Lizard_King wrote:


There were military helicopters and a variety of military vehicles as well, and the weapons were about as differentiated as GTAIV with the key idea that the game didn't make me go back to the weapon store and repurchase them every time I died.

There is no distance in JC that takes fifteen minutes to travel by helicopter.

It is entirely possible, though, to spend as long as you wish in certain parts of Liberty city and never see an empty taxi.

Well, maybe your mother is a whore. All of these things are possibilities, they are just not as relevant as you'd think. The parts of GTAIV that you skip, whether it's pigeons or taxi rides, those are all of the prime indicators that this is a game where the ideas they had would have been better served by a linear action title. At no point does the game reward experimentation or any sense of exploration, where each and every one of the titles I list has bonuses IN GAME for doing almost anything.

I'll compare and contrast that with the totally sweet "two motorcycle guys" chase, which begins with my favorite GTAIV trick, the "gets away in a cutscene" move. I really loved how no matter how many accurate shots I got into them despite the horribly broken in-car shooting mechanic, there was no way to stop the chase unless I made it to the halfway point so I could see the totally sweet instadeath train scenario that could only pose a mortal threat to me. That's fucking inspired there, right asshole?

Listen, I'm not trying to persuade you to like anything other than what Rockstar has to offer you. Keep at your shitty playable cutscene games, I don't care. But it is clear that GTA4 is an entirely different animal from the genre its series spawned, and I would say its a game that quite naturally speaks to people like Quentin that play one game a year or people like you that need something to fill the void in their life between deliveries of stupid zingers at the Creexuls. You want to re-file the GTA series under whatever the fuck it is now, that's fine with me. But it should no longer pretend to be what it once was, because everybody else is doing it better. Everything about GTA4 that is good would be better served by a straightforwardly linear title, up to and including Four Leaf Clover. Making me drive to two different locations to pick shit up before I get killed in a mission then respawn in my millionaire's hovel to wash rinse repeat does not a sandbox make.