S: May 2008 Archives

Since almost everyone is talking about how awesomely good GTA4 is at the moment, I thought I'd talk purely about it's bad points.

• "HEY CAHZEEEEEN! I see you're walking into a safehouse to save your game and turn it off! Let's go get drunk! We have to or you'll lose respect from me!"
• All the customisation you had in GTA:SA? Oh, yeah, we took most of that out.
• Street vendor hotdog = $5. Burger = $1?
• "Go kill this guy for me" "Oh hey, thanks for takin' care of that guy. Go kill this one now".
• The McRearys. Just when you think you'll get some original missions, one will call you.
• Only 20 minutes of Lazlow. In fact around 20 minutes of every radio station. Every time you get into a car it seems to be the same song playing. Why did the last 3 games have an hour-long loop and this one has less than half?
• The auto-aim system. This alone has caused me more deaths than anything else in the game. It can be handy to have when it works. It's an absolute nightmare in missions that are outdoors. If there's any civilian bystanders walking past and you hit the button to aim, it'll snap to them. Not the guy 3 feet away from you with a shotgun. If there isn't anything else around for it to aim at, it won't snap onto anyone.
• Oh, you have a million dollars? Too bad there's nothing for you to spend it on like houses.
• "Hey, I'm calling you to tell you I have killed the guy you wanted dead. Now I have to lose my wanted level but I can't run or get into a car because I'm on the phone to you. Oh, a policeman just shot me in the face and I failed the mission".
• Look at this store we have here. Doesn't it look great? It's all lit up and looks like the kind of store you'd be able to enter, but you can't. What's that? You entered the other diner that looked exactly like this one? Well too bad, because you can't get into this.
• When you turn your phone back on you usually get "Hey man why you ain't called me? I hate you 4eva" messages. Perhaps I haven't called you because I'm progressing through the storyline, or having fun.
  

Parts of these problems, such as the short amount of radio content, seem like they could be caused by the lack of disc space available on the 360 version (the only version I've played) but I haven't been able to find anything about the PS3 version having more content on it's shiny bluray.

Overall it's a good game, but it's severely lacking in comparison to the last couple. San Andreas had so much to do, and such a high level of customisation options. There's plenty to do in GTA4 but after a while it just feels like a chore. I have no idea why they've taken such a huge jump backwards in terms of game content, but it's fun. I guess.