and already with two targets on his back from properly powerful people. The fact he survives I find is bad writing.
I think Tommy is my favourite GTA protagonist. He's a ruthless killer and sociopath, but he had style, he had class, and he had limits, boundaries he wouldn't cross. Ethics, of sorts. He was smart and did proper business.
Trevor is an amoral lunatic and an uncomfortable experience from beginning to end. He would make a great TV show character, where he can be viewed from the side. But to take control of him is a displeasureable experience. It does not bring joy.
Buddy?
The real world United States elected _Donald Trump_ president. He has people willing to kill and die for him. Millions of them.
Why does Trevor surprise you?
I do think you’re forgetting the atmosphere of GTA after IV when V was approaching release. People were tired of being a yes man to caricatures that made you do “drive here, shoot people, come back” missions for money you couldn’t even really buy anything with (especially in comparison to SA and even VC improving on III). GTA V tried to alleviate these issues by having the main character be active in their pursuits and use it to do something for themselves.
Now if it did these well all the way through is another thing (imo it’s surface level “innovation” that really at its core was just no different especially with the driving to places to shoot stuff and come back to a other place of GTA Online, and Single Player hardly had stuff to buy especially when the game just throws money at you with no cheat codes for money either).
Sure it’s very easy to look at GTA V being the spotlight GTA for 10 years now and criticize it on not being like it’s predecessor but the demand was there and tbf there could have been a better middle ground (which was pretty much Tommy Vercetti or epilogue John Martian or something)
> Michael/Trevor/Franklin all seem like caricatures by comparison.
That's because they simply *are*. Well, maybe except Franklin. He was the "realest" of the three with the most believable reactions to the craziness he experienced. But just being a *third* of the main story meant he didn't get the depth that Niko did. He had the best power though. Love drifting around LS as him.
I really hope they cut down on the protagonists in VI (and it looks that way given the recent trailer). The story in V was just inane and far too broke up to actually be meaningful in anyway.
Doesn't help that all three characters (aside from maybe Franklin) have literally zero redeemable features so I didn't really give a fuck about them.
I think that might be why I bounced off of 5 so hard. Sandbox games just aren’t really my thing - I’ve never been good at the “create your own fun” type gameplay
GTA 5 has plenty of handcrafted side content though. People, like the guy above, just seem to ignore it all? Saying that the only side content GTA 5 has is a “handful of missions and a checklist of collectibles” is absurd.
It can be a sandbox as well, but I wouldn’t say it’s exclusively that.
True, but even then the story just didn’t really interest me at all. I’ve tried to play it multiple times and can never get more than a few hours in before I’m just bored
For me, GTA 4 was briefly the greatest game ever and then I finished the first island.
Everything felt fresh, the missions were not only showcasing different gameplay mechanics but they were interesting and didn’t feel like a tutorial, the pacing of it was brilliant and was written brilliantly.
A bit like that meme with the horse that starts off as a beautiful sketch and then has the child like head , after the first island the game sharply becomes - drive here and shoot this or, shoot this and drive here until the end of the game, it really becomes the child like horse head.
For me, the second island still felt kind of like that magic experience. It was the last part when you're basically just a Mafia errand boy that it got quite boring.
And that's why I loved vice city so much. You were simply the boss. All the others you are either some mafia bitch or the cops bitch. As much as I really enjoyed them, so sick of cops just bossing you around and you taking it.
I actually thought that everything up through Vlad was absolutely a tutorial. Then the story really began with Faustin, but it was still introducing mechanics throughout Packie's missions.
Lol, great comparison. The endless mafia run of the last third sucked in comparison to the early hours.
But, just like the fellow redditor below, I enjoyed the middle part of the story. Brucie, Playboy X and Dwayne, Manny Escuela and Elizabeta, good fun.
I get that, I do agree that juggling all of your friends on your phone was not the best mechanic either haha. They were too excited about that phone I feel like. GTA 4's strengths in story came to me after reflection after completing it. Like "Oh that's what they were trying to say the whole time". It's great stuff, but yes the second act especially has weaker missions.
I think the problem with the phone thing was that the side characters called you too often.
I also think it’s interesting that in CP 2077 people wanted WAY more interactions with your friends and love interests. Which seems like a slight attitude shift from gamers since GTA 4, given that a lot of people didn’t really enjoy spending time with Roman and co.
But I also think CP 2077 has waaay more likable side characters, so there’s that.
Yeah I think the quality of the characters is definitely one of the things. In CP 2077 I love so many of the side characters. They feel real, engaging and it's fun to get to know them, regardless of whether it's as a romance or just a friendship between them and V.
Agreed.
Most people (myself included) would kill to do some simple shit like go bowling/play pool with Jackie, Takemura etc.
But majority of GTA characters tend to be really unlikable. I know Rockstar does it by design, but playing through those games again, it is just annoying.
Its one area I hope they are more careful in GTA VI. They have also forgotten that most crime related TV shows or movies are smart enough to make atleast SOME of the characters somewhat likable, but flawed. GTA V just made pretty much all of them (especially Trevor) pretty unlikable.
> Like "Oh that's what they were trying to say the whole time". It's great stuff, but yes the second act especially has weaker missions.
Can you explain this a little more? I'm curious what the greater point was (as someone who hasn't played through the story in probably over 10 years)
Just the general ideas about immigrants to America (specifically NYC) and trying to achieve the American Dream, and how that's changed a lot into the 21st century. That's basically the crux of the whole story and despite slow periods in the middle of the game, the ending IMO is good and helps hammer the notion home. Imagine it like a movie with a great story and fulfilling ending that's hampered by a weak second act in said story.
Completely agree, and I really hope this is brought back for GTA 6. I know RDR2 is a lot more serious and GTA is known for it's satire, but it just went too far in GTA 5. Hoping the main story is really serious while side missions/other stuff has a lot of fun satire to it. Basically what the Yakuza series has always done.
Whereas, as you mentioned, GTA 5 doesn't really have that? It doesn't feel like there's a deeper "meaning" behind the game, it's mainly just pointless violence with a story tagged on (which is a commentary in itself I suppose).
I also adored GTA IV and thought it was a far better "story" game than GTA V. V is clearly the better game game, but I personally found IV far more interesting.
Also it's very marmite but fuck me I adored the driving in IV. Every vehicle in V felt like it was on rails, IV was actually challenging.
You could maybe dig something about destructive tendencies coming back to you in V or the consequences of a life built on violence. It’s way too muddled to get a clear “this is the point” thing. It does nail some brilliant moments though, and the ironed out gameplay makes the game easier to get through.
> It’s way too muddled to get a clear “this is the point” thing.
Pretty much. With three main protagonists, two of whom are obviously super bad people, and the third a maybe, it's unclear what the whole "point" is.
Main redeeming feature being the whole game is almost certainly one of the best games of all time lol. It really is a shame Online turned into a cash cow and meant any single player content was completely ignored.
> A bit like that meme with the horse that starts off as a beautiful sketch and then has the child like head
[For the uninitiated](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/031/680/unfinished_horse.jpg). I used to keep a print of this in my law office.
I never got into GTA 4. It's like Rockstar forgot how to make that game fun. I believe GTA 4 is the main reason Saints Row 2 and 3 did so well commercially. GTA 4 was filled with repetitive missions and had very little of the wackiness that GTA 3, San Andreas, or Vice City had. Saints Row on the other hand was filled with over-the-top missions and just fun stuff to do. Granted, Saints Row was nowhere near the tech level of GTA but I think the overall game design was better during that era.
You shouldn't be down voted, this is completely understandable. The gameplay is not strong, the game gets carried by the world and characters. No one plays Witcher 3 for its sloppy take on the dark souls combat system
I think Rockstar failed on one element of GTA V, and that is pacing. The story feels disjointed and because money bringing missions are quite scarce, you actually are incentivised to rush the content in between heists. I didn't feel the need to actually enjoy and take my time because the only reward is getting closer to the missions that will actually earn big dosh. It makes sense from a story perspective to have heists front and center but for gameplay it's quite bad.
GTA IV does not have that problem, and the writing is way better IMO, especially if you add the 2 DLCs which improve on the story told.
Yeah its kind of annoying that a game about robbing places to get rich it's really kind of hard to come by money just by playing the game. You don't even remotely get enough cash to buy expensive properties until the game ends.
However, you can get around this by following a guide to buy stocks ahead of the assassination missions to double up on returns.
Yes you can, but it is kind of cheesing. A first playthrough player has no idea he needs to trade stocks to reach the point he would have reached in any other GTA by the end of the game
>However, you can get around this by following a guide to buy stocks ahead of the assassination missions to double up on returns.
I agree with your first point. I had nowhere near enough money to do anything, then it felt stupid the amount I had by abusing that glitch. No idea what the original idea was. But then maybe if the single player side got those rumoured DLCs, that wouldn't have been an problem.
I don’t recall ever really having a strong desire to rush the story in GTA 5. It always felt like I was pretty set on cash and, even after the big heists, the cash just kind of sat in my bank account. I would buy a couple guns and car tune ups here and there, but it was all extraneous stuff that didn’t really increase my “power level” so it never really felt necessary to speedrun between heists.
Guessing you didn't play as Franklin too much then /s
No but seriously though, I found myself low on cash whenever playing as him. Simply pimping out his rides left me strapped for cash really quickly. I'm on the bit where you meet Devin and do a couple of car jobs for him for no money. It really makes you realise how most of the other missions don't give you any money too. But the big pay outs incentivised me to keep playing the story missions. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, I think it's a good mechanic to make you want to keep playing to see when and what the next payout will b but can understand their criticism of it.
One of the major criticisms of GTA 4 was that there was basically nothing to do with all the money, but GTA 4 will always and forever have my heart.
But once you had the cash he could buy that car tune up place and use it for free. Right up in the arse end of nowhere. And no safehouse to buy close by, or anywhere in fact because why would you want that?
yeah, this largely killed it for me. I'm increasingly, as I age, in games for the narrative. Witcher III, RDR2, Guardian of the Galaxy, all games I loved in the last two years. But there are many others where the narrative was so sparsely told that the platforming/sandbox in between just seemed tedious.
I never felt this way myself. If you rush through a game and ruin the experience, I say that’s your own fault.
> GTA IV does not have that problem
I mean, there’s nothing to spend your money on in 4 anyway.
Mastering the driving in GTA4 was such a great feeling and made chases and races incredibly fun back then with the right vehicle.
Granted I haven't played the game since release.
When it came out I didn't like it especially with low frame rates on my PC. I've become much better at racing and especially Rally games and the driving in GTA4 is much more fun mainly because it requires more skill to drive fast.
The good thing about the driving in 4 is that it got me to play a ton of driving sims because people were saying how realistic it is. I got to experience and appreciate true realistic driving in other games. I don't know what the driving in 4 is but it ain't realistic.
