miffy495

Haven't unlocked all of the islands yet, eh? Must have ventured into forbidden territory. On the last mission right now. Third try of it, anyway. I'm taking a breather before having another go. They do provide you with a checkpoint between all of the initial driving and the ensuing shootout, but when it takes you back there, your status is not reset. Say I have full health and armor going in to the mission, with all of my ammunition maxed. Then I fail with a quarter of my lifebar left. If I choose to retry, I start back at the beginning of the shootout, but with only a quarter of my lifebar. So I load up an older save and try again. Real effective checkpoint system there, Rockstar.

Wrestle, you do know that if you go to "load" in the pause menu and go to the very bottom of the save lists (under all the "empty slot" ones) it shows your last autosave and will allow you to load it, right? That's come in handy for me a few times. As for the hooker thing, the Weazel News updates do occasionally carry details on the latest exploits of a serial killer who's beheading people around Liberty. Never payed that close attention to them, but the victims may well be prostitutes.

Nah, that makes perfect sense. I stayed there a month in '06 and it was one of the reasons I wanted to unlock Algonquin so badly. It does improve the experience if you've got a point of reference for it. Also, Viva Pinata is awesome. You have my approval, though that likely means nothing at all. Brkl, I heard SDF was actually started by the guy who made the Wii60 site as a way of parodying Sony, but it actually attracted a base of legitimate Sony fans which scares me a little. Either way, never really worth reading except for thing like that comparison screenshot which I'll grant was kinda funny.

I've experienced pop-in exactly once. And not in the manner that they claim. It took approximately 2 seconds for the texture on the road I was driving on to appear after I'd been playing for 6 hours straight. Before and after that one incident, there were no problems at all. As for slowdown, a few times, but not in any really problematic ways. Say I hit a ramp and fly over about 15 police cars all with their lights flashing and sirens blaring and my car start to do a barrel roll. It'll slow down a bit until I land. Once the wheels hit the ground and I can actually control things anyway I was perfectly fine. Trees, signs, whatever appearing out of nowhere has not happened at all to me. Compare this to Vice City Stories on the PSP, where I could drive across an entire neighbourhood without the road texture loading yet, and there is no problem whatsoever. I'm actually curious what SDF said about VCS now given how much worse the performance was.

Awesome! Good on you, Tanukitsune. Wrestle, don't worry about Michelle. She'll soon have a much larger impact on you than you anticipate. That does sound like an amazing chase though. I actually have yet to get over a 3 star wanted level myself. Wait, that's not exactly true. The bank heist level gives you 5 stars, but for some reason doesn't give you the achievement when you get away. I need to get out there and cause some havoc, but I'm really waiting until I have a rocket launcher at my disposal. The only achievement I figured would be particularly hard was the $500000 in your account one. At least, I thought it would until one mission gave me $250000 for completing it. Now I'm only $100000 away and quite confident I'll make it. Also, there's that "survive a 6-star wanted level for 5 minutes) one. I'm probably going to get the level and hole up in the subway trying to stave of NOOSE teams until the "achievement unlocked" thing pops up and I can let them riddle me with bullets. Actually, the Subway seems to be a good way to lose wanted levels. If you can take a motorbike down into the tunnels and just run for a while, you'll eventually get out of the wanted circle and be able to hide.

Hooray! Congratulations. I played on the easier difficulty level, as I'd rather experience the game than frustration, but it always did seem to keep me on edge. Fighting the first of those giant ogre-things always kept me tense. I seemed to have about 1hp left no matter what I did, for the entire fight, until I finally killed the bastard. It really does feel rewarding when you can pull stuff like that off. I'm also reminded of the first time I killed that flying purple nutjob in Ninja Gaiden. I spent 3 hours retrying a damn 5 minutes fight, but when I killed her I was laughing like a maniac with joy.

