Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Do you know what a red herring is?

[quote name="Lizard_King"][quote name="Fortinbras"]Honestly, lets not take sides with Jsoh in this. Or anything, really.[/quote] What, are you kidding me? I can't think of a single issue where I wouldn't by default assume that Jsoh is more right than you. [quote] Time from mission acquirement to site of mission via taxi in GTAIV: 10-30 seconds to hail a cab and climb in, 2 seconds to select your mission giver, 1 second to press A for quick travel. Skip cutscene, walk out, get another taxi, quick travel to mission. On a few missions this increases to maybe two minutes while you wander around trying to find a random taxi. But the funny thing is you don't have to make your way to the mission site initially if you don't want to! [/quote] Go ahead, do the Phil Bell mission I'm talking about. I want you to do all of this bullshit you just wrote about, then drive to pick up Phil in the truck, then drive the slow truck to the location in service of the worst infiltration in history, then watch Phil sprint into the warehouse and die in a blaze of glory. With any luck, you get wasted trying to save him and have to swing by the store to repurchase all of your equipment. And hey, maybe you look at a guide and find out where the replacement body armors are placed, or drive in and out using the shitty drive and shoot mechanic to kill as many as possible with the truck "protecting" you. But all of those are shitty tactical options you only need because of the suicidal AI and its refusal to allow you to do anything sensible, which is not even factoring in that you are in for a worthless boat chase/escort mission immediately following. As an added bonus, this is not the only time Phil Bell will ask you to drive a slow truck from A to B in service to his awful plans. [quote] Riding your stupid horse around Crusader Israel where there's <b>ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO OR SEE</b> except get a bunch of fucking flags with no utility whatsoever. What was that you were saying earlier about mini-objectives with utility as compared to GTAIV? [/quote]Keep in mind I was referring to the way you get around in the city for the other 95% of the game, which you know and were being purposely obtuse about. Interestingly enough, I asked that exact same question to Charles at qt3, since he was one of the makers of the game. He said the flag thing was tacked on at the last minute in response to focus groups, and they agreed it sucked and would do better next time rather than just check the collectible box at the last minute. Same for the way the templars were handled, but even those managed to be better than all but the top shelf sidequests in GTA4. Why do I bring this up? Because my point wasn't that AC was perfect, it's just that it did enough right to overcome its defects. Which GTA4 did not, unless you are someone who plays very few games in this genre and don't know better (Quentin!) or someone who probably jerks off every night to the profound character development and high caliber storytelling that Rockstar provided in the game. That leaves all of those assholes dishing out 10/10 to an obviously flawed product that made a lot of terrible decisions but are too ashamed and deluded to admit it (that's you, Plato). There's middle ground in there, too, but none of it is yours. You lost your shot at it when you actually went with this [quote] Sometimes I think you just enjoy being a contrarian about all this shit to make us all suffer for the fact you don't have a decent PC and have to play shitty versions of good games on the XBOX360.[/quote] as the anchor of your argument. [/quote]