Wrestlevania

So, this "GTA 4" thing then...

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I have to agree. This IS a big leap forward. I've been avoiding the press/arguments/whatever about this game and just been enjoying it on my own terms. I had no idea people where dissing it. I really believe this is a *massive* leap forward for games, simply because of the time and detail that's gone into creating it: You cannot compare it with anything else.

Look at Oblivion. It got rave reviews for its massive world (the main storyline kinda sucked) and look how basic that seems in comparison now -- every NPC has the same three voices -- women often have men's voices and vise versa. The lack of attention to detail may seem like a shallow complaint, but in this day of intense HD graphical mayhem, it's really where the next progression is going to take place.

IMHO.

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I've been playing GTA4 at a leisurely pace for the past 10 days or so, playing it every now and then on Spaff's Xbox (my own Xbox is still broken and even if it wasn't I'm living in a hotel for the moment). Normally I would have played it intensively and tried to complete it asap but playing a few hours at a time is actually much nicer and allows you to absorb the game a bit better.

Anyway, GTA4 is a technical marvel and very impressive from an "omg graphics" and "omg assets" perspective, but I especially like how the core of the game is somehow a lot tighter now. It's like a more distilled version of the formula. I'm also really enjoying the story so far, which is the most human of any GTA to date. I love that Nico Bellic has a past, and also has a goal (besides pursuing the American Dream). They've subtly added a bit of dramatic realism in many ways... I mean, even the new wanted system, the lack of jetpacks et al, and the removal of AmmuNation in favor of obscure underground shops, kind of help the story indirectly.

The missions kind of stayed at the same level of quality and are a bit uninteresting sometimes, though maybe I've just played too much iterations of GTA. I love some of the little ideas sprinkled around some of the missions though, like throwing a brick into a store window, or threatening a guy with a gun / shooting his knee instead of killing him. Good stuff.

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threatening a guy with a gun / shooting his knee instead of killing him. Good stuff.

I killed him anyway. I killed them all. The game let me.

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I killed him anyway. I killed them all. The game let me.

I think it only allows that if you shoot him in the knee first. I screwed it up once by twitching and hitting him in the body.

--

Was it someone here that mentioned the Playboy X penthouse balcony being a good place to go for the six stars achievement? If so, thanks for the tip. Got the achievement tonight with about $65K worth of rockets/launcher for helicopters and a load of machine gun ammo and nades for the cops on the opposite roof.

I'm now at the very last mission, and debating whether to go for it, or savour the stunt jumps, pigeons, etc. before using the last mission to get 100%...

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I think it only allows that if you shoot him in the knee first. I screwed it up once by twitching and hitting him in the body.

I messed it up first time as well. But I wasn't really paying attention and, er, kind of shot him in the head... :shifty:

Got it right the second time though, knee-capping the fecker. I then shot his co-star in the balls too, after I got fed up with his "big weapon" bragging. He collapsed into a heap, clutching his groin and squealing like a stuck pig. The prick.

I also restarted this mission by following Dimitri a little too closely into the porn shop, accidentally shoving him down the stairs and into the opening cut scene. Brilliant! It's extremely satisfying to see even NPCs react with such contextual awareness.

Speaking of which, I'm particularly liking the fact the world allows you to develop habits. For example: every time I see one of those lunatic street preachers, I kick them in the shins as a matter of duty. It's an insignificant detail, but there's something quite rewarding in shutting these idiots up, mid-torrent, with a swift boot to the legs. :tup:

The main characters, though, continue to just amaze, delight and repulse in equal measure. It's all I can do to not remove that cock Manny's knee-caps with a shotgun every time I have to work with the insufferable dickhead, for instance.

Brucie continues to be a guilty pleasure; every time I pick him up, I make sure I go on a scooter or overly elaborate motorbike... :grin:

I think Little Jacob remains my genuine favourite character though. He and Badman are brilliant if you ask me.

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I agree with you about Manny. The Manny and Elizabeta missions were my favorite parts of the game though...