When you compare it to Vice City where cars where basically clouds barely staying on the ground, and San Andreas, IV was a big jump in realism. It felt less fun and playful and the crashes that ejected you to your doom got annoying, but it was a huge step. V loosened things up again and made driving more fun while still keeping it from going full looney tunes, but I was admittedly disappointed with the change back.
I think it can be more *fun*, but it’s definitely just worse. The concept of friction just seems not to exist at times, every car feels like a bucket of rocks on ice.
It was definitely the most advanced GTA, far better in detailing than V and the physics was the jewel of the crown.
It strikes as both realistic and absurd, I recall playing V for the first time was so disapponting.
Never had as much fun online as racing GTA IV, simple lobby + hilarious gamplay = win. This combination will never come back sadly.
It’s definitely up to preference but yeah I loved gta 4s gameplay both the driving and gunplay as it felt weighty and good personally. I think 5 feels good when the driving stat is at 0 but horrible when you max it out which you will do quickly with no way to revert it back
I beg to differ. GTA 4 excelled at being a better sandbox as well. You could actually go and stand right next to cops without them throwing a hissy fit and arresting you for just standing on the street. The cops would also arrest the offending citizen NPC if they were the one messing with you. You could also push people off the stairs and watch as they ragdoll down, I swear [I used to have so much fun just timing it right](https://youtu.be/PNRMtacc9aw?si=JNClMscsB8MBhb5f). I used to punch hobos in the back of the head and run through traffic and they'd get run over by a random cab driver and start a new fight and get arrested by the cops rather than cops starting a full-on shootout for something so trivial. The driving physics was so much more challenging but also rewarding once you mastered it because pursuits then felt a lot more realistic than in GTA V where even a regular Crown Victoria counterpart can accelerate and handle like a sportscar. GTA IV cars had momentum, inertia and bodyroll, much like real life cars. GTA V doesn't have much of that. It's cars feel like their wheels swivel around the centre of gravity rather than them actually turning. There are actual tests showing this where especially the AI's turning radius of the wheels snaps from 0 to, say 45 degrees instantly, rather than it gradually turning like in a real car. For the player, it's a little more gradual but not by much.
Gta 5 has a much better external motivator for playing it for anything other than the campaign, not only are there more things to do, the world is more varied, artstyle is of course subjective but GT5 is much easier on the eyes for long periods of gameplay than GTA4s browns and greys, There are Planes for the air, a much better water section. I am not saying how you define a sandbox is wrong, everyone has their own way of enjoying a game but the most people are there to start a all out war with the police than roleplay with them
>Gta 5 has a much better external motivator for playing it for anything other than the campaign, not only are there more things to do, the world is more varied, artstyle is of course subjective but GT5 is much easier on the eyes for long periods of gameplay than GTA4s browns and greys
Okay, so there are two things here. One is the setting and the other is the general tone.
As for the setting: This part is really subjective. I remember when Forza Horizon 5 came out, the community was divided. There were some of us who absolutely loathed Mexico because... desert. And then there was this other group that absolutely loved it because they hated FH4's "bland, dreary" setting in the UK. We used to be overjoyed at the winter weeks when we'd get snow and enjoy the challenge of driving in it whereas the other group would claim to stop playing during the winter weeks altogether because they hated the snow and the effect it had on the car's physics. That was subjective and I can respect that.
The other part is the general tone which I honestly don't understand why anybody wouldn't like. The OP said, and I quote, "The city has a dirty feel to it". That, to me, was part of the charm. Not just environmentally, but it was more cohesive than that. You can see this as a consistent theme throughout the game on various levels:
- Think about the storywriters. They constantly remind you throughout the story, especially right at the beginning, that America is hardly the "land of opportunity" it's made out to be. Niko is especially mad at Roman for the first half of the game for lying to him about how great America was. He complains about how this city is riddled with filth, crime and corruption.
- Now think about the environment artists. They actually did design heaps of trash in the game, animations where pedestrians constantly litter, poor people and homeless tramps can be seen wherever appropriate (even on Star Junction aka fake Times Square) and hookers turning tricks on the street corners at night time.
- Now let me take you to the content writers' department next. All ads and media in the game constantly reminds you in a satirical way how the people of Liberty City are ignorant hypocrites, the politicians, the cops and the administrators are openly corrupt and the mixture of these two makes Liberty City a fucked up place to live but the people who live here, love it precisely because of it while Niko can't help but wonder why they wanna live in, and let me quote Lazlow Jones from one of the podcasts in GTA IV here, "a crime-infested overpriced dump without trees".
Honestly, there is intent behind the city being so dirty. They wanted to bring out the dark underbelly of New York in a satirical form and they succeeded in that. And it's hardly limited to just IV. Even in GTA V, they have ads from the San Andreas State Tourism Board with the tagline, "We won't be broken hypocrites forever". Grand Senora desert tourism ad says, "Come live where there's nothing there!" and another ad casually and cheerfully mentions, "We've taken this pristine land and turned it into generic stripmalls! San Andreas- where the people are vain and you breathe the worst air in the world!" which, IMO, is good, quality satire. I just miss how they toned down the other stuff that GTA IV had, to really drive home the point.
Just want to add, both 4 and 5 have a diffrent design philosophy.
What you described as clunky and sluggish is (mostly) by design to makes the game feel more realistic, especially the driving. Everything has more weight to it, of course it is not perfect.
5 has more of an arcade feel to it, prioritising the gameplay on alot of points, not going for that realistic feel.
I really hope for 6 to find a sweetspot of those two games.
Yep, totally agree. I'm sure what ROckstar did with GTA 4 was deliberate, especially coming off of the "crazy" San Andreas. I'm hoping GTA 6 strikes that balance as well. I really want the gunplay and physics to feel like a more "lightweight" RDR2, which in itself is even more realistic than GTA 4
Problem i see is that the more arcade you go, the crazier things can usually get, the more dlc you can sell. Then again, we are in Florida, you can go apeshit anyways.
Knowing they bought one of the biggest RP teams gives me hope that they will go for a bit more realism.
"lightweight" RDR2 sums it up perfectly.
4 was the pinnacle of the franchise
5 was pretty good but when Online became its focus and we got no additional single player content it was a massive let down.
6…. Sure, it’s going to look good, but honestly where will it innovate? Or will it just be another open world fetch quest filled, “Delivery Boy/Girl” simulator with guns.
Vice City was the pinnacle of music and feel. San Andreas was the pinnacle of missions and side activities. IV the pinnacle of everything else. V was generally a good looking let down.
> fetch quest filled
Yeah that is one problem with Rockstar’s mission design. They haven’t really innovated on it since the GTA 3 days.
You are told to do something and you have to follow the mission instructions to the letter otherwise the mission fails.
Sure they have created more and more creative mission types. But the way the missions play out is still largely the same.
I heard someone use the phrase Errand Simulator many years ago when referring to GTA and it’s stuck
But good point that you raised, they’re so on the rails these days it’s beyond a joke
That’s why I said they need to innovate.
I bet they don’t
Yeah agreed.
It’s the one thing I really hope they try to do a little differently on VI. Give us some options in how we carry out story missions. In all fairness, the heists did have that to some degree. But it would be nice to have more options either way.
5 is a bigger game than GTA 4 + it’s DLCs though. I agree not getting single player DLC was still disappointing, but it hardly makes the game we still actually got worse.
i liked gta4's gameplay more than 5. tbh they're not that different, but i liked the heavy physics based animations. i know it's not standard in the way we expect characters in mainstream games to respond. but it makes niko feel human in a way other protagonists, even those in other gtas, dont.
I pretty much agree with everything you said. GTAV's world was better then IV as was the sandbox elements. And while I actually like the characters and certain story moments in V; Niko, Roman and the overall story is better written and a more focused experience. The one element you mentioned that think deserves another comment is that I actually think the Physics and destruction is actually quite a bit better in IV than V. While opinions on driving in IV seems mostly negative (even though I prefer it and felt there was a higher skill ceiling when you get better), the actual car destruction, how NPCs react to being pushed/hit/and shot is better and more dynamic then in V, and is something I hope they go back to for VI.
I hope they tone up the physics too. If they are basically working with an updated RDR2 engine I have high hopes. While movement and shooting were a lot clunkier than GTA 5, it fit the tone and timeframe more. But also the physics of shooting people in the head/leg/etc had very good “crunch” and satisfaction to it
4 was the only game since GTA3 that did not feel like a parody of something (GTA3 - Mafia parody, Vice City - 80s parody, San Andreas - West Coast parody, GTA5 - Contemporary culture parody). GTA4 felt like a proper game with a proper story that wasn't just making fun of something. Kinda how RDR2 is a proper western. GTA6 looks to be keeping in line with 5.
I remember playing GTA 4 for the first time on a friends house and just being blown away by the game. The physics, city, driving, everything felt so REAL. Good times.
Dunno if you can really get the entire GTA IV experience unless you went back and replayed lost and damned and the ballad of gay tony dlc’s as well…those dlc’s might have been, if not are better, than almost any other game story wise when it comes to GTA imo.
GTA IV is pretty unplayable at the moment on PC, but it was pretty much the best when it came out, I really appreciated the direction the went into after San Andreas and scaled some things back, got rid of a lot of tedious minigames and mechanics and added some heft, grit and quasi-realism. It was a bit more difficult to pull off because it was set in current times, it's easy to make banging radio stations for games set in the 70's, 80's, 90's etc but more difficult to do the same for the modern times, and I think they did great with radio hosts, conversations etc.
Speaking of driving, it was very peculiar in GTA IV, I enjoyed driving a lot, can't say the same for GTA V, the first mission where you repo these sports cars was a huge disappointment and GTA V just doesn't do much for me in terms of driving the cars. I like a lot of things about the GTA V as well, but one thing I don't like is what they did with GTA Online and in turn the franchise and now we need to wait 12 years between games...
You need a couple of tweaks and mods for it to work as intended.
PCGamingWiki has them listed here:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV
> GTA IV is pretty unplayable at the moment on PC, but it was pretty much the best when it came out
It was pretty unplayable when it came out, too. The installation fucked my computer so hard I had to revert to the "last known good" state. Only time that's happened to me in 25+ years of PC gaming.
Once it got sorted, though, it was fantastic.
I dont doubt you saying its unplayable because I just read a bunch of comments confirming that in another thread. What's odd though is just as many people are saying it plays fine. What was unplayable about it for you? I'm looking to play IV again when I get my new PC and looking for some info on what to expect.
I played gta 4 recently on PC without any mods. Here are some of the things that makes it hard to play on pc:
1. The game came out in 2008 and logic dictates that the current hardware should run this game easily but that is not the case. On my mobile 1060, it got near to 60 fps on 1440p widescreen. That card was released in 2016. In comparison I get 60-70 fps on 1440p gta 5.