No, it's not. But that the experience has been deepened and made much more enthralling does not make it a huge leap forward to me. It's a leap, to be sure. What you say has leapt forward, (the social modeling; the way police chases work now; the seemingly-bottomless incidental details and dialogue exchanges; the massively improved gunplay and hand-to-hand systems) I agree with. To me though, all of these things are the polish on the game. The game starts with sandbox gameplay and an impressive story. The mechanics and character of the world, amazingly detailed as they are, are the gloss on top of it. The game in GTA IV is only a small progression for the series. The world is a huge step forward for games, but this doesn't change the fact that if you didn't like the core game before you probably won't now. That said, I was a fan before and thus have been incredibly enthralled with the game. I just opened up the third section of the map about 10 minutes ago and have yet to journey there. I'm pretty psyched for it. Like Rodi said, the more I play, the more I crave. My girlfriend went to bed early last night so that she could get up for work today and I ended up playing until 3 am with headphones on so I wouldn't wake her. This despite sharing an alarm clock and knowing we'd have to get up at the same time. I'm tired today, but still playing this evening. To werd123, are custom soundtracks really such a big deal? I've never used them, not once, despite every version I own up to this point having the ability. And III, SA, and VC were all on PC so all it would have taken is dragging and dropping mp3s into a folder. The soundtracks have always been good, and will always be interrupted by gunfire and dialogue anyway, so wouldn't it just be more annoying if it was a song you really loved? And you're complaining that 60% at 30 hours is too little gameplay? I'm hard pressed under normal circumstances to devote more than 10 hours to a game I absolutely love. The last time I broke that rule was when I played Mass Effect over the Christmas holidays when I had no school to worry about. Lucky me, school ended for the summer last week so I can do the same thing now. The only time I've seen a game with a box that promised more than 100 hours of gameplay I put it right back on the shelf. 100 hours is too much game. Finally, Erkki, I got the same call as you during that mission. It happens a few times in different missions. The few times I've had to replay missions with really long car rides with lots of dialogue, I noticed that the second time I went for the drive, the conversations covered all the same points but was totally different. Very cool little detail there that makes having to replay really long missions (I just did that bank one the reviews all talked about. 2 15 minute tries) not so much of a hassle.

Yeah, this isn't going to change your mind. Maybe give it a rental just to make sure, and personally I can't see any way I wouldn't love this game, but I wouldn't buy it right away if I were you. I just had one of those perfect moments again. I'd just (midgame spoiler. No story details, just hiding it so that if you don't want to know what a mission involves doing you don't have to look.) and I ended up with that feeling of a mission well done as I flew over Middle Park with the Who's "The Seeker" coming on the radio. At midnight, game time. Brilliant.

No, you're right. It's not the same giant kind of leap we saw from GTA3. It is however, still a step up from San Andreas, which was one of my favorite games of all time. I personally wouldn't give it a 10. 9.5, sure. Maybe even a bit higher. It feels like what it is, the pinnacle of an utterly fantastic series. Apparently a lot of places think that means a 10/10. Whether or not you agree with them shouldn't really change the fact that it's a great game and deserves a play.

Shit, that addiction level is awesome! What exactly is it supposed to measure, anyway? Mine is at "That's some good shit" but I have no idea what it means.

No custom soundtracks, no. The one in there is pretty good, but not the best they've had. The classic rock station (LRR Liberty Rock Radio) is pretty sweet though. The Who, Bowie, the Smashing Pumpkins, Queen, R.E.M., etc. As an added bonus, not only is there an Iggy Pop song in there (I Wanna Be Your Dog), he's also the bloody DJ! Hells. Yes.

...And I just opened up Algonquin. Holy crap that was pretty. Just after getting to the island, Brucie called me up about a helicopter tour that he wanted to take a couple of girls on with me as the pilot. Was only supposed to scope out Broker Bridge at night, but I went all around downtown and through Middle Park as well. beautiful night scene. So cool.

Yeah, I'm aware. I did tweak the brightness up a bit, but may have to do so more. That mission for Brucie is actually the last one he'll give you, Rodi. After that he'll be just a normal friend and give you the ability to call him up anytime for street races. Also the usual stuff, I've been drinking and bowling with him for example. That street race actually ended spectacularly different for me. I held first for a while, then ended up spinning out about three markers from the end. Refusing to give in, I gunned it as hard as I could down the final straightaway, being quite surprised when a small hill in the road ended up launching me up and over the two cars which had gotten ahead of me. I landed about two inches in front of the car who had previously been in first and caused that motherfucker to break hard and spin out as I happily crossed the finish line with Brucie screaming about how awesome that was and how crazy I am. I celebrated for a good 5 minutes after that. JoeX111, I got my first handgun the same way. Didn't know there was something out behind the stripclub, but I do suggest going back and going into the room by the entrance marked "staff only." Free pump action shotgun sitting in the security office there, and as long as you switch back to empty hands when leaving the office, no one will give you trouble if you take it. Every time I go there with Roman I end up heading in just to grab some more ammo. It's the little stuff that really makes this. The thing that's impressed me more than anything else so far is incredibly inconsequential to anything else in the game. Any of you charge your cell phones next to your computer speakers? You know that distinctive clicking noise that the speakers will make a couple of seconds before the phone rings? "click-click-click. click-click-click. click-click-click. cliiiiiiiiiiiick.?" That one. If you're driving and have the radio on, the car's speakers will make exactly the same noise the perfect amount of time before your phone rings. When I noticed that, my jaw actually dropped. That's the amount of detail they put in here. Incredible.

Heh. Very nice, sir. The visor is actually really impressive.

