Here is my very honest and un-biased review of Grand Theft Auto 4. I don't know where everyone elses standards are but please read on.
Grand Theft Auto 4 carries the title of being the #1 rated game of all time and the highest grossing form of entertainment in a single day, yet it's unfortunate that such a redundant game holds such great honors.
You would assume that with 3 years in development and unlimited funding this would be a masterpiece, however it is not. Due to a lack of mission variety, poor aiming mechanics, horrible driving physics, an overall un-inspired world, and tacked on multiplayer gta4 makes for one horrible game.
As a huge fan of the film and novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk i have learned that routine is not enjoyable. Going to the same job day in and day out, working for minimum wage, taking orders from obese bosses, and coming home unable to sleep each and every day is no way to live. Why then does Rockstar feel this concept of routine can work in a videogame?
The single player portion of gta4, which is the game's main focus, can be summed up as being an un-entertaining game based on routine. Talk to this person, he tells you to kill this person, you drive half way across the map, kill that person, escape from police, and drive back to original person who hired you. If you take that example and repeat it for 30 hours you will understand how gta4 works. After the first area alone you will realize gta4 has no depth in mission variety. Unfortunately, there are 4 areas within Liberty City that follow this pattern.
Auto-Aim is a complete and utter joke. Why should any game ever have to rely on auto-aim? Gta4's reason is because without auto-aim its targeting system is flawed. This is quite tragic because with a better targeting system gta4 may have been fun, but it inevitably doesn't and thus is not fun.
Saints Row was released a year and a half prior to gta4. It featured interesting side missions such as insurance fraud and mayhem and incorporated some of the most solid shooting mechanics to be seen in a third person game of this type to date. This is in part because Volition decided to take first person shooting and transition it to third person. If Saints Row was praised for great gunplay and came out before gta4 then why hasn't Rockstar learned from Volition and fixed their aiming?
The driving physics try to add realism to the game, but end up being a nuisance. If it ain't broke don't fix it. The vehicles in previous gta's have all been entertaining to drive, but in the fourth installment in this series Rockstar sucked the life out of that entertainment. Want to take a corner at 60mph like you previously could? You can't. Want to come to a complete stop after driving 100mph in 50ft? You can't. Want to do anything fun with your car? Well, you can't.
Lastly, the one component that brought people back to gta time and time again was the open-ended cities. Gta4 brings you another open-ended city, yet this time around there is nothing to do within it. Sure you can go bowling or sit in a restaurant or watch a theatrical performance, but why? Why would you want to do any of these things inside a videogame? It's all pointless and other than those 3 activities there is nothing else to do within Liberty City.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion exceeds any of the gta games in it's sheer vastness and how the entire world of Tamriel is populated with people who own stores, have houses, and have daily schedules. Every building within Tamriel is open for you to explore. You may find treasure in a cave, you may steal a sword from a wealthy person's home, you may buy armor from a blacksmith, you may customize your weaponry with spells in a guild, you may enter a battle arena, so many things are available for you to do that you could never possibly be bored in Oblivion. Gta4 however does not offer anything and instead you are left with the monotonous single player missions alone.
Now don't get me wrong, there are aspects about gta4's single player that are good. Most notably the story is intruiging and the voice acting and cut scenes are well done, but when you're playing the game just to get to the next cut scene and not wanting to actually go through gameplay then you know something is wrong. Other noteworthy positives about gta4 are the graphics, which for the size of liberty city, are amazing and the sound is well done.
This brings us now to multiplayer, a mutt that tries to be something it can't be. Gta4 attempts at being a competitive racing game, a competitive shooting game, and a cooperative mission game, but it fails miserably on all accounts.
The core mechanics of shooting and driving transition unchanged into multiplayer, such a shame. The helicopters are impossible to pilot effectively, drive-by's are dull, the action is too spread out, driving is annoying for the aforementioned reasons, and there are 15 different modes which all feel tacked on just to add depth. Multiplayer has never been something gta has needed and shouldn't have been added. For multiplayer we can stick with games like halo or call of duty or project gotham racing or rainbow six.
Gameplay is the core fundamental of any videogame. Gameplay can make or break a game, and in gta4's case it breaks it in half. There are far too many short-comings in gta4 to warrant a 10/10, let alone a 9/10. With such a redundant single player campaign and un-effective multiplayer Grand Theft Auto 4 gets a 5.5/10.
makchady
Great review... couldn't agree with you more.
Log in to comment