NO SPOILARZ - THE GTA IV THREAD

[weemadando]

I need to start dropping alternate saves now too - I'm too far in to risk it all. Especially given that I broke Brucie in a "friend" mission. I parked a car in a place where after I honked the horn for him and the girls to get in, they just walked over and stood around the car not getting in. All I could do was re-load a previous save. Don't want that to happen at the end of a mission or anything like that.

My other big problem is where a mission ends with a phone call. You make the call (usually) once the police wanted levels are lost. But I got stabbed to death prior to making the call by a disgruntled bum that I'd knocked over while running from the police when he caught up with me during the phone call. Suckage = yes.

[Stark]

Ando, those cutscene errors happen to me all the fucking time. Going to a fast food place is tempting fate; I now prefer the hotdog stands since they break cutscenes less often. I've broken Brucie like that myself.

The secret with the end of a mission is to try really hard to be in a car. Even if you can dash and start the jack animation, you'll be fine; being stuck in walk-mode is lame.

[KhyronTheBackstabber]

I've had that happen a couple of time with Brucie. Both times I showed up in a vehicle that didn't have room for four people. If you wait a few minutes, the game will get moving again so you don't have to re-lode. Or you can just show up in a four seater.

[Stark]

Your best bet is to show up in nothing. Just park nearby and walk to the chevron. He says 'get in', but you don't have to have a car because you're teleported to the boat/chopper/whatever.

[Vympel]

I've died because of that fucking "good idea to call the boss while the cops are gunning for me, and no I can't run while talking because I'm a hapless retard" thing once - or, more accurately, came close to dying, so I promptly loaded the game.

Unfortunately, because autosave had already happened, I missed out on the post mission call. I'm sure it wasn't that important, but it would've been nice to hear what was said. It was the second Manny mission IIRC.

[Stark]

The post-mission calls are kinda wierd like that. I've done the immediate load myself, and you don't get the call but you DO get all the effects of it (new dots on map, new mission access, etc). The game waits an 'autosave' period of time, even with autosave off, so it's strange you don't get the call once you load.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Anyone know what the update 1.01 does? I'm just downloading it now and don't recall it being there last night.

[Jade Falcon]

Okay, does anyone else known how to do the Friend mission where you take the guy to pay off his debts. This is one where the guys say something like "It'll take more than money to sort this out Mel"?

First time, somehow I got into the car and was chased, went into a pay and spray and Mel had disappeared.

Every other time, Mel either dies, or the goddamn cop sneaks up behind me while I'm dealing with the gunmen and kills me.

[Starglider]

Damn, I wish I'd checked out the Anihiliator with a cheat first before I bothered shooting all 200 pigeons. The thing is a piece of shit. The hunter was a barrel of laughs and well worth getting all the hidden packages for (or even better, doing the flight school challenges in SA). The Anihiliator has no rocket launchers, so forget blasting traffic jams with it. It has no vigilante mode, so no Brown Thunder. It looks like it's armed with four miniguns, but only two actually fire and they do so at a pathetically low rate of fire; they also cut out randomly for a second or two. In other words the guns have a combined firepower roughly equal to your assault rifle. Worst, there's no way to target them (auto or manual); they're fixed straight ahead, so it's damn near impossible to hit anything with them. Forget blowing up vehicles; I hardly managed to kill any pedestrians despite spraying the sidewalk for several minutes. Last of all, dogfighting police choppers (which I enjoyed in VC/SA) is shit. If you hover and blast them, it takes ages to line up due to the flakey helicopter controls and your guns are so weak that they manage to almost kill your chopper with rifle fire by the time you've taken down on police chopper. Making sweeping high speed passes worked but the controls are so clumsy that it took me about ten minutes to kill one chopper. I actually had more luck ramming them, though it's very hard to knock them down without seriously damaging your own bird. It's pretty sad that thing loses hard to the sea sparrow in every respect save armour.

