Grand Theft Auto IV -- It might feature crime and prostitutes.

At toll booths I mean.

Were you able to save from wherever in this game or did that not come until Red Dead Redemption?

nope

either had to complete a mission or go to your safehouse

Yeah, I don't know if I'm going back to Liberty City any time soon then.

The expansions have checkpoints

Listen, we weren't talking about your mama here.

that's cold pp

i'm with jjj, still kinda slogging through it. at least i just unlocked the third island, so the end is coming closer in sight.

are there any notable rewards or side activities I should try while i'm barreling to the end? no way i'm gonna hunt down those pigeons though. i guess i'm trying to hook up with Kate for story reasons, but i have this feeling it'll be disappointing

got the achievement "impossible trinity" and it was kind of intriguing, seems to imply we'll see the same mission from the POV of the other protagonists in the DLC

the third island is such a shit reward isn't it? great, I unlocked a wasteland.

Nhex, no rewards for side missions (of which there are few, random strangers - about 7 I think). Vigilante missions come back, a bit differently, but again no reward for doing them

haha yeah third island was just a huge oil refinery and a prison.

Although don't want to come down too hard on this, I remember having a lot of fun just pissing about when it was first here. Seems dated compared to V now obv.

ugh. i noticed that when i first stole a cop car that there was no reward for vigilante stuff, very strange considering the effort they put into that whole "police computer" jazz. but you could say that kind of thing about a lot of this game! thanks for letting me know, i'm kinda glad i won't have to do more bowling or darts or what-have-you. friendships, who needs 'em

i did run into a couple of the random strangers, though i got one of them killed and never saw another one again (the alkie Russian guy)

xp i know! you unlocked... New Jersey. Thanks, Rockstar.

oh man, "A Revenger's Tragedy" (final mission if you take the "deal" branch) is driving me CRAZY. stupid boat!

jjjusten you give up on this?

christ, finally over. i'm gonna need a few cleansing games before I on to do the episodes, i need a good break from Liberty City

the bizarre checkpointing really almost completely ruined this game for me - why they hell doesn't it remember the ammo/armor you have when you restart a mission? am i really gonna have to call a cab, go to the weapon store and restock each time I fail a really tough mission? (yes)

i remember getting a car for a reward for completing the Bernie missions, but have no idea how I was ever going to get it back again after it got destroyed/lost. little things like that kept annoying me throughout the game.

that said, i really felt for Roman throughout the game. nobody else but Roman. that poor idiot degenerate.

another thing i hated (as I sit back tonight and ponder the herculean effort it took me to get through this game) is the amount of forced sequences, for lack of a better term. like you know people hate in RPGs when you're forced to fail a battle for storyline purposes, but of course you don't know it ahead of time so you waste limited potions trying to beat it in vain?

GTA IV has a lot of these chase sequences where ostensibly you're supposed to chase somebody down and kill them. however, invisibly, the game decides that you cannot and you HAVE to trail them to the endpoint of a predetermined route, no matter how many bullets you plug their vehicle with, it'll never blow up. then on other missions, you ARE supposed to kill them during the chase, and you'll fail the mission and have to restart if you let them get to their destination, so, UGH

out of curiosity, was there any kind of reaction to the Bernie character, because wow, really ugly stereotype, even for GTA standards

After playing GTA 5 this game sucks so bad

Sucks so bad

After playing GTA San Andreas, GTA 5 sucked so much.

Has it been a year?
Been going through The Lost and Damned. Generally more fun that GTA IV, though the plot feels quite predictable, even for GTA, feels ilke a retread of the GTA IV and San Andreas stories. The fact that Sons of Anarchy exists probably ruined the novelty of the biker club world - too bad for Rockstar, they were probably already developing this when SoA came out.
I'll say it has a few things over the main game - driving bikes, even slower, is a LOT more fun than the terrible car physics.
Second, they're way more reasonable about the check-pointing, so it's not nearly as frustrating to get through the more violent missions. Less obnoxious driving the same routes over and over again.
Third, I do love the way they've woven the timeline of the original into this game, so you see some of the same events from another side, as they clearly planned it out ahead of time. I appreciate that, and look forward to it in the Ballad of Gay Tony as well. When I eventually get around to GTA V, I hope Rockstar refines the multiple character POV use with the three leads in that one.

Like a dummy I read the GTA wiki to fill in some story holes and found out the Lost have a story arc in GTA V and some spoilers. Dang.
L&D had a fun final mission storming the Alderney prison, narratively it was a bit anticlimactic since Ray Boccino's fate was decided by Niko in the main game, and so much time is spent in the second half on the Diamond epic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8duNSbt6VHs

finished Ballad of Gay Tony, which was really good; the best GTA game outside of San Andreas, just barely
i feel like the GTA IV trilogy was some crazy b-movie John Dos Passos American epic shit. i'm kind of in awe of the whole thing, even if they made a lot of mistakes, and a lot of it was very tasteless, i admire the ambitions and what they did accomplish in gameplay, world, character, and so on. waaaay waaay deep under the surface there's some deep expression of Modern Times America in there. it's unexpected.
any good thinkpieces about this? i'd be surprised if there weren't some interesting write-ups out there

Gay Tony was great, just so much fun...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oP2M1Pnx7I

POONIKINS WILL F YOUR SH1T UP

an internet classic

ok...so i finally got around to playing this game and finishing it. btw it's 2015, do i need to still need to state spoilers? here they come.