Yup, have it for 360. I know it was different (reviews mostly said "more traditional") on the older consoles. Who knows, I may have done a hell of a lot better if I'd had that version.

Any of you made Niko date a guy yet? I found it pretty interesting that one of the missions actually forces you to. It's like they're trying to get that part of the game on the news.

Yeah. I really don't know what kept me from getting into Double Agent. Oh well. I'm sure I'll give it another go sooner or later. GTA IV is keeping me plenty busy at the moment anyway.

I just use the headset to talk. I think next time I want to try multiplayer I'll just make an invite-only session and send out a few. I ended up having a 12 year old yell at me about how he couldn't find the helicopter and how it was my fault. Hell with that. Hopefully invites will fare a bit better. Getting drunk is pretty fun. I was really surprised how hard walking is. Getting behind the wheel was probably a bad idea, as I soon had a two star wanted level for accidental civilian/police officer death. Luckily I was also able to lose it while drunk, but this made the chase even more fun. I'll be going drinking with contacts again very soon. Little Jacob just got added to my phone as a friend, so it's time to take him for a drink or two.

Thanks. It probably has something to do with the fact that it's the only one I've ever attempted to play on a console. All of the others were done on PC, and the precision really helped. ...jerk.

Hehe. Fun times. Mine sounds like some candidate for obnoxious Matthew Good-style over the top pretension.

Hooray! Welcome back to the fold. I look forward to much comical disillusionment and "------? More like ------!" thoughts in the future. Also, maybe you can give me a verdict here. Is Double Agent a hell of a lot harder than Chaos Theory or do I just suck at it for some reason? I got stuck on that level where you have to come up through the ice at the start and just kinda gave up. Do you find it more difficult or is there just something weird about the way I'm playing it? For the record, I beat Chaos Theory without any real difficulty. The first Splinter Cell as well, though I never played Pandora Tomorrow.

God damn. My condolences, sir.

I'm also going to add that I just played one more mission and the fog effects are really, really pretty. Even the traffic lights look beautiful. I went up a hill into oncoming traffic and the headlights of the cars I was about to hit just looked so damned real. Excellent work there. As for when I'll be online, I'll probably be playing tomorrow afternoon before the Pittsburgh game, which starts at 5 my time. Odds are that I'll be playing from 3 until 5. I believe (but could be mistaken) you're 7 hours ahead of me, so that'd be 10 til 12 for you. Cheers.

Ok, this is pretty sweet. I'll get my gripes out of the way first. After playing for an hour: Cons: -Niko turns in kind of a weird way. He leans like he's running around an oval track even when he's just walking. He also turns slower than the camera so if you (like me) have gotten used to turning in 3rd person games by rotating your camera around the character and having him continue moving forward, you're going to have to take some time to adapt. -The aliasing is pretty pronounced. Not a game-breaker, but whatever. -Night driving is near impossible. Holy crap, when it gets dark it gets dark. This will probably get better when I'm in the financial districts of Algonquin rather than the poorer areas of Broker that I'm in now, but for the moment it's really tough to do anything after dark. Pros: -The game keeps going even when you're doing a mission for someone else. Seriously. The following spoiler is from the period of time between the third and fourth mission. Not really a big one, but if you're sensitive, you know. You can't tell me that that's not cool. -The damage modelling on the cars is beautiful. Dents in all the right places, and very realistic crumple. Haven't gotten to see any explosions yet, but if they've put this much effort into a dented fender, I'm excited for when I do. -The new wanted system is pretty cool, and adds a lot of intensity to things. I accidentally plowed into a cop car while running a red immediately after finishing the intro mission. I really didn't mean to, but it meant adapting quickly to the change. For those who don't know, rather than finding police bribes or anything like that, when you get a star now there's a circle that appears on your map that shows where the alert cops are. The more stars, the bigger the circle. If you can get out of that circle and stay out of sight for a while, the stars go away. It almost feels like outrunning the guards in Assassin's Creed. You make a frantic dash to get out of sight and away from the police, rather than having to mark a pay n spray on your map or anything like that. Hell, that random bump with a cop ended up with me outrunning a two star level on the freeway. Pretty damn cool. Keep in mind, all this is before the game has even given me a weapon yet. Needless to say, I'm enjoying myself. Wrestle, can't wait to hear your thoughts when you start playing. If we happen to be awake and online at similar hours, I'd be glad to go on a rampage or two with you.

Just got home myself. The guy behind me in line was a buddy from High School whom I hadn't seen since, so it was a nice experience in line. Crapload of people here too. Got my copy on 360 and will be moving the console to my room in a few minutes so that I can play without irritating my roommates. I'll post up some thoughts when I'm turning it off to go to bed. Luckily, even though transit had shut down for the night, my buddy was nice enough to offer me a ride home, so I beat even the time I'd been hoping to make.