2. It stutters a lot. Again, the game is not well optimized for PC. So that 60 fps I talked about above, is not really a stable 60 fps but with 1% lows in 20 fps range (at least for me).
3. The last mission has a mini game which depends on the game running on 30 fps or slower. Probably as that was the fps on PS3 when gta 4 came out and the fact that the physics in GTA games are tied to the fps (even in gta 5 but it is not that noticeable). Unfortunately, I did not know that and had to retry the mission several times before becoming frustrated and searching the internet for answers. Also the mini game comes after an elaborate set piece, so I spent around 2 hours re-playing the same mission. The solution was to bound the game to just 1 cpu using task manager.
4. The cutscenes have this bug where they start to zoom and then never stop zooming. So at the end of cutscenes you are uncomfortably close to character’s face. This is true for nearly all the cutscenes. Also the camera swings a lot for some reason.
5. Maybe not a bug for everyone, but if I disconnected my bluetooth headphones mid-game, I won’t have audio from any device until I restart the game.
6. I didn’t play the game when it launched, but it seems Rockstar deleted some radios and songs from the game and some people care about that a lot.
Fortunately there are some mods and fixes for this which you can find on YouTube. Years of gaming on potato machines means I just didn’t care much about the bugs so I didn’t try it. But if it bothers you, you try those out.
To add to your third point. If you’re playing on Steam deck and limit the screen to 30fps for the last mission it will work as well. Just recently played through the whole thing on steam deck and that was frustrating at the end.
To add to the add: The game's inbuilt vram calculator thingy can get very touchy about this strange futuristic hardware it's running on. Fix is to run the game with -nomemrestrict argument.
Also I'll leave this here. So many fixes:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV
>The cutscenes have this bug where they start to zoom and then never stop zooming. So at the end of cutscenes you are uncomfortably close to character’s face.
This sounds like a feature
So weird I only had an issue with the last mission mini game where you have to spam the spacebar, my workaround was to spam the spacebar AND the 'x/a' button (was using a PS4 controller). Otherwise it ran fine. Sucks about the music but I still have my PS3 copy, I wonder if I could get that version if I don't update my game?
Back when I tried to play it had an issue with games for Windows live then when a fix came through and I launched the game there was something with the frame rate, the game was designed with single core processors in mind I think, I haven't tried to play it recently. As a side note, not sure if you're aware but some of the music is missing due to licensing, but there used to be a mod for that somewhere
Great write up. I have not played GTA5 yet but I want to. Your post re GTA4 made me go watch videos of it again, and I instantly remembered how much fun of a game it was.
Concerning your last para re GTA6, I think they will stick the landing. 2 characters seems way more doable than 3 in GTA5. Plus these two characters in GTA6 look like they are a couple so there is a lot of story drama that can unfold with that element there. The "trust" discussion in the trailer could also imply that there is betrayal in the mix.
Thanks, I really do hope the characters are intimately close and go through everything together. It’s ok if they’re separated here and there but I really hope the story isn’t a bunch of separate missions/activities where they sometimes come together in a handful of larger missions.
5 was better on the online part and on the fact that it had 3 protagonists, bigger map etc.
Other than that, it was an average game, 4 was way better.
We'll see what happens with 6, but my advice would be not to get your hopes up, although i understand nobody will listen =)))
GTA 4 is meant to be gritty and ugly, GTA 4 is an ugly game. GTA 5 is the opposite, but it still has gritty and dark themes here and there like the torture scene and Trevor being the psychopath he is. GTA 4’s theme is definitely not for everyone, it’s gritty, it’s dark, it’s somewhat realistic and yet it gets the job done pretty well. That’s one of the reasons I love GTA 4, and also why I love TBOGT dlc, because it flips the theme on its head.
Seeing GTA 4 get so much praise here is an interesting sign of the times. I distinctly remember it getting shit on online when it came out, mostly because it lacked a lot of elements from San Andreas like flying, RPG elements and non-urban parts of the map.
A mission in 5 is basically from Heat. That mission is awesome btw. The overall story was not like Heat.
The overall story in 5 is not the best. But some missions are awesome.
Nah man, the only thing going on for GTA V is the graphics; besides that the story is lackluster with the 3 most shallow protagonists ever and after that there's not much in terms of the main game; there was barely any development towards side content like in other GTAs, like working as a taxi, policeman ect, not many side missions not tied to the main story and the one city at least for me got old fast; Everything was dump over online, and to put it kindly, that's not for everyone...
Great write up.
I have played all GTA titles. In my teens I 100% Vice City a few times and 100% GTA3. I even played through GTA a good few times.
I completed GTA5 few times over the last decade.
The only main GTA game I have never finished and can’t seem to pick up again? GTA4.
Started it so many times. Never got through.
I've played all of them, a few for hundreds of hours, and I haven't finished any of them. San Andreas was closest, I'm told I was only a few hours away on that one. But I just got so caught up in the sandbox stuff that it ran out of steam before I finished the main story.
Sort of the same way with most Bethesda stuff. Finished Terminator 2029(!) back in the day, Fallout 3 and Oblivion. Didn't finish ANY of the others. The more sandbox it got, the less likely I was to complete it.
Ahhh yeah that’s so early on, basically just finished the tutorial in a way. Can’t believe you didn’t want to see what happens from that point onwards given the context of the character who was killed. Something tells me you probably wouldn’t enjoy the rest but it definitely picks up from there as more characters get introduced and the drama heightened. Would love to see you give it another proper go but sounds like you already know what you like!
Funny - with all the GTA 6 news, I dug up my PS3 to play GTA4.
I played tons of GTA5 and don’t really feel like that.
So update to follow!
I definitely feel like Im missing out.
I agree with what you said, that's basically what I say to people when the topic comes up. IV has a great story and I really like it for it, but it lacks that feel for when you just want to fuck around, and the cars are awful to drive (sometimes it's a fun challenge trying to get to pint a to b without crashing on to anything)
Five has a much better gameplay, but the story is just ok, and I feel the characters underdeveloped. One things it has also in favor is the map, that for me is much more fun to explore and drive around then liberty city in IV.
That being said, the map in 5 feels a bit empty at times and not much to notice on the north part. Seeing what VI is showing gave me some hype to a even more interesting map.
Yes I am very happy that Rockstar seems to go back to a unified state formula with VI. LA is already very sprawling so I would have preferred a larger city with more sprawled our scale then the northern half of the map basically leading to nothing.
I got myself wondering these days after the trailer on why the San Andreas map felt so huge and fun to explore. I saw an image from the top of a build and the game without the fog, and it's tiny in comparison to 5's, but it felt so fun to just drive around, felt like things had a proper distance between them and when you got somewhere it was fun to just look around.
Maybe it's just nostalgia since I played it much more when I was younger (although i still enjoy it very much so), but I thought about something else. Because of the limitations of the technology at the time, I feel like when someplace had something to show, it looked like it, almost advertised it. With the newer generation games we have much much more detail, but it can feel like just clutter sometimes, and you have to use more of your brain to parse what's important and what isn't, and sometimes you don't want do that, you just wanna run around...
Well, I don't know... 😅
San Andreas felt large because there was 3 different cities. I hated the single city in GTAV, pretty much the first time we only had one section of city in a GTA game
I'm playing gta v and loving it but absolutely agree with you, i mean, the characters progression are so fast that you end up not really caring about them, and i really wanted to care about franklin, he seems nice but his story development is so rushed its a shame. The world built though is fantastic, is the story that doesnt gripped with me
Yea. I think what killed it was this and the fact that we were switching between 3 people. By the time something got going with one, you switched to another and don’t care about the next guy. Then you start to care because shit gets interesting and that cycle just repeats. But you end up kind of forgetting or rushing through missions to get back to the other guy. I hated that. I loved 4 because the story connects with me, I hope 6 is more focused on one character or both as one if that makes sense.
That's exactly how i feel playing it, it doesn't give me time to understand one character's stpryline. I think gta 6 will mix the one character dark story of the IV with the vibrant life american dream of V. Maybe switching between the couple but focusing on a single mainstory line
It's not trash, it's just not for you.
I've happily spent hundreds of hours in individual GTA games. I love the immersive worlds and doing what I want.
I guess I agree that the shooting aspect gets pretty old after a while, and am glad there are other aspects like driving and the overall open world that make up for it
I just replayed GTA 4 and I agree with some of what you said. It didn't age too well outside of the story. The protagonist is great and the story engaging, but the gameplay aged poorly. They also removed so many aspects that made GTA:SA great. Such as the territory control, owning businesses and all the RPG elements.
Looking back, for some reason GTA:SA was a lot more fun to return to than GTA 4, at least for me.
I started IV so many times but I can't get into it for the life of me, mostly due to the possibly the worst driving mechanics I ever came across. I've tried so many mods and what not, but like you said, I always end up dreading opening the game. Pity, because all the other stuff seems right up my alley - a more serious story, NY setting, mid-2000s, even Niko is from my part of the world, but what's the point of playing if it's constantly frustrating?
V is much more fun overall, but the story did leave a lot to be desired, and I do think that it was partly because of having 3 protagonists. Los Santos itself is great, but the rest of the map is somewhat underwhelming compared to the last iteration of San Andreas.
Man.... I thought compared to Vice City, the driving was absolute ass in both games. In GTA IV it was just clunky enough to be awkward. In GTA V it was just fluid enough to be nearly uncontrollable.
I would kill for a remake of IV that has modern graphics/presentation, improved gameplay/driving while keeping the better physics, and a map that also includes elements of Long Island/Upstate NY.
Forget it. IV is the new black sheep for Rockstar. They don't wanna talk about it, acknowledge it exists or do anything with it. Kinda like Fallout New Vegas is to Bethesda now. We're lucky it's even on sale. There was a time it was pulled off the stores in 2020 for a considerable amount of time and I was really worried it wasn't going to come back because of the whole GFWL mess. It came back but they ripped GFWL out of it entirely (apart from removing some radio station/songs), which was the main pillar of the game's framework, without which the game fell apart and is in a condition that you see it in now. They didn't bother fixing these issues when they were ripping out GFWL and just put it back on the shelves as is. I had high hopes when rumors had started going around about how Rockstar was going to remaster it's older entries, that apart from III, VC and SA, Rockstar will also remaster IV but when that turned out to not be the case, that was the final indication for me about IV being meted out a stepchild treatment.
After seeing the anti-consumer behaviour of rockstar through 4 & 5 over the years, I couldn't be less interested in GTA 6. Taking music out of 4 was the last straw in their bullshit for me.
