GTA4 was better than GTA5: When even the embodiment of DECLINE itself begins to decline.

[sullynathan]

You all should've played the ballad of gay Tony.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I see it more as a Nico's hunt for his former comrades and eventual gangsters showdown stuff never really delivering a kind of payoff. Nico doesn't really change as a character or learn anything, at the end he's the same guy he was at the start (then again, one could argue this in regards to most GTA protagonists, even the two best ones; Tommy's still Tommy at the end, and CJ's still a bitch). Which is pretty bad since Nico's initial state is mostly just one of disinterest.

So I suppose I should revise that I'm CONCEPTUALLY okay with Nico.

 

[karoliner]

Never played V but it's difficult to believe its worse than IV that game was boring as fuck.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

and CJ's still a bitch

Care to explain what you mean by this?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

and CJ's still a bitch

Care to explain what you mean by this?

Just the time when early in the game Ryder tells CJ that he's still a bitch despite bailing them from whatever trouble they were in.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Pretty sure Ryder calls him "busta".

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

He does that all the time, but I have a pretty strong recollection of this one thing happening (IIRC it's after the bicycle escape). Though since my memory is nowhere near eidetic, could be it was Sweet or Big Smoke.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

CJ does come across as a bit of a bitch when it comes to Tenpenny.

He certainly does a lot of missions for him. Even after Tenpenny set up Sweet in collusion with Ryder and Big Smoke.

 

[Ash]

GTA4 and 5, banal shit boring that they are, are not the embodiment of decline. They are decline yes, but there are far worse offenders.

Fallouts Vice City and San Andreas were great for me as a storyfag

They're better games for gameplayfags too. Well, aside from the autoaim shit (optional-ish in San Andreas, at least).

 

[taxalot]

Ballad of Gay Tony made GTA 4 redeem itself on all its accounts. I agree, this was clearly one of the best DLC I have ever played, if not the best.

 

[Curratum]

Too bad that 4 stutters even on today's high-end PCs and has asset pop-in from hell, which renders it essentially unplayable, huh?

 

[Burning Bridges]

GTA Online is fucking brilliant, once you have the right people to play with.

It's the first DX11 game I know that runs really well and has bloom and all kinds of stuff enabled with no visual artifacts, ever. If it was not for the loading times and constant input delays, I would rate it one of the best games of all time.

Of course it's a resource hog but also uses a lot of impressive technology. If Rockstar should ever make an operating system that boots directly into their game, a lot of people would use it.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Btw it's also done a lot for the reputation of the PC. I meet a lot of people who ditched their console and bought a PC to be able to play GTA in full glory.

 

[Abhay]

CJ does come across as a bit of a bitch when it comes to Tenpenny.

Not at all. Did you miss all the conversations between CJ and Tenpenny, where CJ doesn't really care about him.

Frank Tenpenny: BOO!
Carl Johnson: Asshole

CJ was never intetested in working for him. Tenpenny knew exactly that CJ isn't someone who could be threatened to do his bidding and so he had to FORCE him by arresting Sweet and using him as a way to put pressure on him. Even in the beginning CJ did the missions (like Grey Imports) not because Tenpenny told him to do, but because of the affiliantion of the Russian mafia with the Ballas trying to make a deal for getting better guns that would surely put GSF at a disadvantage. CJ did for the GSF and not for Tenpenny. It was only after Sweet's arrest that CJ had no option but to follow whatever orders that Tenpenny gave him.

He certainly does a lot of missions for him. Even after Tenpenny set up Sweet in collusion with Ryder and Big Smoke.

