GTA IV overrated?

[Mimi Nakamura]

I decided to finally purchase GTA IV, but I have to say that I'm incredibly disappointed. The graphics are terrible, the control system is very poor, and the gameplay seems to be very repetitive. The music is impressive though, and some of the cut scenes are funny. It doesn't feel like much of a challenge, and I feel it's definitely not worthy of all the good reviews it received.

I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me, but is there anyone who shares the same opinions?

[dayzed4life]

I like playing gta iv quite a bit. mostly for just something to do between other games I'm playing. I definitely don't get as much enjoyment out of it as some of the other gta titles.

[G-Boobie]

Absolutely. To my mind, there is no more over-hyped series in gaming than the GTA games. Terrible controls, poorly designed missions, shady checkpoints, and cliched story.

To be fair, there are some clever and enjoyable pieces in the GTA games, but the overall package has never delivered for me. I much preferred Crackdown and Saint's Row.

All, of course, in my opinion.

[miaandjohnrule]

To be fair, there are some clever and enjoyable pieces in the GTA games, but the overall package has never delivered for me. I much preferred Crackdown and Saint's Row.

Well put. My thoughts exactly. I have played all the GTA IV expansions, they aren't all that. Pretty Meh.

[SPAZ-12]

GTA IV is way over-hyped, and I love the GTA games. My biggest problem was that they made things more "realistic." In reality all this did was break the driving portion of the game (aka: the best part) and made some other parts very annoying. After playing it for awhile I started enjoying it, but it took way too long before I was good enough to be able to have fun; in the previous GTA releases almost anyone could pick up the controller and have fun immediately.

[kupomogli]

I've never been a fan of GTA until GTA4.

The frst GTA I ever played was the first one. Amazing game, for about 20 minutes. Then boredom set in and I gave it back to the friend who let me borrow it. After that it was GTA3, Vice City, Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories, and last(before GTA4,) San Andreas.

If you ask me, GTA3 is just an overall bad game. The presentation is nice, but everything else is just bad. The only reason to even play GTA3 nowdays is to listen to Chatterbox. Lawlow Jones ftw.

I just recently finished GTA Liberty City Stories and it did have a nice backstory to GTA3 including a lot of characters such as Donald Love, who owns all the radio stations in GTA3, Eight Ball, Salvatore, etc. However. Despite having a great backstory, the game sucked. It's gameplay is better than GTA3, but not much, and for a game that came out 5 years later. I'd expected so much more.

Vice City and Vice City Stories. Now Vice City is pretty much GTA3 with another storyline. Not much has changed and the game is only slightly better. Vice City Stories is actually much better than any of the others with the inclusion of the rackets that you can own to make yourself extra money, but overall the game is finally decent.

San Andreas actually improved on the series a lot. This is honestly the first actually good GTA game. I still don't like it in comparison to Driver, Driver 3(yes, I like Driv3r better,) and Scarface the World is Yours, as those games are so much better, but it's actually good for a GTA game.

-
Then I played GTA4. GTA4 is amazing. This is coming from a person who has mostly disliked the GTA series and has merely only played the games prior to playing GTA4. GTA4 is the very first game in the series that was good enough for me to play to completion.

Now the first thing I noticed on the game when starting it is the driving. The cars controlled very realistic. Much to how a car would control in real life. I enjoy simcade driving games much more than arcade style, so the new style of driving was something I really liked and this was in the first 10 minutes of playing the game.

What I didn't like at fist was the camera angles when driving. Due to this I put the game down and didn't play it for the longest time, picking it up three months later and actually one more time giving it a chance. Previously already changing the controls to older style racing games rather than the trigger buttons for acceleration and breaking, etc, it had a button placement that I liked, and then figuring a good way for the camera not to suck while driving I started to enjoy it. When driving and making a turn around the corner, press O(or B on the 360) to change your cars view to cam view but immediately let it go and it'll directly position itself behind you. Sure this really sucks to have to do this since the camera doesn't turn behind you quick enough, but fixing the camera issue was easy enough.

So I got back into the game. Played more and got up to the shooting. If you've ever played Scarface the World Is Yours, you'll know that the aiming system is exactly the same. Now I used auto aim when first playing and unlike the other GTA games, instead of auto aiming towards a random person three blocks down the road behind you, you can only aim at someone within the camera's vision(meaning only straight ahead of you.) With lock on, it then allows you to aim at a specific part within the body instead of just at a character and shoot them in the chest until they die. Shoot at their leg and watch them fall or even their head and, well, also watch them fall.

