Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Re: Neither did GTAIV, you dumb fuck

[quote name="Lizard_King"][quote name="Fortinbras"] I remember getting to insta-travel to a safehouse in Just Cause. There was never any incentive to switch weapons, your pistols or an assault rifle looted off a dead mexican did just fine. And I can't ever remember a safehouse in Just Cause giving me a useful vehicle other than a fucking commercial helicopter, and I only had to unlock one safehouse for that. Everything else I stole on site, after an aggravating 15 minute helicopter ride that couldn't be skipped. GTA IV could skip the tedious ride across town! [/quote] There were military helicopters and a variety of military vehicles as well, and the weapons were about as differentiated as GTAIV with the key idea that the game didn't make me go back to the weapon store and repurchase them every time I died. There is no distance in JC that takes fifteen minutes to travel by helicopter. It is entirely possible, though, to spend as long as you wish in certain parts of Liberty city and never see an empty taxi. [quote]Did you ever stop to think that maybe this devotion to some Platonic ideal of a sandbox game is what makes the ones you listed so thoroughly unenjoyable to other people? In your mind if a game sets out to make itself a sandbox game and succeeds, well it doesn't matter whether it's an exercise in tedium like Just Cause or thoroughly uninspiring like Saints Row II, it succeeded! GTAIV broke the covenant! Or maybe your idea of a sandbox game is just stupid. I went to Just Cause looking for the same thing you were and didn't see it. I saw a shitty compromise between GTA and Mercenaries that fucking failed at both. [/quote] Well, maybe your mother is a whore. All of these things are possibilities, they are just not as relevant as you'd think. The parts of GTAIV that you skip, whether it's pigeons or taxi rides, those are all of the prime indicators that this is a game where the ideas they had would have been better served by a linear action title. At no point does the game reward experimentation or any sense of exploration, where each and every one of the titles I list has bonuses IN GAME for doing almost anything. SR2 may be a blatant knock off, but instead of trudging to the next mission prompted by my character's craven stupidity unarmed, I was base jumping into the back of a gang members convertible while my friend in coop flew the chopper, in order to unlock no falling damage. That would combine with the other marginal benefits I'd unlocked, from different fighting moves to souped up weapons, to make the next mission a completely different experience than the first time I failed it because I could fall down the 12 stories of it with no penalty or swan dive into it from as high as I wanted on the building. The mission was then comprised of a moderately impressive series of set pieces, which at no point were compromised by suicidal buddy AI even in single player since the game isn't designed to punish you for its shortcomings. I'll compare and contrast that with the totally sweet "two motorcycle guys" chase, which begins with my favorite GTAIV trick, the "gets away in a cutscene" move. I really loved how no matter how many accurate shots I got into them despite the horribly broken in-car shooting mechanic, there was no way to stop the chase unless I made it to the halfway point so I could see the totally sweet instadeath train scenario that could only pose a mortal threat to me. That's fucking inspired there, right asshole? Listen, I'm not trying to persuade you to like anything other than what Rockstar has to offer you. Keep at your shitty playable cutscene games, I don't care. But it is clear that GTA4 is an entirely different animal from the genre its series spawned, and I would say its a game that quite naturally speaks to people like Quentin that play one game a year or people like you that need something to fill the void in their life between deliveries of stupid zingers at the Creexuls. You want to re-file the GTA series under whatever the fuck it is now, that's fine with me. But it should no longer pretend to be what it once was, because everybody else is doing it better. Everything about GTA4 that is good would be better served by a straightforwardly linear title, up to and including Four Leaf Clover. Making me drive to two different locations to pick shit up before I get killed in a mission then respawn in my millionaire's hovel to wash rinse repeat does not a sandbox make. Also, Platonic ideal? Don't try to legitimize your low standards for entertainment and interactivity with some bullshit claim that I am arguing in the abstract. Every one of my complaints is concrete and repeatable. They don't agree with your tastes, which is actually a point in their favor, but that's not the same thing. [/quote]