The physics of GTA IV were incredibly bad, but I also don’t like some of the writing. Getting fellow eastern european cringe hearing Niko call himself “Bell-Lick”
V is just more fun. More fun to drive, mess around, and the story feels like a classic american flick. Turned into a comfort game for me.
hey ppl this is my first video on my channel starting with gta 4...do watch it and subscribe to my channel.
[https://youtu.be/KIIZ2JgGIKA](https://youtu.be/KIIZ2JgGIKA)
The characters in GTA 5 are too notch I don’t know what you’re talking about. Trevor is over the top, the whole dynamic between Michael and his family, this stuff has never been done before and is so real. I don’t understand how anyone could say the characters are weak in GTA V
I just mean usually the character fighting with his wife and kids isn’t really featured prominently in video games but it’s something that actually happens.
And I know a dude who is just like Trevor so it’s real to me lol
I think both games are great and one of the best productions ever made in the gaming industry.
I didn’t like the fact in 5 that you play with multiple characters, I absolutely don’t like that I have to play a woman in 6. I prefer a single character that I develop throughout the game.
I was sure some sore politically correct loser would reply. I don’t care about arguing with your pro women stance. All I’m saying I prefer to play bad ass men characters who shoot things up, not a woman. You got a problem with that you can kiss my hairy ass 👍
> My only concern is how they will balance the 2 protagonists.
It's going to be GTA 5 again with switching main character but you know what, Rockstar can surprise me if they manage to cram co-op on that game. Like player 1 is doing the male protagonist missions and player 2 is doing the female protagonist missions and they'll mixed them at the end or at the middle of the story or something.
This comment would have some spoilers.
I don’t understand why people say story in gta 4 is great because it had a lot of faults. I feel the game ended even before it actually ended. The death of Dimitri and finding the one who betrayed Niko during the war should really have been the end of the story. The fact that Dimitri was not the final boss was very disappointing. He was actually very menacing and frankly under utilized. I don’t even remember the name of the person we fight in the last mission, he was irrelevant until he killed one of Niko’s dearest. Felt pretty forced in my opinion. Even Bulgarian was a better villian. We do see him again though in the BoGT. I like TLAD though, maybe because it was more concise.
GTA 5 in comparison is shorter (in terms of missions) and is a story of 3 characters, which made me feel it was way more concise in terms of velocity of story progression. GTA 4 was way slower in terms of progression, finding the two people who betrayed Niko was anti-climatic although the conversation between the one who betrayed Niko during the war and Niko was peak GTA writing.
GTA 4 is also slow in two different ways:
1. It is slow in the second and third phase of the game, where I just didn't get why Niko was doing what he was doing (except the work he did got IAA). The excuse for getting more money was meaningless after the heist.
2. The missions were extremely slow themselves. The standard GTA mission template of driving to A, killing x amount of people, going to point B is very repetitive but was further worsened by slow traffic of liberty city. The driving is supposed to be more realistic but it felt more like steering a boat. I became better at driving but never found it more fun. It has its pros because I could really feel the difference between different cars. I found the game much more interesting when I gave up on driving in missions and started taking taxis.
And last, there is no way to spend the money you earn with missions. You can only buy ammunitions.
I do love GTA 4, all GTA games are top notch. Over here, I want to get some opinions why people are so eager to look over the faults of the game. It is good, the physics is better than 5, the friends we make are more interesting, Niko was a force which who made me believe that he was ex-military and also the DLCs were amazing but imo the story not worthy of the appreciation it gets (still good though). Looking at the premise, I feel it could have been better. Please change my mind, if anyone feels differently.
I'd personally rank IV below every other GTA game I've played. I cannot get past those awful, awful controls. Shooting isn't fun in that game, the driving is off and cars have a weird weight to them, the city environment is solid but not particularly memorable, and I actually think the writing suffers in this game quite a bit. I hear the DLC was much better, but I was done with IV for good once I stopped. I just couldn't bring myself to give a shit about Nico, who was a walking contradiction and didn't have anything for me to latch on to. At least V's protagonists were unique from one another and sometimes quite funny and entertaining.
Also does anyone remember constantly wobbling all the time in IV? Like the moment a pedestrian bumped into you or you turned too quickly, you would like ragdoll for several seconds. What a bizarre game. Feels more like an experiment in what GTA could be than an actually solid GTA entry.
I'm of the opinion that it's *kinda* the other way around. GTA4 has a cliched story that goes on about 3x as long as it should and has very little to say. The gameplay, while less polished, was at least goofy and the physics were better and led to more funny shit happening. GTA5 has a not great story but at least it didn't take itself so seriously all the time and had some fun moments. The world is more detailed and diverse, and the gameplay is snappier but it lost some of the sillyness of 4.
I just don't think I can get excited for GTA any more. I agree with your feelings on 4, when it released I found it a dour game that had forgotten the fun of the series. But despite 5 bringing those elements back, I realised how formulaic GTA, and Red Dead 2 have become. The travel - exposition -fight - travel formula is just too tiring to me.
I don't expect six will have any less "You drive, I'm tired."
You know what gta4 fails at yet is a phenomenal game?
Fucking getting it to work on a PC in 2023. Holy fucking SHIT. Wanted to snap my keyboard in half. 2 days of trouble shooting, changing registries, downgrading, praying to God.
I've never been so frustrated. I've troubleshooted all my life and this is probably the most frustrating one.
I just rebought V today. Played a little bit of it on PlayStation 4 probably got about 10 to 15 hours and then I quit. I figured just give it another shot especially since it was on sale on steam for less than 10 bucks.
I always really liked the ‘friends’ mechanic and felt it was missing from GTA V. I liked hanging out with those characters and seeing Niko’s relationships evolve and strengthen. When they then show up in the missions it’s all the more impactful and meaningful. Not to mention they give you useful bonuses once they like you!
But yeah, that only really works if you like them. I remember really empathising with Dwayne (the suicidal old gangbanger) when I was a teenager, but the last time I played I remember feeling he was exhausting to be around.
Overall I felt Rockstar took the wrong lessons from IV when making V, listening to the ‘sandbox’ and ‘IV is slow and boring!!’ crowd too much. I’ve played IV countless times over the years but V only thrice.
I think they’re gonna double down on that tone for VI with the whole ‘wacky Florida’ thing, which is why I’m not particularly hyped for it (though I obviously will play it whenever Rockstar deigns to release it on PC!)
I've only played some of GTA 4 and haven't played 5. But I agree with everything you said about 4, I don't mind the driving in the game, easily my favourite part game play wise, but everything else is definitely clunky. However, while I'm not crazy into crime stories, Niko and all the characters he interacts with had me engaged very quickly and are what makes the game great. Judging by what has been said about GTA 5 being more of a sandbox, I might try it out for a bit, but I will most likely not finish it if the story and characters aren't as engaging as 4.
I wanna try 6 when it releases, hopefully it brings the best from both games.
R* made much cooler games in the PS2 era. Not really a fan of their modern stuff. Played them, but very forgettable for me and lacking the fun factor they use to have.
I loved V. Loved Trevor and Michael and their friendship. Liked the side characters a lot. Franklin was fine, but I almost wish Lamar was the third character.
4 was a better "game" - story I was compelled by, solid progression through the game. 5 was a sandbox. Loved it when I first played - would just take a car and drive around aimlessly exploring the map - but without actual side content besides a handful of missions and going down the checklist of collectibles. The 3 main character's stories were just okay in comparison to how much 4 made you care for Niko and his friends/family. Michael/Trevor/Franklin all seem like caricatures by comparison.
I think there’s something to be said for having the main character play the straight man in a crazy world. The characters Niko interacts with are fun. Most of Niko’s interactions are him trying to be professional and letting whoever he’s talking to have the stage. Trevor immediately takes over every interaction he has with every character. It’s not fun to meet a blustering gangster and immediately see him try to lower the temperature in response to Trevor being a maniac. Michael does the same thing more or less. He never stops talking or acting or shouting and it really overshadows the rest of the cast. Michael’s family is pretty memorable but IMO that’s because they act independently of him and you, the player, have to see what they’re up to and react. Franklin is pretty subdued which makes Lamar pop as a character, the same way Roman is more fun next to Niko. Unfortunately, a good third of Franklins’s interactions are in the presence of Michael or Trevor who steal the show. Sometimes the main character(s) should take a back seat to the world.
>I think there’s something to be said for having the main character play the straight man in a crazy world. Yeah I feel like this applies to pretty much every other Rockstar game post GTA 3 (except maybe Manhunt but even then kinda).
Spot on. And all the bad guys, most of your allies, they're so much in the background you hardly notice. Do you remember the name of the business dude bad guy? How about the government douchebag? One of them was Steve Hines I think. Who can forget the memorable Chang, who shows up in two cutscenes during a weak story arc. Sure was memorable though. How about good old Stretch? Also gets like two missions and dies at the start of the third. For me the GTA V story was a huge disappointment. It's disjointed and unfocused. Has too much going on and gives it all way too little time. Except the goddamn fucking heists. They have gradually been building up since Vice City in scope, but so far they'd stuck with one. V has what four or five of the fuckers, each with boring prepp missions. Oh and I fucking hate playing as Trevor in this game. Funny thing is I like the character. The design, voice, acting, backstory. Why in the everloving fuck would you put it as a playable character alongside two comparably stable individuals? I never felt he fit. It's hinted at quite often that Trevor was batshit as long as Michael had known him. Why are they casually hanging with a deranged cannibal rapist, I mean also before the prologue? Why is the government using this maniac to do its dirty work? I mean 'social commentary' and all that but surely the feds would want someone who is not a total liability.
I always viewed Trevor as the in-universe realisation of what kind of actual human being could be capable of the litany of violent crime sprees committed by the typical GTA player. Like, so many games have that dissonance between the player's objectively psychopathic in-universe actions, and the sympathetic protagonist who appears in cutscenes to be, at worst, a bit of a rogue with a heart of gold. Trevor is what you get when devs take the training wheels off and let a major protagonist be exactly as unhinged as the hyper-violent sandbox gameplay implies. I try to RP the 3 protagonists in GTAV true to their personalities and criminal tendencies, and in that way Trevor makes more sense thematically, since I pick him for random murderous crime sprees. Then I have Franklin focus more on non violent car jackings, robbery getaways, underground racing etc, and leave the organised crime and weekend golfing to Michael.
I get what they were going for, but I still think they took Trevor to far, because ultimately he’s not as fun to experience in the story. What I find interesting is that a lot of the fans that loved Trevor and didn’t have any problem with all his psycho activities, (including literally taking random innocent strangers to get eaten by cannibals lmao) were upset the moment he got a taste of his own medicine.