Because Sweet's life was at risk. He had been under pressure to not only protect Sweet in prison but also to gain back the lost respect abd family's power by doing something with his life, aiming for a better life for both his family and the homies who have been pushed into drugs. He preferred not to get on the wrong side of Tenpenny till the right time and opportunity arrives later. Note the difference in his tone when talking to Tenpenny before and after Sweet's arrest. The CJ in LS clearly doesn't give a shit to Tenpenny's threats, but soon after Sweet's arrest he had to tone down his agression for reasons already explained. This is what separates him from ther protagonists who despite looking tough to act ike a badass remained little bitches running pointless errands even when there was no compulsion for the same. Niko is a good example of an absolutely pathetic and the most rubbish characters in the series.

 

[DalekFlay]

Never loved any of these games as much as the mainstream does but I did like 4 more than 5. I think simpler is better sometimes, plus I liked the characters more, plus I like Northeast more than California.

 

[Abhay]

I think simpler is better sometimes

But it lacked sufficient amount of variety in content. Sure the shooting is satisfying and even the introduction of euphoria but other than that the game lacked anything interesting worth talking about. The missions were utter boring and repetitive. Even the side missions were not different in that regard. The pointbof side missions was always to offer something to the players that helps to break the monotony of the main campaign. In case if IV, side missions were just another excuse for driving from point A to point B, killing more dudes as a vigilante, and collecting packages by obeying the orders and fulfilling tasks that didn't reward you anything interesting or new besides MOAR MONEY. The most stupid part of the whole game is that you never spend money on purchasing even your own safehouse. Its offered absolutely free to Niko, readily available on the platter, and yet the game wants us to believe that Niko needs to run more errands for the sake of making more money, or even worse to find that special someone whom he doesn't even mention in any of his conversations with lots of characters for whom he had been working throughout the game. Other than Ray and Bernie (of course his cousin as well), Niko didn't talk about Darko to anybody else, so exactly how are we supposed to figure out that Niko is lokking for that someone by working for all these criminals that the game keeps introducing and then very conveniently got killed later???
This whole finding special someone element has so little role to play in the whole story, just one mission with cutscenes of Darko, that's all there's to oit. The only revelation that comes from that mission is that even Darko finds Niko a hypocrite, like seriously, did we waste time to make us realise something that we knew about Niko way before Darko mentioned it?

Regarding the other characters, then again, I absolutely disliked them. Many characters are simply clones of much more memorable and well written characters of the past. Like that police officer (one of those McReary) who is a blatant rip off of Tenpenny, from his background to missions, everything is more or less lifted from Tenpenny's character. I don't know why they introduced him. He had nothing important to offer in the overall plot. Same goes for Salvatore Leobe's clone aka Pegorino, and even that Playboy X is another OG LoC version we have already experienced in the series.

Majority of the missions are simply lifted from prev games. Check out GTAWikia's Trivia section of each of the missions where they have detailed nicely all the similarities and exact situations in which the missions appear very much repeated in the same manner as their predecessors.

I can list many things that make GTA IV an absolute waste of time. The amazingly detailed city and euphoria, including a couple of interesting additions are the only things that stands out about GTA IV.

V maybe not that great but surely it was still a decent game than GTA IV.

 

[Multidirectional]

Too bad that 4 stutters even on today's high-end PCs and has asset pop-in from hell, which renders it essentially unplayable, huh?

I've just got new cpu/mobo/ram and I've been testing games that gave my previous CPU trouble. It's i5-8400 now and it runs GTA 4 real well, finally. Almost constant 60 FPS on these settings:

Spoiler

No stuttering and asset pop in is significantly lower than other games of this type, expecially considering the amount of detail in the city. Only drops to 45-50 rarely in larger traffics jams, particularly one bridge. I am guessing maxed Vehicle Density has something to do with that but now gonna lower it because I love setting off chain car explosions in this game too much.

 

[Astral Rag]

That expansion pack was cool too. Unfortunately R* thought it was a great idea to add a piss filter over the graphixx. Of course there is a mod that disables it but that won't stop me from complaining about it.
In the current year R* actually started caring about the quality of their PC ports again but now they only release multiplayer garbage post release . GTA V runs much better than GTA IV on my PC...

