GTA IV Rant

I'm not going to bother reviewing GTA IV. You've already bought it, or you're not gonna. But, I am going to bitch about it.

First, GTA IV is the only GTA I've ever finished. The writing and difficulty levels meshed perfectly with what I needed to complete the story. But, in terms of actual gameplay, it wasn't nearly as fun as any of the previous titles. It's a good game. Just not as fun as it should have been.

The main thing Rockstar ruined is the cars. With the exception of the high-end sports cars, none of the cars handle even remotely acceptably. None of the vehicles have impressive acceleration. None of them corner easily. None of them skid predictably. All of them feel like they weigh three tons. It's a fucking video game. All of the cars should at least have the potential to entertain.

Another huge problem is the simulation distance. In previous games, you could sit on a tower and snipe at pedestrians blocks away. In GTA IV, if you're more than about five stories up, few or no pedestrians are simulated, and never any traffic. This means my favorite passtime of crashing cars by popping tires with sniper rifle becomes rather more difficult to facilitate.

The simulation distance also ruins high speed driving. You'll be zipping along in a sports car at high speed. All of the streets in front of you will have fuzzy red and white lights (of are just empty, during the day), but as you hig each cross street, they turn out to be mere phantasms. Until finally, of course, the program streams in some simulated traffic and you T-bone a Plymouth and shoot through the hood.

Combat was much improved previous games. Except for the weird cover system. But, does it matter? It's Grand Theft Auto. If the Auto part sucks, the quality of the Grand Theft interests me far less.

I'm just sayin', I had more fun last time, Rockstar.

EDIT: I just realized that I must have totally blocked out the memory of the loathsome goddamn goatfucking relentless and indiscriminate phonecalls and their chickenraping punitive solidarity system. I'm not going to talk about it. They shouldn't have done it. It's self evident.