GRAND THEFT AUTO 4 NEEDS A THREAD AND YOU GUYS CAN'T BE TRUSTED TO MAKE ONE

Man it's so bizarre that this is the only video game forum outside of RPGamer where GTA4 isn't the biggest event ever.

I've gotten much further into the game and I am particularly impressed by the writing. The main character is the most well-written character I've ever seen in a video game. He has a troubled past and is aware of the world around him and has an ambivalent feeling about it; he isn't a cutout hardass or paragon of virtue like most videogame heroes are. He's a real person with real feelings and he doesn't like to talk about them. When he *does* talk about them, you can see in his animation and hear in the acting that a wall has broken down and that he feels vulnerable or on the verge of tears. I play a ton of jRPGs, which are supposedly primarily about story (the makers of those games would disagree with this statement), and I can confidently say that GTA 4 is 400% as well-written as any jRPG out there. The visual design of Niko Bellic is something I could write pages about, but in short I can say that he is a daring decision and brilliant star.

I think that not playing or spending the time to appreciate the game is doing yourself an enormous disservice. There is real, solid stuff to this game. It has an artistic vision. I guess a lot of people assume that an open-world game like this is exclusively about driving really fast in a stolen car, and I suppose that if you never complete the first couple of missions, that's probably all you'll do. But if you play jRPGs and you claim that storyline and writing are major forces compelling you through a game, you'd be missing out on the best writing in a videogame yet by not playing GTA4.

author=Tau link=topic=997.msg13774#msg13774 date=1209654103
That last part you wrote sounds like some kind of advertising pitch haha.

Well I don't know man I just think it's criminal that jRPG nuts who love game stories and talk about GAMES AS ART aren't interested in the game that has the best story and is probably a culturally-relevant piece of art.

Oh yeah definitely hand-to-hand sucks in this game. Of course you only need to do it like once in the entire game so. Anyway, it's clunky and awkward and doesn't really work and it doesn't feel very engaging when you punch, kick, dodge etc. I actually prefer a system where I mash the button to win opposed to something like this which is complicatd but not really tight enough to function.

I think the aiming system is a perfect balance between giving you control over where you want to shoot the bad guy but keeping it from requiring the precision of a shooter. It's a really clever balance.

But yeah this game isn't perfect and it's rough around the edges in some spots and the game actually kind of nosedives into boring droll without any plot development exactly halfway through (not even kidding). It's an incredible game though, and definitely more than the sum of its parts (this is the video game buzz phrase of 2008).