Also, the fifth and sixth stars are pointless. The federal agents seem to be weaker than the SWAT teams. The police Anhiliators don't seem to be any more effective than the usual police choppers and still die to one RPG round. The sixth star in particular is utterly pointless; the only apparent difference is that you get two helicopters instead of one after you, though I'm not sure, that may happen in five star mode. For some reason normal police cars and foot cops still keep turning up and shooting their popguns at you (only get mown down mercilessly) even on six stars.

This is sufficiently broken that my guess is that Rockstar simply ran out of time and didn't finish this aspect of the game. The people saying 'oh but it's more realistic' are kidding themselves anyway. If I've just shot down four armed choppers, blown up three SWAT vans with grenades and machine gunned 100 or so police and FBI officers, no sane commander is going to keep sending more of the same units to die.

[Stark]

It's pretty funny you'd never flown a Blackhawk until you slaved around like a psychopath with no job to kill all 200 birds. Hell, I've flown one with no tail boom and there's no way in fuck I'm shooting those fucking birds.

[Starglider]

It's pretty funny you'd never flown a Blackhawk until you slaved around like a psychopath with no job to kill all 200 birds.

It took me about six hours, but it wasn't horribly boring, you do see lots of bits of the map you wouldn't otherwise go to, and you have to be creative to get to some of them (I was just going with the map, except for a couple I got stuck on and looked at the walkthrough).

[Stark]

Still not ever going to do the worthless scavenger hunt, sorry.

[Starglider]

You know at this rate Saint's Row 2 might actually be more fun than GTA4. Ok the plot will be crap, the art will be less polished and there won't be a ton of pretty but irrelevant fluff like the websites, but if it's a choice I'll take more mission, weapon, minigame and vehicle variety thanks.

EDIT : I have to admit that the 'Ripley' (the aircraft towing tractor you can find on the airport) is a laugh. It's very strong and durable for its size while remaining quite maneuverable. When you drive it through traffic jams all the other cars go flying like confetti.

[frogcurry]

You know at this rate Saint's Row 2 might actually be more fun than GTA4. Ok the plot will be crap, the art will be less polished and there won't be a ton of pretty but irrelevant fluff like the websites, but if it's a choice I'll take more mission, weapon, minigame and vehicle variety thanks.

What about the extra content thats supposed to be coming (to the Xbox at least)?

[weemadando]

Saints Row was too shoddily constructed, I really didn't enjoy the way it played and the story delivery required too much "make-work" to advance it.

For me? Give me Crackdown 2 where I can just go hogwild and as I get better SHIT BLOWS UP BETTER. Or a MUCH tighter storyline in GTA where everything that you do has some bearing on reality and where the missions are all tightly linked into a developing plot, not where you have random crap in some missions that destroy the carefully crafted tone of the rest of the game.

[Stark]

Crackdown 2 is going to have to be seriously better than the first one to not be shit. It was boring, easy and ugly. Just like Mercenaries 2; the original was a piece of bland easy shit but it was a good idea... the sequel could be good but there's no real reason to expect it.

Then again, Saint's Row's only claim to fame is 'better than a PS2 game', which is pretty pathetic. I'm sure more identical cars and identical guns will make it a better game... somehow. Look at Vegas with it's 5.... sorry I mean 30 guns you never use.

[GuppyShark]

Just had a great scene.

I'm chasing a guy and he takes off in his car onto the highway. I pursue in a police car, sirens blazing. It's night.

I spray fire at him with my SMG. We weave through traffic, a truck takes damage and the doors fling open, barrels come out. I dodge these.

The target's car catches alight, and he jumps out. I keep cruising and end up overtaking. His car explodes.

My car gets launched off the highway into some parklands. I jump out and shortly afterwards my car explodes too.

Stand up, call my client. Job's done.

[weemadando]

I'm actually wanting to try a few "set ups" in free mode at some point.

One of them is going to be seeing just how far we can launch an Infernus or bike. I've done a few island to island jumps, but I think if we can do a no-traffic game and run straight down one of hte major roads in Alonquin and hit a jump we can get some distance.

Why does this need freemode?