The stoyline was also very good. It didn't try and take itself seriously, but the voice acting was great and the characters were extremely likable. You didn't go and do a mission and then like the other GTA games. Oh go do this, etc, etc. It gave you quite a bit of story on these characters before missions even started.

Anyways. While there isn't as much to do in GTA4 as there is in San Andreas, there is definitely more to do in GTA4 than GTA3, VC, and LCS(not sure about VCS.) This is also the only GTA I actually enjoy driving around in and not just doing mission after mission.

Last. There's the multiplayer. Playing deathmatch isn't as good as playing deathmatch on a fps etc. However, playing deathmatch is still fun. Team deathmatch is even better. The Race mode with I think 20 different races, Cannonball run, a few helicopter races, and boat races as well. A few other different modes and then even some story like modes where you can complete a story like mission with friends.

Also. GTA4 isn't as overhyped as you might think. Once it came out, yeah, but after it came out you have so many fans of the series that says GTA4 is the worst one. I see a lot of times when people say GTA3 is such a great game in the series but then say some sortof remark towards how GTA4 isn't any good. Sure everyone has their opinion, but I think that's nothing more than a fanboy of the series being biased because it's not the same crap we've been seeing with the series since day one(in 3d atleast.)

So overall. I think the GTA series sucks overall. GTA4 however is by far one of the best current gen games I've ever played, one of the best games of all time. Now I haven't played GTA Episodes From Liberty City, but that will be soon since it's finally coming out on the PS3 this month. Gameplay the same as GTA4 with a different story is definitely something I don't mind.

*edit*

GTA IV is way over-hyped, and I love the GTA games. My biggest problem was that they made things more "realistic." In reality all this did was break the driving portion of the game (aka: the best part) and made some other parts very annoying. After playing it for awhile I started enjoying it, but it took way too long before I was good enough to be able to have fun; in the previous GTA releases almost anyone could pick up the controller and have fun immediately.

Nothing against you Spaz, but people should read my second to last edit after reading this quote.

This is what I'm talking about though. The previous GTA games were just extremely poorly designed arcade racing style games with bad mechanics for shooting etc. When everything was expanded, the driving was redone, and the shooting no longer sucked, this is what made the GTA series good for me. They fixed everything that was wrong in GTA games prior to GTA4 so that it had great racing mechanics, great shooting mechanics, great story, a world that is actually nice to explore even on foot, and easily the best soundtrack to date on a GTA title(except for Chatterbox being better than Integrity 2.0.)

[Icarus Moonsight]

I had a lot of fun playing my homebrew mission "crotch-rocket" (what I called it) in Vice City (last GTA I played). You jack a motorcycle, moped, scooter or whatever. Drive it somewhat fast, down a straight. Aim for a group of people and then hit the bail button while yelling "Crotch-Rocket!". Taking out a beat-cop gets you bonus imaginary points... Possibly a gun! Then you go pick up the monies and your bike, or just jack another one and do it all over again. Don't worry about yelling the warning, they can't hear you.

After doing that for about an hour, you never have to play the games again.

[otoko]

I honestly never got GTA for the story. I ignored it and just found someone with a complete save game.

I like the control scheme, so whatever. I just usually use it as a time filler. Recently since I got it for my growing PS3 collection I've been playing with friends online and that has been tons of fun.

Recently, we've been doing wars between us and using the strip clubs as bases!

[johj1987]

gta 4 sucks. you should try saints row that is a great game you could customize you character and your cars

[Swamperon]

I played it and it was... okay. Certainly not enjoyable as San Andreas. It was most certainly overrated upon release, not deserving the amount of perfect scores it received. In fact I've seen reviewers admit that they became swept up in the hype and rated it to highly.

[exit]

GTA has always been overhyped and overrated, but so are all of the other big name games. I personally never intended to get GTA4, but then I did get GTA4 and put countless amount of hours just messing around alone. It's no Vice City or anything, but I got my moneys worth.

gta 4 sucks. you should try saints row that is a great game you could customize you character and your cars

Saints Row is just the poor man's GTA, Saints Row 2 was just horrible.

[Cryomancer]

Saints Row 2 = king of the genre.

GTA4 is pretty lame and boring when compared to either Saints Row or any previous GTA title in my opinion. The game penalizes you for skipping the taxi ride? cmon now. Every mission seems to be "drive the hell way across the entire map, get your orders, drive the hell other side of the map to carry them out", and then when you beat it someone wants to go out and they are, surprise, way the hell on the other side of the map. Of course I'm gonna start taking taxis when it gets like that all the time. Why are you punishing me for getting to the GAME part of the game and not just the traffic simulator part? Everything that is fun about the previous games is gone, replaced by incredible blandness. I really, really hate the BROWN = REAL!!!! / GREY = GRITTY!!! trend of modern games. Even the music stations are lacking in GTA4. San Andreas is a far, far better game in my experience.