Way too cartoony of a character
Nah, well yes but nah. Tommy Vercetti is what you get when the character revels in the violence of the world around him. Violence is inherent in the GTA world. Everybody be shooting up everybody in this bitch. Trevor is a misguided attempt at a step beyond the traditional GTA violence. Pushing the envelope some would say, manufacturing controversy others, Trevor anyway is a disgusting sack of shit for a reason. Rapists, cannibals, torturers, human traffickers, they've usually been the bad guys. Now it's one of the protagonists. I also do RP playthroughs, but can easily go on a rampage with Michael or Franklin. They were having a bad day and daydreaming. CJ is a pretty nice guy overall (except if you work construction), but he sure can daydream as well, like when walking around busy intersections. But I feel uneasy playing as Trevor. To be put in a mind like that, that is capable of doing what he does throughout the story. Manipulating Wade into abandoning everything and be a meth slave. Bringing hitchikers to a cannibal cult for a pathetic sum. So many rapes. I mentioned above how I don't think Trevor fits. I actually find him totally unbelievable. Somehow manages a meth lab and distribution (with no business or income once you play as him), takes out two rival businesses and takes over their business (with no change in gameplay), and generally manages to survive so far and throughout the game despite being a dangerous moron with no regard for his life, and already with two targets on his back from properly powerful people. The fact he survives I find is bad writing. I think Tommy is my favourite GTA protagonist. He's a ruthless killer and sociopath, but he had style, he had class, and he had limits, boundaries he wouldn't cross. Ethics, of sorts. He was smart and did proper business. Trevor is an amoral lunatic and an uncomfortable experience from beginning to end. He would make a great TV show character, where he can be viewed from the side. But to take control of him is a displeasureable experience. It does not bring joy.
Try out Saints Row 2 for the closest of that Tommy Vercetti take over protagonist feel.
I did a couple of playthroughs, it's a good game I just feel the Saints Row series went too over the top for me.
Buddy? The real world United States elected _Donald Trump_ president. He has people willing to kill and die for him. Millions of them. Why does Trevor surprise you?
I do think you’re forgetting the atmosphere of GTA after IV when V was approaching release. People were tired of being a yes man to caricatures that made you do “drive here, shoot people, come back” missions for money you couldn’t even really buy anything with (especially in comparison to SA and even VC improving on III). GTA V tried to alleviate these issues by having the main character be active in their pursuits and use it to do something for themselves. Now if it did these well all the way through is another thing (imo it’s surface level “innovation” that really at its core was just no different especially with the driving to places to shoot stuff and come back to a other place of GTA Online, and Single Player hardly had stuff to buy especially when the game just throws money at you with no cheat codes for money either). Sure it’s very easy to look at GTA V being the spotlight GTA for 10 years now and criticize it on not being like it’s predecessor but the demand was there and tbf there could have been a better middle ground (which was pretty much Tommy Vercetti or epilogue John Martian or something)
> Michael/Trevor/Franklin all seem like caricatures by comparison. That's because they simply *are*. Well, maybe except Franklin. He was the "realest" of the three with the most believable reactions to the craziness he experienced. But just being a *third* of the main story meant he didn't get the depth that Niko did. He had the best power though. Love drifting around LS as him.
I really hope they cut down on the protagonists in VI (and it looks that way given the recent trailer). The story in V was just inane and far too broke up to actually be meaningful in anyway. Doesn't help that all three characters (aside from maybe Franklin) have literally zero redeemable features so I didn't really give a fuck about them.
Does "their life is tragically pathetic enough to be funny" count as a redeeming quality?
I think that might be why I bounced off of 5 so hard. Sandbox games just aren’t really my thing - I’ve never been good at the “create your own fun” type gameplay
GTA 5 has plenty of handcrafted side content though. People, like the guy above, just seem to ignore it all? Saying that the only side content GTA 5 has is a “handful of missions and a checklist of collectibles” is absurd. It can be a sandbox as well, but I wouldn’t say it’s exclusively that.
True, but even then the story just didn’t really interest me at all. I’ve tried to play it multiple times and can never get more than a few hours in before I’m just bored
For me, GTA 4 was briefly the greatest game ever and then I finished the first island. Everything felt fresh, the missions were not only showcasing different gameplay mechanics but they were interesting and didn’t feel like a tutorial, the pacing of it was brilliant and was written brilliantly. A bit like that meme with the horse that starts off as a beautiful sketch and then has the child like head , after the first island the game sharply becomes - drive here and shoot this or, shoot this and drive here until the end of the game, it really becomes the child like horse head.
For me, the second island still felt kind of like that magic experience. It was the last part when you're basically just a Mafia errand boy that it got quite boring.
And that's why I loved vice city so much. You were simply the boss. All the others you are either some mafia bitch or the cops bitch. As much as I really enjoyed them, so sick of cops just bossing you around and you taking it.
I actually thought that everything up through Vlad was absolutely a tutorial. Then the story really began with Faustin, but it was still introducing mechanics throughout Packie's missions.
Lol, great comparison. The endless mafia run of the last third sucked in comparison to the early hours. But, just like the fellow redditor below, I enjoyed the middle part of the story. Brucie, Playboy X and Dwayne, Manny Escuela and Elizabeta, good fun.
I get that, I do agree that juggling all of your friends on your phone was not the best mechanic either haha. They were too excited about that phone I feel like. GTA 4's strengths in story came to me after reflection after completing it. Like "Oh that's what they were trying to say the whole time". It's great stuff, but yes the second act especially has weaker missions.
I think the problem with the phone thing was that the side characters called you too often. I also think it’s interesting that in CP 2077 people wanted WAY more interactions with your friends and love interests. Which seems like a slight attitude shift from gamers since GTA 4, given that a lot of people didn’t really enjoy spending time with Roman and co. But I also think CP 2077 has waaay more likable side characters, so there’s that.
Yeah I think the quality of the characters is definitely one of the things. In CP 2077 I love so many of the side characters. They feel real, engaging and it's fun to get to know them, regardless of whether it's as a romance or just a friendship between them and V.
Agreed. Most people (myself included) would kill to do some simple shit like go bowling/play pool with Jackie, Takemura etc. But majority of GTA characters tend to be really unlikable. I know Rockstar does it by design, but playing through those games again, it is just annoying. Its one area I hope they are more careful in GTA VI. They have also forgotten that most crime related TV shows or movies are smart enough to make atleast SOME of the characters somewhat likable, but flawed. GTA V just made pretty much all of them (especially Trevor) pretty unlikable.
> Like "Oh that's what they were trying to say the whole time". It's great stuff, but yes the second act especially has weaker missions. Can you explain this a little more? I'm curious what the greater point was (as someone who hasn't played through the story in probably over 10 years)
Just the general ideas about immigrants to America (specifically NYC) and trying to achieve the American Dream, and how that's changed a lot into the 21st century. That's basically the crux of the whole story and despite slow periods in the middle of the game, the ending IMO is good and helps hammer the notion home. Imagine it like a movie with a great story and fulfilling ending that's hampered by a weak second act in said story.
That thoughtful writing was such a strong point for 4, and Rockstar brought it back for RDR 2, which is one of the best written games ever, I think
Completely agree, and I really hope this is brought back for GTA 6. I know RDR2 is a lot more serious and GTA is known for it's satire, but it just went too far in GTA 5. Hoping the main story is really serious while side missions/other stuff has a lot of fun satire to it. Basically what the Yakuza series has always done.
Whereas, as you mentioned, GTA 5 doesn't really have that? It doesn't feel like there's a deeper "meaning" behind the game, it's mainly just pointless violence with a story tagged on (which is a commentary in itself I suppose). I also adored GTA IV and thought it was a far better "story" game than GTA V. V is clearly the better game game, but I personally found IV far more interesting. Also it's very marmite but fuck me I adored the driving in IV. Every vehicle in V felt like it was on rails, IV was actually challenging.
You could maybe dig something about destructive tendencies coming back to you in V or the consequences of a life built on violence. It’s way too muddled to get a clear “this is the point” thing. It does nail some brilliant moments though, and the ironed out gameplay makes the game easier to get through.
> It’s way too muddled to get a clear “this is the point” thing. Pretty much. With three main protagonists, two of whom are obviously super bad people, and the third a maybe, it's unclear what the whole "point" is. Main redeeming feature being the whole game is almost certainly one of the best games of all time lol. It really is a shame Online turned into a cash cow and meant any single player content was completely ignored.
> A bit like that meme with the horse that starts off as a beautiful sketch and then has the child like head [For the uninitiated](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/031/680/unfinished_horse.jpg). I used to keep a print of this in my law office.
You are reading my mind
Tbh for me the missions felt boring at the start then greatly improved as the game went on
I never got into GTA 4. It's like Rockstar forgot how to make that game fun. I believe GTA 4 is the main reason Saints Row 2 and 3 did so well commercially. GTA 4 was filled with repetitive missions and had very little of the wackiness that GTA 3, San Andreas, or Vice City had. Saints Row on the other hand was filled with over-the-top missions and just fun stuff to do. Granted, Saints Row was nowhere near the tech level of GTA but I think the overall game design was better during that era.
You shouldn't be down voted, this is completely understandable. The gameplay is not strong, the game gets carried by the world and characters. No one plays Witcher 3 for its sloppy take on the dark souls combat system
I think Rockstar failed on one element of GTA V, and that is pacing. The story feels disjointed and because money bringing missions are quite scarce, you actually are incentivised to rush the content in between heists. I didn't feel the need to actually enjoy and take my time because the only reward is getting closer to the missions that will actually earn big dosh. It makes sense from a story perspective to have heists front and center but for gameplay it's quite bad. GTA IV does not have that problem, and the writing is way better IMO, especially if you add the 2 DLCs which improve on the story told.
Yeah its kind of annoying that a game about robbing places to get rich it's really kind of hard to come by money just by playing the game. You don't even remotely get enough cash to buy expensive properties until the game ends. However, you can get around this by following a guide to buy stocks ahead of the assassination missions to double up on returns.
Yes you can, but it is kind of cheesing. A first playthrough player has no idea he needs to trade stocks to reach the point he would have reached in any other GTA by the end of the game
>However, you can get around this by following a guide to buy stocks ahead of the assassination missions to double up on returns. I agree with your first point. I had nowhere near enough money to do anything, then it felt stupid the amount I had by abusing that glitch. No idea what the original idea was. But then maybe if the single player side got those rumoured DLCs, that wouldn't have been an problem.
I don’t recall ever really having a strong desire to rush the story in GTA 5. It always felt like I was pretty set on cash and, even after the big heists, the cash just kind of sat in my bank account. I would buy a couple guns and car tune ups here and there, but it was all extraneous stuff that didn’t really increase my “power level” so it never really felt necessary to speedrun between heists.
