Grand Theft Auto IV was a letdown. I fully expected GTAIV to be amazing and I was seriously disappointed. San Andreas was a close to perfect game. I don't think there is a game out there that is as huge as San Andreas. You are playing a game that contains an entire [imaginary] state. There are three big cities separated by great distances and rural towns to fill those gaps. Rockstar pushed the genre beyond expectations.
Perhaps I neglected to read the proper previews of GTAIV, but it was tiny compared to San Andreas. Liberty City looked beautiful, but it lacked the variety of San Andreas. I started noticing familiar locations way too soon. And what happened to the RPG elements in San Andreas? It was a fun leveling up all of CJ's skills. It was also fun to gorge and make CJ fat and then work that fat off. That game's attention to detail was amazingly deep. It was the perfect blend of action and RPG. The only game that surpasses it in that aspect, is Fallout 3.
Look, I liked GTAIV, but I didn't love it. That's what I wanted out of GTAIV. I wanted so badly to love that game, but it just didn't have what I was looking for. It was supposed to be the biggest GTA yet. Clearly it had the biggest story yet, but the size of the city and its surrounding areas was tiny compared to San Andreas.
Sure the game got amazing reviews, but I think that was because of hype. People were so pumped for this game that it was going to amaze them no matter what. I think a lot of publications and websites probably felt pressured to give it great reviews because they wanted to sell mags or get more visitors. It was probably one of the most highly anticipated games of all time. Nobody was going to convince themselves that it wasn't up to par. It had to be awesome.
Well, it wasn't awesome. It was very good, but it wasn't new enough to rant and rave over. Fallout 3 was new and different. Little Big Planet was also new and different. But GTAIV felt like a retred of older iterations with much better graphics.
We've come to expect greatness from Rockstar with every GTA outing. Give us a game truly worthy of the GTA moniker. Give us a GTA game that is truly worth 50+ hours of our lives. We want to get lost in every nook and cranny of the GTA universe. Bring back the nooks and crannies.
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Sounds like your just as disappointed in GTA IV as I was with Gear of War 2. I played Gears of War over and over, but once I got done with GoW2, it didn't have the same replay ability.
ReplyDeleteFallout 3 was awesome though I'd have to agree. Funny thing about FO3 is that the map was suppose to be much larger. The makers decided to scale it down. How much fun would a larger map have been!?!?!
Cheers.