[jonebone]

Personally I thought it was a great game. I mean how many series can you honestly say have improved with each version? Even if you hate the series, you have to at least admit that GTA IV > III and III > everything else.

Sure it may seem a bit repetitive, but what game doesn't? In Super Mario all you do is jump around, get powerups and use fireballs. That's repetitive isn't it? Still doesn't stop it from being a great game.

I enjoyed it and I'm not a GTA fanboy by any means. Got my 40-50 hours of use out if it at release and probably will never touch it again. However, at no point in the gameplay did I ever thing "Wow, this is stupid" or "Man this really sucks".

[megasdkirby]

For me, I always thought it was overrated. I tried liking the series, but it just never grabbed by attention. It might be great, but I never understood or realized why.

"Just not my cup of tea" or however it is said.

[chicnstu]

What I'm having a hard time understanding is how people can't see that GTA IV is a quality, polished game. The story is the most well-written in the series, the missions have more variety than ever, the physics are amazing (the way the characters react to everything, the vehicle damage is better than any game I've seen), the multiplayer is great to be an extra to an already huge single-player experience, and, for such a massive environment, the graphics are amazing. That's why Crackdown and Saints Row are cel-shaded, they didn't want to spend the time or couldn't get the graphics to look good realistically, Rockstar did.

Crackdown is cool, but very repetitive. Most of the fun is in being on rooftops. And the Saints Row series is just cheesy, and not in the good way.

[Cryomancer]

Well, that's opinions for you. I like the crazy over-the-top ness of Saints Row and San Andreas. Saints Row 2 is especially excellent, as it provides many things that the genre should have had day 1, and should require from now on. Cruise control for example. Far too many sandbox games leave that out, it's a crime! You can have a car delivered to you; call your friends to come to YOU, with a car; you can have followers, who can get into their own cars and follow yours. Seriously, tons of technical improvements on the formula that more games need to pick up on. And since when is Saints Row a low graphics quality game?

[StoneAgeGamer]

GTA4 is over hyped. Its a good game, but not as ground breaking as previous versions and did not deserve the perfect scores it was getting from reviewers. My favorite GTA is Vice City. Fun story (not original, but fun), great 80s music, good controls, and just a fun game IMO.

[heybtbm]

GTA IV is excellent except for the music. After being spoiled with the incredible soundtracks from Vice City and San Andreas, the "let's do it as cheap as we can" music selection was a big letdown. That, and the multiplayer was embarrassingly awful.

Still, it's one of the best games this generation IMO. In terms of it's place on the GTA list, I'd say it's the 2nd best. Right below San Andreas but above Vice City.

[Therealqtip]

I grew up hating the gta games but I really like them now. They're only overhyped (besides the millions of people that love them) because its like OMG GTA YOU KILL HOOKERS, OH MANNN I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE WHAT ROCKSTAR HAS HIDDEN IN THIS GAME! (Hot coffee mod)

[kupomogli]

GTA IV is excellent except for the music. After being spoiled with the incredible soundtracks from Vice City and San Andreas, the "let's do it as cheap as we can" music selection was a big letdown. That, and the multiplayer was embarrassingly awful.

You didn't like the music. I thought it had a lot of great music.

First off. While not as good as Chatterbox from GTA3, Integrity 2.0 was awesome. Almost every song in Tuff Gong, Liberty Rock Radio, and Radio Broker was really good. Those were the ones I mainly left it on, but I could leave it on nearly anything and it was enjoyable.

GTA3 I left it on Chatterbox or Flashback. Lazlow is awesome and the Scarface soundtrack is amazing. I thought everything else sucked. Then as for Liberty City Stories I only left it on the last station LCFR and only when Lazlow was on because literally every music track on that game sucked balls. I had music completed turned off for half the game it just got so grating.

I can't tell you about Vice City. I only left it on VRock. But Vice City Stories had a really good soundtrack which is another I could leave it most stations without being annoyed as most of the music was very very good. I honestly think VRock was better on Vice City Stories, not much though.

San Andreas I only remember X Rock.

I'd say overall if it went by my favorite genre, Rock. It would be Vice City Stories(it had other stations I listened to and liked so that's a tie breaker,) Vice City, San Andreas, and GTA4 would be in that order.