Because I want to work into it some other ideas, like hitting someone with an Infernus going that fast, RPG+jump=rocket boost and the like.

And also I want to work towards the 5 complete flips achievement.

[weemadando]

Crackdown 2 is going to have to be seriously better than the first one to not be shit. It was boring, easy and ugly. Just like Mercenaries 2; the original was a piece of bland easy shit but it was a good idea... the sequel could be good but there's no real reason to expect it.

Then again, Saint's Row's only claim to fame is 'better than a PS2 game', which is pretty pathetic. I'm sure more identical cars and identical guns will make it a better game... somehow. Look at Vegas with it's 5.... sorry I mean 30 guns you never use. :)

So are you saying that Crackdown was in no way fun?

I didn't really think much of the missions, but be damned if it wasn't fucking hilarious and fun once you hit lvl4 explosives.

And even before then, it was fun being the superhero (yeah, superhero, sure - lets kill more innocents).

[SylasGaunt]

Damn, I wish I'd checked out the Anihiliator with a cheat first before I bothered shooting all 200 pigeons. The thing is a piece of shit. The hunter was a barrel of laughs and well worth getting all the hidden packages for (or even better, doing the flight school challenges in SA). The Anihiliator has no rocket launchers, so forget blasting traffic jams with it. It has no vigilante mode, so no Brown Thunder. It looks like it's armed with four miniguns, but only two actually fire and they do so at a pathetically low rate of fire; they also cut out randomly for a second or two. In other words the guns have a combined firepower roughly equal to your assault rifle. Worst, there's no way to target them (auto or manual); they're fixed straight ahead, so it's damn near impossible to hit anything with them. Forget blowing up vehicles; I hardly managed to kill any pedestrians despite spraying the sidewalk for several minutes. Last of all, dogfighting police choppers (which I enjoyed in VC/SA) is shit. If you hover and blast them, it takes ages to line up due to the flakey helicopter controls and your guns are so weak that they manage to almost kill your chopper with rifle fire by the time you've taken down on police chopper. Making sweeping high speed passes worked but the controls are so clumsy that it took me about ten minutes to kill one chopper. I actually had more luck ramming them, though it's very hard to knock them down without seriously damaging your own bird. It's pretty sad that thing loses hard to the sea sparrow in every respect save armour.\

Forget the miniguns, the real fun of a chopper is when you hit a car with the rotor blades.

[RogueIce]

So is there any way to shoot down or otherwise damage the planes around the airport? Or are they invincible? I couldn't seem to damage a fuel truck by the jetways, either.

Also, I like the fact that you can damage parts of your chopper. Although it sucked when I was trying to land a Blackhawk on top of one of the jetways, messed up, and broke my tail boom off. I managed to jump out though. A few minutes later, after exhausting my RPGs against a jet (to no effect) I decided to see what havoc I could cause with grenades. Alas, I wasn't that familiar with the new mechanics of thrown weapons and "tossed" it right at my feet. A few seconds later and I had one spectacular death.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Alas, I wasn't that familiar with the new mechanics of thrown weapons and "tossed" it right at my feet. A few seconds later and I had one spectacular death.

I enjoy pulling an "action movie shot" by walking past some traffic at a red light, dropping a grenade between two cars there, and just keep walking casually as they blow up behind me.

[weemadando]

On the mission where you have to "hit" the helicopter on the ground to hi-jack it, I drove up to the security gate and stopped. The two goons step up and start to warn me off, I drop a grenade out the window, smash the gas pedal down and go screaming through the checkpoint and down into the helipad area as the grenade goes off and kills the guys on the security gate who had just realised what was going on and started to leg it.

[Stark]

So are you saying that Crackdown was in no way fun?

It was fun for five minutes, until you maxed everything and it was pathetically easy beyond the hilarious level design. You want five minutes for $100, buy a hooker, not a game.

The absolute highpoint of the game was the America's Most Wanted guy saying 'skills for kills, agent' and 'increase your KILLING POWER'. The actual game was boring, ugly and easy, as I said. Doing the same shit over and over = suck.