Sadly they never fix any of their older games and they even cut out music years after release. And IIRC they replaced some of their GTA III engine games on Steam with shittier ports of Android ports because why not.

 

[Multidirectional]

GTA V runs much better than GTA IV on my PC...

It ran much better on my old PC too, I assume it would be the same with this one. I would be impressed by it except physics are way less fun in V. I use Visual IV to remove piss filter from Lost and Damned and Ballad of Gay Tony looks fine unmodded.

 

[Duraframe300]

GTA5 heroes are (ANGER ISSIUES ANGER ISSUES, FIND ME FUNNY. DON'T LEAVE ME") (Nigga bang bang, I feel so sorry and devoid of life) and (FISHMALK)

All of which work much better for a GTA game than Nico. "OH THE HORRIBLE GUILT OF THE TERRIBLE THINGS I DID IN THE WAR" *carjacks an old lady and runs over 12 pedestrians on the way to bowling*

Considering we’re talking about the yugoslavian war carjacking an old ladys car and murdering 12 pedestrians probably counts as a pretty humane thing to do.

 

[DalekFlay]

I can list many things that make GTA IV an absolute waste of time. The amazingly detailed city and euphoria, including a couple of interesting additions are the only things that stands out about GTA IV.

V maybe not that great but surely it was still a decent game than GTA IV.

You wrote a lot of stuff, but like I said I've never really been into this series like other people are. Like with Assassin's Creed I load them up, explore the city and do some missions, then get bored and try to finish the main "quest" if I have the patience, or just uninstall. So when you speak about variety of side content or whatever it just rolls right off my back, because I just want to headshot some people and get it the fuck over with.

 

[karoliner]

Finally finished V. Is better than IV for starters it had a stable framerate of 60fps and never crashed to desktop. And this time they remembered to have some humor on the story. Michael story is kinda whetever with his family stuff but Franklin's and Trevor's compensate for it. Controlling aircraft with m&k is a pain in the ass you really need a gamepad. I remember the heists being very hyped back in the day but except for the Paleto Score they were very underwhelming. In general mission design and variety is inferior to Vice City and San Andreas, is way too realistic and down to earth is the same criticism i had for IV.

Not a great game or anything but at least it didn't make feel i was wasting my time like IV did.

 

[DDZ]

I liked GTA IV much more, mostly because I just enjoy driving around and crashing into shit. I don't like the overly arcade car control of V, with the steering in air and stuff.

IV also have Liberty City Hardocre.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I've just got new cpu/mobo/ram and I've been testing games that gave my previous CPU trouble. It's i5-8400 now and it runs GTA 4 real well, finally. Almost constant 60 FPS on these settings:

Spoiler

No stuttering and asset pop in is significantly lower than other games of this type, expecially considering the amount of detail in the city. Only drops to 45-50 rarely in larger traffics jams, particularly one bridge. I am guessing maxed Vehicle Density has something to do with that but now gonna lower it because I love setting off chain car explosions in this game too much.

GTA V is really light on your system. It does not even store cars that you see on the street sometimes you just go around the corner and they're gone. A paradoxical situation that the game takes 50GB on the SSD but a savegame would only amount to a few bytes.

It's optimized to the point of it being a deception, complexity is nonexistant, and they can harness the full power of the GPU to show the city and stream new data in the background.

But I think they did a really good job on this one. for the first 100 hours or I felt like I'm actually in Los Santos, with constantly varying people and accents, traffic that appears relatively believable (until you go through with 200 km/h in the wrong way), and some of the best weather and lightning effects I have seen. I mean, just the transition between rain and sunshine is worth playing the game.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

GTA IV will, to this day, refuse to boot on any system I’ve installed it on (3 I think?). GTA V I’ve never played, but the one time a friend tried to show it to me I saw a 5 minute cutscene followed by some mandatory QTE yoga.

So, yeah. I guess I would say IV is slightly better?