Little Jacob is through and through a good guy, everyone seems to like him. Plus, the cut scenes with him and Shadow speaking patois and Niko looking bewildered are hilarious :)

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Hee, I also love Brucie. The helicopter rides with him seem mental as fuck just because of all his talk. :tup:

BTW, I've unlocked the second part of the city and have access to the following people:

Francis (just killed the guy with the sniper rifle)

Packie (about to do the bank robbery)

Playboy X (not done anything)

Anyone able to tell me roughly how far through I am? ;

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Check 'STATS' in the pause menu. You're at exactly the same point I'm up to (freakish!), which is approximately 26% through according to the stats screen.

I've not been able to play anything like as much as I wanted to, but I'm enjoying taking my time with it and doing side missions and such. It's just so damned immersive. And I really want to get my money's worth--there's so much to see and do.

I've only shot 3 pidgeons so far, but, now I've got the sniper rifle from helping Packie (great little mission, that one), I'm constantly on the look out for flying vermin. Is it true that you can hear them as you drive/walk about, or is my mind playing tricks on me?

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You can hear them making pigeon noises, but it's not very loud and you have to be close.

I also thought there was a little tune that played, but that seemed to be a coincidence and was in fact just an ice cream truck. :fart:

And yes, definitely a weird coincidence!

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You can hear them making pigeon noises, but it's not very loud and you have to be close.

AAARGH!!!

That means I rode right past one (or more) on Sunday night, on my way to execute that blackmailer. :frusty:

And yes, definitely a weird coincidence!

That's cool. I was starting to feel no small amount of mounting peer pressure, as most of my friends on- and offline have finished the main story already.

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Is it possible to finish the main story first and then go back and do everything else? I'm thinking about the "30 hours" achievement. I could keep doing all the side missions (which I'm enjoying), but I may as well plough through the main storyline if I can just do them later anyway.

Anyone else getting a little frustrated with GTA? I've not read any reviews on the game, and tried to steer clear of as much opinion as I possibly can (apologies if what I'm about to say has already been said here). Basically the game boils down to these things: Cut-scene, travel, mission.

The problem I'm having is having to repeat certain missions over and over. It's so annoyingly dull having to start back at your apartment, find a cab that's empty, flag it down, skip to the end, jump out the cab, find car, fail mission, repeat.

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Is it possible to finish the main story first and then go back and do everything else?

Yes.

The problem I'm having is having to repeat certain missions over and over. It's so annoyingly dull having to start back at your apartment, find a cab that's empty, flag it down, skip to the end, jump out the cab, find car, fail mission, repeat.

Oh man, there was this one mission where I had to drive three guys to a warehouse and then have a big shootout. Well, the warehouse was on that little island thing under the bridge, so there was no easy way to get to it -- you had to drive to the bridge, all the way across the bridge, then loop around. Since I had to take those guys, I couldn't use a cab. During the shootout, enemies continually spawned and my guys kept dying, meaning I had to start it over again like five times, which would be fine except I couldn't take a cab there! That mission pissed me off more than any other, and of course finally I realized there was a pretty easy way to get through it because:

...you were just supposed to run out the back door when all the guys rushed in, but I didn't get that at first. I thought I was supposed to kill everyone or something.

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Arg, it's frustrating : I bought my copy of GTA4 on my last day in the US (@the virgin of Time Square nonetheless) and brought it along with the US console back to France. Thing is, I tried to use the Xbox 360 with an adapter to make it work with EU power socket, but it just blew up the fuse of the socket... I'm considering buying the official French power adapter for the 360, but I'm not sure if it'd work with the US console. Anybody knows anything about that ?

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I'd say that you most likely need the French power supply. It should take your French mains current and turn it into something the XBox wants (which I'm pretty sure is the same for all 360s).

You could also try a higher amped adapter? *shrugs*

When I get home I can look at the part number for my UK PAL 360's PSU and you can see if it's the same as the US one. If it is, then I guess all you need is the plug changing through an adapter.

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Yes.

:tup: Thanks! It's stupid that an achievement should make me change the way I play the game, but I think I'll do it non-the-less.

Is that the general consensus, I guess? That the playability is kind of reduced to hitting a brick over and over in a slow and tortuous manner?

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When I get home I can look at the part number for my UK PAL 360's PSU and you can see if it's the same as the US one. If it is, then I guess all you need is the plug changing through an adapter.

That'd be great, thanks!