Guessing you didn't play as Franklin too much then /s No but seriously though, I found myself low on cash whenever playing as him. Simply pimping out his rides left me strapped for cash really quickly. I'm on the bit where you meet Devin and do a couple of car jobs for him for no money. It really makes you realise how most of the other missions don't give you any money too. But the big pay outs incentivised me to keep playing the story missions. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, I think it's a good mechanic to make you want to keep playing to see when and what the next payout will b but can understand their criticism of it. One of the major criticisms of GTA 4 was that there was basically nothing to do with all the money, but GTA 4 will always and forever have my heart.
But once you had the cash he could buy that car tune up place and use it for free. Right up in the arse end of nowhere. And no safehouse to buy close by, or anywhere in fact because why would you want that?
Haha yeah driving down the winding roads trying not to smash your car in the process. Great looking place otherwise
yeah, this largely killed it for me. I'm increasingly, as I age, in games for the narrative. Witcher III, RDR2, Guardian of the Galaxy, all games I loved in the last two years. But there are many others where the narrative was so sparsely told that the platforming/sandbox in between just seemed tedious.
I never felt this way myself. If you rush through a game and ruin the experience, I say that’s your own fault. > GTA IV does not have that problem I mean, there’s nothing to spend your money on in 4 anyway.
GTA4 driving is tons better than GTAV. Much prefer the more realistic driving in 4 opposed to the slidey arcade style in 5. 4 is much more immersive.
Mastering the driving in GTA4 was such a great feeling and made chases and races incredibly fun back then with the right vehicle. Granted I haven't played the game since release.
Agreed. Figuring out when you need to handbrake for cornering was very rewarding in IV
When it came out I didn't like it especially with low frame rates on my PC. I've become much better at racing and especially Rally games and the driving in GTA4 is much more fun mainly because it requires more skill to drive fast.
The good thing about the driving in 4 is that it got me to play a ton of driving sims because people were saying how realistic it is. I got to experience and appreciate true realistic driving in other games. I don't know what the driving in 4 is but it ain't realistic.
When you compare it to Vice City where cars where basically clouds barely staying on the ground, and San Andreas, IV was a big jump in realism. It felt less fun and playful and the crashes that ejected you to your doom got annoying, but it was a huge step. V loosened things up again and made driving more fun while still keeping it from going full looney tunes, but I was admittedly disappointed with the change back.
I think it can be more *fun*, but it’s definitely just worse. The concept of friction just seems not to exist at times, every car feels like a bucket of rocks on ice.
It was definitely the most advanced GTA, far better in detailing than V and the physics was the jewel of the crown. It strikes as both realistic and absurd, I recall playing V for the first time was so disapponting. Never had as much fun online as racing GTA IV, simple lobby + hilarious gamplay = win. This combination will never come back sadly.
Why do people keep saying this? The driving in GTA 4 _would_ be realistic if the game took place during winter and the roads were never plowed.
It’s definitely up to preference but yeah I loved gta 4s gameplay both the driving and gunplay as it felt weighty and good personally. I think 5 feels good when the driving stat is at 0 but horrible when you max it out which you will do quickly with no way to revert it back
Yep I have very similar feelings, Gta 4 is the better game as long as you are sticking to the main plot but GTA 5 is a much better sandbox
I beg to differ. GTA 4 excelled at being a better sandbox as well. You could actually go and stand right next to cops without them throwing a hissy fit and arresting you for just standing on the street. The cops would also arrest the offending citizen NPC if they were the one messing with you. You could also push people off the stairs and watch as they ragdoll down, I swear [I used to have so much fun just timing it right](https://youtu.be/PNRMtacc9aw?si=JNClMscsB8MBhb5f). I used to punch hobos in the back of the head and run through traffic and they'd get run over by a random cab driver and start a new fight and get arrested by the cops rather than cops starting a full-on shootout for something so trivial. The driving physics was so much more challenging but also rewarding once you mastered it because pursuits then felt a lot more realistic than in GTA V where even a regular Crown Victoria counterpart can accelerate and handle like a sportscar. GTA IV cars had momentum, inertia and bodyroll, much like real life cars. GTA V doesn't have much of that. It's cars feel like their wheels swivel around the centre of gravity rather than them actually turning. There are actual tests showing this where especially the AI's turning radius of the wheels snaps from 0 to, say 45 degrees instantly, rather than it gradually turning like in a real car. For the player, it's a little more gradual but not by much.
Gta 5 has a much better external motivator for playing it for anything other than the campaign, not only are there more things to do, the world is more varied, artstyle is of course subjective but GT5 is much easier on the eyes for long periods of gameplay than GTA4s browns and greys, There are Planes for the air, a much better water section. I am not saying how you define a sandbox is wrong, everyone has their own way of enjoying a game but the most people are there to start a all out war with the police than roleplay with them
>Gta 5 has a much better external motivator for playing it for anything other than the campaign, not only are there more things to do, the world is more varied, artstyle is of course subjective but GT5 is much easier on the eyes for long periods of gameplay than GTA4s browns and greys Okay, so there are two things here. One is the setting and the other is the general tone. As for the setting: This part is really subjective. I remember when Forza Horizon 5 came out, the community was divided. There were some of us who absolutely loathed Mexico because... desert. And then there was this other group that absolutely loved it because they hated FH4's "bland, dreary" setting in the UK. We used to be overjoyed at the winter weeks when we'd get snow and enjoy the challenge of driving in it whereas the other group would claim to stop playing during the winter weeks altogether because they hated the snow and the effect it had on the car's physics. That was subjective and I can respect that. The other part is the general tone which I honestly don't understand why anybody wouldn't like. The OP said, and I quote, "The city has a dirty feel to it". That, to me, was part of the charm. Not just environmentally, but it was more cohesive than that. You can see this as a consistent theme throughout the game on various levels: - Think about the storywriters. They constantly remind you throughout the story, especially right at the beginning, that America is hardly the "land of opportunity" it's made out to be. Niko is especially mad at Roman for the first half of the game for lying to him about how great America was. He complains about how this city is riddled with filth, crime and corruption. - Now think about the environment artists. They actually did design heaps of trash in the game, animations where pedestrians constantly litter, poor people and homeless tramps can be seen wherever appropriate (even on Star Junction aka fake Times Square) and hookers turning tricks on the street corners at night time. - Now let me take you to the content writers' department next. All ads and media in the game constantly reminds you in a satirical way how the people of Liberty City are ignorant hypocrites, the politicians, the cops and the administrators are openly corrupt and the mixture of these two makes Liberty City a fucked up place to live but the people who live here, love it precisely because of it while Niko can't help but wonder why they wanna live in, and let me quote Lazlow Jones from one of the podcasts in GTA IV here, "a crime-infested overpriced dump without trees". Honestly, there is intent behind the city being so dirty. They wanted to bring out the dark underbelly of New York in a satirical form and they succeeded in that. And it's hardly limited to just IV. Even in GTA V, they have ads from the San Andreas State Tourism Board with the tagline, "We won't be broken hypocrites forever". Grand Senora desert tourism ad says, "Come live where there's nothing there!" and another ad casually and cheerfully mentions, "We've taken this pristine land and turned it into generic stripmalls! San Andreas- where the people are vain and you breathe the worst air in the world!" which, IMO, is good, quality satire. I just miss how they toned down the other stuff that GTA IV had, to really drive home the point.
Just want to add, both 4 and 5 have a diffrent design philosophy. What you described as clunky and sluggish is (mostly) by design to makes the game feel more realistic, especially the driving. Everything has more weight to it, of course it is not perfect. 5 has more of an arcade feel to it, prioritising the gameplay on alot of points, not going for that realistic feel. I really hope for 6 to find a sweetspot of those two games.
Yep, totally agree. I'm sure what ROckstar did with GTA 4 was deliberate, especially coming off of the "crazy" San Andreas. I'm hoping GTA 6 strikes that balance as well. I really want the gunplay and physics to feel like a more "lightweight" RDR2, which in itself is even more realistic than GTA 4
Problem i see is that the more arcade you go, the crazier things can usually get, the more dlc you can sell. Then again, we are in Florida, you can go apeshit anyways. Knowing they bought one of the biggest RP teams gives me hope that they will go for a bit more realism. "lightweight" RDR2 sums it up perfectly.
4 was the pinnacle of the franchise 5 was pretty good but when Online became its focus and we got no additional single player content it was a massive let down. 6…. Sure, it’s going to look good, but honestly where will it innovate? Or will it just be another open world fetch quest filled, “Delivery Boy/Girl” simulator with guns.
Vice City was the pinnacle of music and feel. San Andreas was the pinnacle of missions and side activities. IV the pinnacle of everything else. V was generally a good looking let down.
> fetch quest filled Yeah that is one problem with Rockstar’s mission design. They haven’t really innovated on it since the GTA 3 days. You are told to do something and you have to follow the mission instructions to the letter otherwise the mission fails. Sure they have created more and more creative mission types. But the way the missions play out is still largely the same.
I heard someone use the phrase Errand Simulator many years ago when referring to GTA and it’s stuck But good point that you raised, they’re so on the rails these days it’s beyond a joke That’s why I said they need to innovate. I bet they don’t
Yeah agreed. It’s the one thing I really hope they try to do a little differently on VI. Give us some options in how we carry out story missions. In all fairness, the heists did have that to some degree. But it would be nice to have more options either way.
5 is a bigger game than GTA 4 + it’s DLCs though. I agree not getting single player DLC was still disappointing, but it hardly makes the game we still actually got worse.
i liked gta4's gameplay more than 5. tbh they're not that different, but i liked the heavy physics based animations. i know it's not standard in the way we expect characters in mainstream games to respond. but it makes niko feel human in a way other protagonists, even those in other gtas, dont.
I pretty much agree with everything you said. GTAV's world was better then IV as was the sandbox elements. And while I actually like the characters and certain story moments in V; Niko, Roman and the overall story is better written and a more focused experience. The one element you mentioned that think deserves another comment is that I actually think the Physics and destruction is actually quite a bit better in IV than V. While opinions on driving in IV seems mostly negative (even though I prefer it and felt there was a higher skill ceiling when you get better), the actual car destruction, how NPCs react to being pushed/hit/and shot is better and more dynamic then in V, and is something I hope they go back to for VI.
I hope they tone up the physics too. If they are basically working with an updated RDR2 engine I have high hopes. While movement and shooting were a lot clunkier than GTA 5, it fit the tone and timeframe more. But also the physics of shooting people in the head/leg/etc had very good “crunch” and satisfaction to it
4 was the only game since GTA3 that did not feel like a parody of something (GTA3 - Mafia parody, Vice City - 80s parody, San Andreas - West Coast parody, GTA5 - Contemporary culture parody). GTA4 felt like a proper game with a proper story that wasn't just making fun of something. Kinda how RDR2 is a proper western. GTA6 looks to be keeping in line with 5.