i didn't understand the friendship part of the game and i put it off for the most part only hanging out with roman a few times. i didn't mind it but for some reason i was just so focused on the $$$ and wanted to get my revenge on dimitri. i figured i'd just hang out with roman after my task was complete and we could all ride off in the sunset enjoying our life in america. eventually i took the 'deal' route (choosing roman's advice over kate's) and goddamn roman was shot to death at his wedding. now after exacting my revenge and finishing the game i have no cousin to hang out with, he doesn't call, and my calls go straight to voicemail. he was the guy that got me on my feet when i first got to liberty city and put up with all this bs, including his business and apartment being burned down, and now he's gone. i just found this to be incredibly sad. so now i'm just not going to play this game any more and i'm going to call my brother up and see how he's doing and hang out with him.

Yeah I got that grim ending too.

Fortunately I'd befriended Jacob for most of the game so he became my most used friend who I'd spend hours playing pool with. Good times.

What are the part of this that are better than what's found in GTA V?

I had the same idea two years after goole did.

I still have this idea of combining the different Vice Cities and Liberty Cities into a time-travel game -- where you're walking through a Disney Times Square, enter the subway, and come out in Taxi Driver 70s. And in BTTF style, you could have the mayor in the 70s look like the homeless pedestrian in 2010, etc.

― pplains, Wednesday, November 2, 2011 2:15 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my fave wish for GTAV: chicago, but taking place in -- get this -- two different times!! the old godfather trick. two difft versions of the same city, one in the 20s, one today, and you flip back and forth at difft times, one as your own grandfather, and decisions you make in the past can affect things in the present. fuckin awesome, huh.

xp yeah, no sense at all.

― goole, Tuesday, November 10, 2009 11:03 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fuckin' awesome, huh.

Been playing BoGT on PS3. Better than Niko, but I still miss San Andreas.

damn plains, you inspired me to install Tony on my PC

Tony's been an ok game. Cut scenes even show some heart every once in awhile. Still can't get past the first Yuri attack-the-yacht mission though.

Tried out the the Lost & Damned, and nah. "Bring that bitch to the clubhouse because I want some hole! – We want some hole!" If I'm going to have to listen to that and ride a motorcycle that's not a Bati the entire time, I can skip it.

Been on a seagull kill list. Cheating with a map and realized after I shot No. 35 that the caption said "There are 16 more seagulls in Liberty City!" Fuuuck, this happened to me in GTA:LS with the spray paint. Retraced my steps and there was the missing bird at No. 24. I've never enjoyed a headshot better.

So, haven't played all the missions yet. Ignoring the other game on the disc. All that to say that I did play on that swing set glitch until 1 am last night. How can that be so fun.

haha yeah i remember having a lot of fun with that swing glitch

Hey, it's 2019 and I finished The Ballad of Gay Tony tonight.

ahah well done !
Actually I have only discovered (and finished) GTAV a few months ago...
I don't remember much about Gay Tony. Except that it was fun (much more than Lost&Damned and even the original GTAIV).

The image I created that eventually spawned #GTA

I drew this to create an isometric rendering engine, it then evolved that into a rotating isometric engine, then I built the "Top Down Perspective Engine" that went on to become GTA1#DMADesign #retro #grandtheftauto #retrogaming pic.twitter.com/Cxr5K8GB75

— Mike Dailly™ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (@mdf200) September 1, 2019

Playing GT has been a little weird since I had only played maybe 10% of IV and just the first mission of L&D. All these clues on the map left over from the original game. Like, I learned where Playboy X's penthouse was and tried to figure out how to get inside since the lobby elevator wasn't working. I found the building next door with the really steep staircases and got to the roof, but couldn't pitch myself across the alley.

Finally shimmied up the fire escape and got a look around. When I left, I realized the penthouse was slightly higher than the roof next door, so I jumped down and went down the steep staircases instead. I suppose there must have been some mission where Niko did this (and not try jumping back the other way) and around all the corners of these staircases there may have been goons lurking to kill. For me, just a couple of dudes standing around.

Also weird parking cars all over the place even though Luis Lopez only had one stupid safehouse. All of Niko's old parking places still worked. Some apartment in the projects on the north side of the map was open, with a filthy mattress and bottles everywhere, making me wonder what kind of hell mission must've taken place there. Ghosts everywhere, but all I really wanted to do was dance.

I hate Johnny. I don't even mind when he dies during a mission because at least I'm watching him die. I hate his voice, I hate his little catchphrases, I hate his clothes, I hate his hate for Hondas and I'm glad that Trevor stomped his head in. My only regret is that I didn't know who Johnny was when I originally saw that scene years ago.

I'm trying to finish the mission where he grabs the diamonds from Luis and Tony. Seeing those two again reminds me of what a better game that was. And I can't catch a break with Johnny trying to chase after Evan.

And that sucks because you know what? I might even hate Evan even more.

They're terrible characters. Also driving those hogs is shitty

Srsly.

Only reason I'm trying to beat this game is because (1.) I've only got four or five missions left. (2.) I'm looking forward to blowing up that depressing clubhouse and (3.) I get to kill this guy:

https://i.imgur.com/a9J3TDt.jpg

Kind of weird how this game can’t be played on current consoles but gta 3 can. Tempted to buy a ps3 and fire it up

Pc is also a (great) option, finances allowing