I'm 35% done with the game and over 20 hours into it, and so far, it is still disappointing considering the praise.
My background, as far as GTA is concerned, is that I've played both Vice City and San Andreas on the PC. They were not bad. I've never played GTA on consoles before, but I have played Saint's Row, which was awesome.
Gamespot is full of CRAP. Sometimes their scores are strange, but this time, they really exaggerated. They managed to give it a 10, which is a PERFECT SCORE, but the say in the video review that the game isn't perfect and that there isn't much new material added compared to previous games. It's not just Gamespot though. Look at Metacritic.com, I see a lot of hundreds. When I read the paragraph under each score I begin to wonder if they are talking about this same game.
In the review from Game Revolution, the author points out that we need to play through 15-20 hours before we experience the good stuff. There were some interesting missions and story elements, but they are few and far apart.
I've seen many games get a really low score from reviewers because it doesn't offer anything new to improve the genre or it doesn't do anything that we haven't seen before. I feel this way about GTA4.
The following are some other thoughts.
-Initially, the graphics were very disappointing. After a certain, relatively close point, the graphics get so blurry that it looks like a wall, and I didn?t get a sense that the city has depth. The first island you play in felt empty, but when you get to the middle island, a Manhattan clone, it starts to feel more like a real city. I've played the game for so long that I've gotten slightly used to the blurriness, although it still bothers me plenty. Then I started to appreciate the graphics more and noticed that at times, the realistic visuals can be breathtaking, especially when you get into the helicopter.
-Because my brother has the 360 version, I became jealous of how much better it looked. Although the PS3 has better shadows, the 360 has a sharper image and has the blur wall pushed back farther to an acceptable range.
-Trying to learn the controls from the menu is difficult because they keep changing because there are many function to each button. Controlling the character is cumbersome, especially when using the camera (right stick) while moving. It is annoying because the camera keeps trying to recenter itself. It makes it difficult to site-see.
-Pressing start and interacting with the map is annoyingly sluggish and takes some getting used to. In fact, the whole map thing is annoying. Going to a point on the map makes you focus more on the map than on the actual game.
-When driving, the camera is in a lower position than I?d like. When backing up with the car, you can't even see what you are backing up into because it zooms into the car and its ass ends up taking up the entire screen.
-No reference material on how to play the game. Instead, they insist on teaching you things while you're busy doing a mission. This is a problem that they've had in previous games and they obvious didn't learn. A pop-up that paused the game would've been nice.
My background, as far as GTA is concerned, is that I've played both Vice City and San Andreas on the PC. They were not bad. I've never played GTA on consoles before, but I have played Saint's Row, which was awesome.
Gamespot is full of CRAP. Sometimes their scores are strange, but this time, they really exaggerated. They managed to give it a 10, which is a PERFECT SCORE, but the say in the video review that the game isn't perfect and that there isn't much new material added compared to previous games. It's not just Gamespot though. Look at Metacritic.com, I see a lot of hundreds. When I read the paragraph under each score I begin to wonder if they are talking about this same game.
In the review from Game Revolution, the author points out that we need to play through 15-20 hours before we experience the good stuff. There were some interesting missions and story elements, but they are few and far apart.
I've seen many games get a really low score from reviewers because it doesn't offer anything new to improve the genre or it doesn't do anything that we haven't seen before. I feel this way about GTA4.
The following are some other thoughts.
-Initially, the graphics were very disappointing. After a certain, relatively close point, the graphics get so blurry that it looks like a wall, and I didn?t get a sense that the city has depth. The first island you play in felt empty, but when you get to the middle island, a Manhattan clone, it starts to feel more like a real city. I've played the game for so long that I've gotten slightly used to the blurriness, although it still bothers me plenty. Then I started to appreciate the graphics more and noticed that at times, the realistic visuals can be breathtaking, especially when you get into the helicopter.
-Because my brother has the 360 version, I became jealous of how much better it looked. Although the PS3 has better shadows, the 360 has a sharper image and has the blur wall pushed back farther to an acceptable range.
-Trying to learn the controls from the menu is difficult because they keep changing because there are many function to each button. Controlling the character is cumbersome, especially when using the camera (right stick) while moving. It is annoying because the camera keeps trying to recenter itself. It makes it difficult to site-see.
-Pressing start and interacting with the map is annoyingly sluggish and takes some getting used to. In fact, the whole map thing is annoying. Going to a point on the map makes you focus more on the map than on the actual game.
-When driving, the camera is in a lower position than I?d like. When backing up with the car, you can't even see what you are backing up into because it zooms into the car and its ass ends up taking up the entire screen.
-No reference material on how to play the game. Instead, they insist on teaching you things while you're busy doing a mission. This is a problem that they've had in previous games and they obvious didn't learn. A pop-up that paused the game would've been nice.