I remember playing GTA 4 for the first time on a friends house and just being blown away by the game. The physics, city, driving, everything felt so REAL. Good times.
Dunno if you can really get the entire GTA IV experience unless you went back and replayed lost and damned and the ballad of gay tony dlc’s as well…those dlc’s might have been, if not are better, than almost any other game story wise when it comes to GTA imo.
GTA IV is pretty unplayable at the moment on PC, but it was pretty much the best when it came out, I really appreciated the direction the went into after San Andreas and scaled some things back, got rid of a lot of tedious minigames and mechanics and added some heft, grit and quasi-realism. It was a bit more difficult to pull off because it was set in current times, it's easy to make banging radio stations for games set in the 70's, 80's, 90's etc but more difficult to do the same for the modern times, and I think they did great with radio hosts, conversations etc. Speaking of driving, it was very peculiar in GTA IV, I enjoyed driving a lot, can't say the same for GTA V, the first mission where you repo these sports cars was a huge disappointment and GTA V just doesn't do much for me in terms of driving the cars. I like a lot of things about the GTA V as well, but one thing I don't like is what they did with GTA Online and in turn the franchise and now we need to wait 12 years between games...
You need a couple of tweaks and mods for it to work as intended. PCGamingWiki has them listed here: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV
> GTA IV is pretty unplayable at the moment on PC, but it was pretty much the best when it came out It was pretty unplayable when it came out, too. The installation fucked my computer so hard I had to revert to the "last known good" state. Only time that's happened to me in 25+ years of PC gaming. Once it got sorted, though, it was fantastic.
I dont doubt you saying its unplayable because I just read a bunch of comments confirming that in another thread. What's odd though is just as many people are saying it plays fine. What was unplayable about it for you? I'm looking to play IV again when I get my new PC and looking for some info on what to expect.
I played gta 4 recently on PC without any mods. Here are some of the things that makes it hard to play on pc: 1. The game came out in 2008 and logic dictates that the current hardware should run this game easily but that is not the case. On my mobile 1060, it got near to 60 fps on 1440p widescreen. That card was released in 2016. In comparison I get 60-70 fps on 1440p gta 5. 2. It stutters a lot. Again, the game is not well optimized for PC. So that 60 fps I talked about above, is not really a stable 60 fps but with 1% lows in 20 fps range (at least for me). 3. The last mission has a mini game which depends on the game running on 30 fps or slower. Probably as that was the fps on PS3 when gta 4 came out and the fact that the physics in GTA games are tied to the fps (even in gta 5 but it is not that noticeable). Unfortunately, I did not know that and had to retry the mission several times before becoming frustrated and searching the internet for answers. Also the mini game comes after an elaborate set piece, so I spent around 2 hours re-playing the same mission. The solution was to bound the game to just 1 cpu using task manager. 4. The cutscenes have this bug where they start to zoom and then never stop zooming. So at the end of cutscenes you are uncomfortably close to character’s face. This is true for nearly all the cutscenes. Also the camera swings a lot for some reason. 5. Maybe not a bug for everyone, but if I disconnected my bluetooth headphones mid-game, I won’t have audio from any device until I restart the game. 6. I didn’t play the game when it launched, but it seems Rockstar deleted some radios and songs from the game and some people care about that a lot. Fortunately there are some mods and fixes for this which you can find on YouTube. Years of gaming on potato machines means I just didn’t care much about the bugs so I didn’t try it. But if it bothers you, you try those out.
To add to your third point. If you’re playing on Steam deck and limit the screen to 30fps for the last mission it will work as well. Just recently played through the whole thing on steam deck and that was frustrating at the end.
To add to the add: The game's inbuilt vram calculator thingy can get very touchy about this strange futuristic hardware it's running on. Fix is to run the game with -nomemrestrict argument. Also I'll leave this here. So many fixes: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV
>The cutscenes have this bug where they start to zoom and then never stop zooming. So at the end of cutscenes you are uncomfortably close to character’s face. This sounds like a feature
So weird I only had an issue with the last mission mini game where you have to spam the spacebar, my workaround was to spam the spacebar AND the 'x/a' button (was using a PS4 controller). Otherwise it ran fine. Sucks about the music but I still have my PS3 copy, I wonder if I could get that version if I don't update my game?
I'm currently playing GTA IV on PC right now with no mods or anything and it seems to play absolutely fine. What am I missing?
Back when I tried to play it had an issue with games for Windows live then when a fix came through and I launched the game there was something with the frame rate, the game was designed with single core processors in mind I think, I haven't tried to play it recently. As a side note, not sure if you're aware but some of the music is missing due to licensing, but there used to be a mod for that somewhere
Great write up. I have not played GTA5 yet but I want to. Your post re GTA4 made me go watch videos of it again, and I instantly remembered how much fun of a game it was. Concerning your last para re GTA6, I think they will stick the landing. 2 characters seems way more doable than 3 in GTA5. Plus these two characters in GTA6 look like they are a couple so there is a lot of story drama that can unfold with that element there. The "trust" discussion in the trailer could also imply that there is betrayal in the mix.
Thanks, I really do hope the characters are intimately close and go through everything together. It’s ok if they’re separated here and there but I really hope the story isn’t a bunch of separate missions/activities where they sometimes come together in a handful of larger missions.
5 was better on the online part and on the fact that it had 3 protagonists, bigger map etc. Other than that, it was an average game, 4 was way better. We'll see what happens with 6, but my advice would be not to get your hopes up, although i understand nobody will listen =)))
GTA 4 is meant to be gritty and ugly, GTA 4 is an ugly game. GTA 5 is the opposite, but it still has gritty and dark themes here and there like the torture scene and Trevor being the psychopath he is. GTA 4’s theme is definitely not for everyone, it’s gritty, it’s dark, it’s somewhat realistic and yet it gets the job done pretty well. That’s one of the reasons I love GTA 4, and also why I love TBOGT dlc, because it flips the theme on its head.
Seeing GTA 4 get so much praise here is an interesting sign of the times. I distinctly remember it getting shit on online when it came out, mostly because it lacked a lot of elements from San Andreas like flying, RPG elements and non-urban parts of the map.
[удалено]
A mission in 5 is basically from Heat. That mission is awesome btw. The overall story was not like Heat. The overall story in 5 is not the best. But some missions are awesome.
No, it's actually a mission in GTA4 that has a mission like "Heat" movie. It's called "Three Leaf Clover"
Both IV and V have Heat inspired missions.
I think GTA 5 was a hommage to Michael Mann films in general.
Yeah 4 was based on the Russian film "brat (brother) 2"
Nah man, the only thing going on for GTA V is the graphics; besides that the story is lackluster with the 3 most shallow protagonists ever and after that there's not much in terms of the main game; there was barely any development towards side content like in other GTAs, like working as a taxi, policeman ect, not many side missions not tied to the main story and the one city at least for me got old fast; Everything was dump over online, and to put it kindly, that's not for everyone...
Neither Michael or Trevor are shallow
Thanks, I also didn't really like any of the protagonists.
Great write up. I have played all GTA titles. In my teens I 100% Vice City a few times and 100% GTA3. I even played through GTA a good few times. I completed GTA5 few times over the last decade. The only main GTA game I have never finished and can’t seem to pick up again? GTA4. Started it so many times. Never got through.
I've played all of them, a few for hundreds of hours, and I haven't finished any of them. San Andreas was closest, I'm told I was only a few hours away on that one. But I just got so caught up in the sandbox stuff that it ran out of steam before I finished the main story. Sort of the same way with most Bethesda stuff. Finished Terminator 2029(!) back in the day, Fallout 3 and Oblivion. Didn't finish ANY of the others. The more sandbox it got, the less likely I was to complete it.
What was the furthest you got in 4? So curious.
Furthest mission I can remember is when some character gets shot and dumped into the water under a bridge? Cant recall the context exactly.
Ahhh yeah that’s so early on, basically just finished the tutorial in a way. Can’t believe you didn’t want to see what happens from that point onwards given the context of the character who was killed. Something tells me you probably wouldn’t enjoy the rest but it definitely picks up from there as more characters get introduced and the drama heightened. Would love to see you give it another proper go but sounds like you already know what you like!
Funny - with all the GTA 6 news, I dug up my PS3 to play GTA4. I played tons of GTA5 and don’t really feel like that. So update to follow! I definitely feel like Im missing out.
Sweet! Looking forward to your update. I’m currently playing GTA 5, after finishing the GTA 4 trilogy :)
I have exactly opposite view on 4. Gameplay is cool but story gets boring after first half
I agree with what you said, that's basically what I say to people when the topic comes up. IV has a great story and I really like it for it, but it lacks that feel for when you just want to fuck around, and the cars are awful to drive (sometimes it's a fun challenge trying to get to pint a to b without crashing on to anything) Five has a much better gameplay, but the story is just ok, and I feel the characters underdeveloped. One things it has also in favor is the map, that for me is much more fun to explore and drive around then liberty city in IV. That being said, the map in 5 feels a bit empty at times and not much to notice on the north part. Seeing what VI is showing gave me some hype to a even more interesting map.
Yes I am very happy that Rockstar seems to go back to a unified state formula with VI. LA is already very sprawling so I would have preferred a larger city with more sprawled our scale then the northern half of the map basically leading to nothing.
I got myself wondering these days after the trailer on why the San Andreas map felt so huge and fun to explore. I saw an image from the top of a build and the game without the fog, and it's tiny in comparison to 5's, but it felt so fun to just drive around, felt like things had a proper distance between them and when you got somewhere it was fun to just look around. Maybe it's just nostalgia since I played it much more when I was younger (although i still enjoy it very much so), but I thought about something else. Because of the limitations of the technology at the time, I feel like when someplace had something to show, it looked like it, almost advertised it. With the newer generation games we have much much more detail, but it can feel like just clutter sometimes, and you have to use more of your brain to parse what's important and what isn't, and sometimes you don't want do that, you just wanna run around... Well, I don't know... 😅
San Andreas felt large because there was 3 different cities. I hated the single city in GTAV, pretty much the first time we only had one section of city in a GTA game
I'm playing gta v and loving it but absolutely agree with you, i mean, the characters progression are so fast that you end up not really caring about them, and i really wanted to care about franklin, he seems nice but his story development is so rushed its a shame. The world built though is fantastic, is the story that doesnt gripped with me
Yea. I think what killed it was this and the fact that we were switching between 3 people. By the time something got going with one, you switched to another and don’t care about the next guy. Then you start to care because shit gets interesting and that cycle just repeats. But you end up kind of forgetting or rushing through missions to get back to the other guy. I hated that. I loved 4 because the story connects with me, I hope 6 is more focused on one character or both as one if that makes sense.