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:tup: Thanks! It's stupid that an achievement should make me change the way I play the game, but I think I'll do it non-the-less.

Is that the general consensus, I guess? That the playability is kind of reduced to hitting a brick over and over in a slow and tortuous manner?

Yeah, I went for the achievement too. Finished with an half hour to spare. I still haven't done a single taxi mission for Roman, so you can see the skipability of the side missions.

I never really got that "Hitting a brick" feeling, but there were only about 5 missions I had to try more than once, and only 2 that took me more than two tries,

(saving Roman and the final mission)

so I never really got the chance. The "cutscene, travel, mission" thing is something that's always been a part of GTA, so it never stood out to me. I totally expected it so it didn't come as a disappointment, just a fact of the game.

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Is that the general consensus, I guess? That the playability is kind of reduced to hitting a brick over and over in a slow and tortuous manner?

From my point of view (unsurprisingly), definitely not.

If you want to take a reductionist view; yes, fine, that's all there is to it. But honestly, I think you need to get out (in-world) more and have some fun. Fuck the 30hr achievement; wander around and just enjoy the massive playground on offer.

I spent 10 minutes picking off hobos on the beach with a sniper rifle last night, just to demonstrate to Mrs V how violent you can be in the game. I also spent about half an hour - in vain - trying to jump a motorbike onto the roof of some steps up to the elevated train, just to show how passive and exploratory you can be.

And you're definitely meant to get up there somehow. There's a skip with some planks laid directly in front of this particular staircase, forming a definite ramp. It's just bloody hard not to slip off the roof as you land the 'bike, or miss entirely and be crushed to death when the bike lands on top of you. Which raised a laugh anyway when that happened.

So go out and have some fun. Try listening to one of the talk radio stations as you walk/drive/ride around aimlessly. Doing this, I discovered Lazlo's back and more embarrassing than ever. My point is that if you're sticking rigidly to the 'main' missions for entertainment, you're missing a lot of what's on offer.

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Yeah, I'd say that aiming for any silly 30-hour achievements is just going to dilute the experience. GTA has always been about a balance between a massive playground and a structured series of missions. If you do nothing but use it as a playground you end up with Assassin's Creed and end up bored within hours; if you exclusively do missions, you'll get frustrated and fed up with the repetitive travelling.

The only real way to play GTA is to do some missions, and if you get sick of continuously failing one you either do a mission for some other guy or just dick around for a bit. It's the ability — and almost necessity — of dividing your time between 'work' and 'play' that makes GTA what it is.

I guess if you're the type of person who just cannot really enjoy an unstructured sandbox (plenty of such people out there), you may have difficulty enjoying GTA as much as some. But me... I can quite happily just go on various rampages, do side-tasks for incentives (friends and girlfriends largely have a tangible benefit), do a circuit around the city's train tracks, etc. Fun!

I have no problem whatsoever with the mission travelling itself because I've played several GTA games where it's so much harder. The taxis in GTA4 are an excellent improvement — imagine not even having those! If nothing else, it's a strong but non-critical incentive for not dying. And I've only really failed two or three times in missions thus far, and even that's only some particularly tricky/long ones.

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I remember spending a day doing ambulance missions in San Andreas. Ended up knowing the city like the back of my hand.

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Hmmm, that's really cool. Thanks guys. :tup: I can definitely enjoy the sandbox thing, but I got a bit hung up on the achievement. Is there any extra bonus or award for not dying or not failing a mission?

I guess I should just get stuck in! :)

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I remember spending a day doing ambulance missions in San Andreas. Ended up knowing the city like the back of my hand.

Just remembered that I did the same in Vice City Stories, with both the ambulance and the fire engine. (There's a finite number of each mission type in that version, however, but it still helps massively.)

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I only discovered the other day that you can play similarly auto-generated missions when you're in a police car by bringing up the on-board computer and asking for local crimes. Pretty good fun activity. :tup:

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Brilliant!

I've been meaning to steal a police car of my own volition and have a good root through the on-board computer. I'm sure there are all sorts of Easter eggs about other characters buried in there...

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That'd be great, thanks!

It says the model part is: DPSN-186CB-1A

There's quite a few other numbers on there. I'll grab them too when I get the chance.

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