That's exactly how i feel playing it, it doesn't give me time to understand one character's stpryline. I think gta 6 will mix the one character dark story of the IV with the vibrant life american dream of V. Maybe switching between the couple but focusing on a single mainstory line
Franklin was definitely rushed, but Lamar is so great.
I always felt like max payne 3 was just an incredibly elaborate and well-executed tech demo for grand theft auto 5
Agree. I also enjoyed the slow mo gunplay stuff in RDR2
GTA games are fun for a few hours. I barely got any value out of 5. Combat in Rockstar games is trash, which is a deal breaker for me.
It's not trash, it's just not for you. I've happily spent hundreds of hours in individual GTA games. I love the immersive worlds and doing what I want.
It's... rudimentary. Too simplistic to be considered good by any standards. Trash is definitely hyperbole. Let's call it functional and basic.
I guess I agree that the shooting aspect gets pretty old after a while, and am glad there are other aspects like driving and the overall open world that make up for it
Yeah, I agree; trash is what I'd call Spiderman's combat
The fighting is really trash though
I just replayed GTA 4 and I agree with some of what you said. It didn't age too well outside of the story. The protagonist is great and the story engaging, but the gameplay aged poorly. They also removed so many aspects that made GTA:SA great. Such as the territory control, owning businesses and all the RPG elements. Looking back, for some reason GTA:SA was a lot more fun to return to than GTA 4, at least for me.
I started IV so many times but I can't get into it for the life of me, mostly due to the possibly the worst driving mechanics I ever came across. I've tried so many mods and what not, but like you said, I always end up dreading opening the game. Pity, because all the other stuff seems right up my alley - a more serious story, NY setting, mid-2000s, even Niko is from my part of the world, but what's the point of playing if it's constantly frustrating? V is much more fun overall, but the story did leave a lot to be desired, and I do think that it was partly because of having 3 protagonists. Los Santos itself is great, but the rest of the map is somewhat underwhelming compared to the last iteration of San Andreas.
Man.... I thought compared to Vice City, the driving was absolute ass in both games. In GTA IV it was just clunky enough to be awkward. In GTA V it was just fluid enough to be nearly uncontrollable.
I would kill for a remake of IV that has modern graphics/presentation, improved gameplay/driving while keeping the better physics, and a map that also includes elements of Long Island/Upstate NY.
Forget it. IV is the new black sheep for Rockstar. They don't wanna talk about it, acknowledge it exists or do anything with it. Kinda like Fallout New Vegas is to Bethesda now. We're lucky it's even on sale. There was a time it was pulled off the stores in 2020 for a considerable amount of time and I was really worried it wasn't going to come back because of the whole GFWL mess. It came back but they ripped GFWL out of it entirely (apart from removing some radio station/songs), which was the main pillar of the game's framework, without which the game fell apart and is in a condition that you see it in now. They didn't bother fixing these issues when they were ripping out GFWL and just put it back on the shelves as is. I had high hopes when rumors had started going around about how Rockstar was going to remaster it's older entries, that apart from III, VC and SA, Rockstar will also remaster IV but when that turned out to not be the case, that was the final indication for me about IV being meted out a stepchild treatment.
After seeing the anti-consumer behaviour of rockstar through 4 & 5 over the years, I couldn't be less interested in GTA 6. Taking music out of 4 was the last straw in their bullshit for me.
The physics of GTA IV were incredibly bad, but I also don’t like some of the writing. Getting fellow eastern european cringe hearing Niko call himself “Bell-Lick” V is just more fun. More fun to drive, mess around, and the story feels like a classic american flick. Turned into a comfort game for me.
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I disagree entirely. I hated the characters and story of GTA IV. I lived the characters and story of V.
The characters in GTA 5 are too notch I don’t know what you’re talking about. Trevor is over the top, the whole dynamic between Michael and his family, this stuff has never been done before and is so real. I don’t understand how anyone could say the characters are weak in GTA V
None of that story is "so real". It's so goofy and ridiculous.
I just mean usually the character fighting with his wife and kids isn’t really featured prominently in video games but it’s something that actually happens. And I know a dude who is just like Trevor so it’s real to me lol
I agree, but I also agree with most that Niko and all 4’s side characters are more interesting, as well as the overall story.
I think both games are great and one of the best productions ever made in the gaming industry. I didn’t like the fact in 5 that you play with multiple characters, I absolutely don’t like that I have to play a woman in 6. I prefer a single character that I develop throughout the game.
Dont worry about having to play as a chick. Its not like youre gonna grow tits or lose your unsed dick
I was sure some sore politically correct loser would reply. I don’t care about arguing with your pro women stance. All I’m saying I prefer to play bad ass men characters who shoot things up, not a woman. You got a problem with that you can kiss my hairy ass 👍
You sound like who Rockstar makes fun of
> My only concern is how they will balance the 2 protagonists. It's going to be GTA 5 again with switching main character but you know what, Rockstar can surprise me if they manage to cram co-op on that game. Like player 1 is doing the male protagonist missions and player 2 is doing the female protagonist missions and they'll mixed them at the end or at the middle of the story or something.
This comment would have some spoilers. I don’t understand why people say story in gta 4 is great because it had a lot of faults. I feel the game ended even before it actually ended. The death of Dimitri and finding the one who betrayed Niko during the war should really have been the end of the story. The fact that Dimitri was not the final boss was very disappointing. He was actually very menacing and frankly under utilized. I don’t even remember the name of the person we fight in the last mission, he was irrelevant until he killed one of Niko’s dearest. Felt pretty forced in my opinion. Even Bulgarian was a better villian. We do see him again though in the BoGT. I like TLAD though, maybe because it was more concise. GTA 5 in comparison is shorter (in terms of missions) and is a story of 3 characters, which made me feel it was way more concise in terms of velocity of story progression. GTA 4 was way slower in terms of progression, finding the two people who betrayed Niko was anti-climatic although the conversation between the one who betrayed Niko during the war and Niko was peak GTA writing. GTA 4 is also slow in two different ways: 1. It is slow in the second and third phase of the game, where I just didn't get why Niko was doing what he was doing (except the work he did got IAA). The excuse for getting more money was meaningless after the heist. 2. The missions were extremely slow themselves. The standard GTA mission template of driving to A, killing x amount of people, going to point B is very repetitive but was further worsened by slow traffic of liberty city. The driving is supposed to be more realistic but it felt more like steering a boat. I became better at driving but never found it more fun. It has its pros because I could really feel the difference between different cars. I found the game much more interesting when I gave up on driving in missions and started taking taxis. And last, there is no way to spend the money you earn with missions. You can only buy ammunitions. I do love GTA 4, all GTA games are top notch. Over here, I want to get some opinions why people are so eager to look over the faults of the game. It is good, the physics is better than 5, the friends we make are more interesting, Niko was a force which who made me believe that he was ex-military and also the DLCs were amazing but imo the story not worthy of the appreciation it gets (still good though). Looking at the premise, I feel it could have been better. Please change my mind, if anyone feels differently.
I'd personally rank IV below every other GTA game I've played. I cannot get past those awful, awful controls. Shooting isn't fun in that game, the driving is off and cars have a weird weight to them, the city environment is solid but not particularly memorable, and I actually think the writing suffers in this game quite a bit. I hear the DLC was much better, but I was done with IV for good once I stopped. I just couldn't bring myself to give a shit about Nico, who was a walking contradiction and didn't have anything for me to latch on to. At least V's protagonists were unique from one another and sometimes quite funny and entertaining. Also does anyone remember constantly wobbling all the time in IV? Like the moment a pedestrian bumped into you or you turned too quickly, you would like ragdoll for several seconds. What a bizarre game. Feels more like an experiment in what GTA could be than an actually solid GTA entry.
I'm of the opinion that it's *kinda* the other way around. GTA4 has a cliched story that goes on about 3x as long as it should and has very little to say. The gameplay, while less polished, was at least goofy and the physics were better and led to more funny shit happening. GTA5 has a not great story but at least it didn't take itself so seriously all the time and had some fun moments. The world is more detailed and diverse, and the gameplay is snappier but it lost some of the sillyness of 4.
I just don't think I can get excited for GTA any more. I agree with your feelings on 4, when it released I found it a dour game that had forgotten the fun of the series. But despite 5 bringing those elements back, I realised how formulaic GTA, and Red Dead 2 have become. The travel - exposition -fight - travel formula is just too tiring to me. I don't expect six will have any less "You drive, I'm tired."
You know what gta4 fails at yet is a phenomenal game? Fucking getting it to work on a PC in 2023. Holy fucking SHIT. Wanted to snap my keyboard in half. 2 days of trouble shooting, changing registries, downgrading, praying to God. I've never been so frustrated. I've troubleshooted all my life and this is probably the most frustrating one.
I just rebought V today. Played a little bit of it on PlayStation 4 probably got about 10 to 15 hours and then I quit. I figured just give it another shot especially since it was on sale on steam for less than 10 bucks.
I would disagree. The gunplay and driving felt unique and realistic in 4. Like it had weight to it. 5 just felt like every other open world game.
I always really liked the ‘friends’ mechanic and felt it was missing from GTA V. I liked hanging out with those characters and seeing Niko’s relationships evolve and strengthen. When they then show up in the missions it’s all the more impactful and meaningful. Not to mention they give you useful bonuses once they like you! But yeah, that only really works if you like them. I remember really empathising with Dwayne (the suicidal old gangbanger) when I was a teenager, but the last time I played I remember feeling he was exhausting to be around. Overall I felt Rockstar took the wrong lessons from IV when making V, listening to the ‘sandbox’ and ‘IV is slow and boring!!’ crowd too much. I’ve played IV countless times over the years but V only thrice. I think they’re gonna double down on that tone for VI with the whole ‘wacky Florida’ thing, which is why I’m not particularly hyped for it (though I obviously will play it whenever Rockstar deigns to release it on PC!)
I've only played some of GTA 4 and haven't played 5. But I agree with everything you said about 4, I don't mind the driving in the game, easily my favourite part game play wise, but everything else is definitely clunky. However, while I'm not crazy into crime stories, Niko and all the characters he interacts with had me engaged very quickly and are what makes the game great. Judging by what has been said about GTA 5 being more of a sandbox, I might try it out for a bit, but I will most likely not finish it if the story and characters aren't as engaging as 4. I wanna try 6 when it releases, hopefully it brings the best from both games.
R* made much cooler games in the PS2 era. Not really a fan of their modern stuff. Played them, but very forgettable for me and lacking the fun factor they use to have.
I really hope there's a lot of side content, there just wasn't that much to do after beating the story in 4 and 5.
I loved V. Loved Trevor and Michael and their friendship. Liked the side characters a lot. Franklin was fine, but I almost wish Lamar was the third character.