Is anyone using weapons other than the shotgun? I use the Uzi on occasion but honestly most of my justice is of the pump-action variety.
I'm at the point of the game now where you have Pistol; Combat Pistol; Pump Shotgun; Combat Shotgun; Uzi; SMG; Assault Rifle; Carbine; Molotov; Grenade; Sniper Rifle; Combat Sniper Rifle; Grenade Launcher
The Combat Pistol is useless except for execution shots (which is to say it's useless). The Combat Shotgun is useful for close range on unarmored targets. The SMG is good for any place you need to sprint and shoot, and is the only weapon you'll use while driving a vehicle. The carbine is useful for long distance shots from behind cover. The sniper is useful for long distance shots and shots to initiate hostilities. The grenades are tremendously powerful, and useful for anti-vehicle and around corners. The rocket launcher is useful for everything but close range, the only caveat being that each grenade for the launcher costs $5000 and LJ doesn't carry them (yet).
The best way to play is to finish the LJ missions ASAP because he gives you the SMG quickly and at the beginning the cheaper prices for body armor are relevant (later on you're going to have so much money it's irrelevant).
- The mini-games are pretty shit. I went bowling with the first girlfriend & got bored of it halfway through. I went and played pool with Roman and got annoyed at it because the physics are fucked. The ball will occasionally just stop wherever the fuck it wants. I got sick of it and deliberately tried sinking the black until he won anyway. He asked for another game, I said no. I've since turned him down playing pool because it was such a shitty implementation of the game.
To the extent that drunk driving is a mini game, that was pretty well implemented. You get drunk to varying degrees depending on who you go drinking with and drinking with Packie makes you completely hammered and driving becomes ridiculous (although potentially migraine inducing). As for bowling and pool, I found bowling boring. I have no idea why they didn't implement pool properly since it would have been so easy. A simple force of hit meter would have made a huge difference. But for that matter, I
still don't understand why the cars don't come with an odometer, my biggest frustration with the game. Incidentally, for those who haven't noticed, when playing pool, simply hitting "A" and taking the shot they set you up for will generally (about 50% chance) get the appropriate ball in. You can fool around with spin (use r stick right and left for side spin, down for backspin and up for forward spin) but setting up a new shot is frustrating given the inadequacies of the interface.
- So far the filler content looks to be fairly superficial. You go to an internet cafe and it's the same shit on the pcs all the time. Maybe it changes later? I dunno. I just think that they could make a whole bunch of stuff and cycle through it.
Not sure what you mean by filler but in terms of in-game optional content like reading random web pages you get linked to and seeing overlap with stuff you hear on the news, or hearing your own exploits reported back to you on the news, that part of the game is absurdly deep. There is about 5-10 hours of content just watching TV and reading random websites. I thought the mini-missions, especially assassination and drug running for LJ were particularly well done. The road races are also much more satisifying that in SA because of the far superior driving engine.
- In regards to the new Police system there is both good & bad, but the negative outweighs the positive. I appreciate that the cops are only called when someone sees you and calls the cops, and that the alarm only goes up when cops arrive and see you at the scene. I hate hate fucking goddamn hate the new "get out of the circle and cops nearly instantly forget you" shit, though. I walked out the front of my house, knifed 5 dudes to death then drove 2 mins up the road to evade the cops. That is fucking weak.
I see where you're coming from but I find the new police system far superior. There were two major problems with the "Go to a pay and spray" system from SA, first that you could do an entire mission perfectly then get tapped by a police car too far from a pay and spray, escalate, get blown up and have to redo, and second that you could exploit quite easily by intentionally getting five star near a pay and spray
because there were so many. With the new system, it is true that the one and two stars are absurdly easy to outrun. That's intentional, and later on when you have Kiki as a girlfriend, you don't even have to outrun one stars, you can just call her and she will get rid of them. This is working as intended. However, I think that you will find that three to five stars are far harder than previously. At this point there are so many cops and helis that outrunning the circle sometimes becomes difficult to impossible depending on where you are. Once again you need a paint place or safehouse (or to finish or start a mission which generally erases stars), and this is now harder given the greater density of the city and the fact that there are far fewer pay and sprays. Also, the challenge of trying to maneuver through the net of flashing dots closing in on you in 3+ stars is
fun.
- I wish Niko would take more damage from car crashes and such.
If it makes you feel any better, faceplanting from a motorcycle at max speed is generally fatal. Which makes some of the later motorcycle missions somewhat annoying.
At the moment the game feels a little too easy. The missions are one thing and I am sure they will get hard later. The underlying mechanics of the game, however, will probably not change. The police are too lenient and easy to get away from and it is really very difficult to get hurt badly outside of a decent fight. I am sure that some people will see these things as positives, but it makes me feel like there's absolutely no reason to consider any action I do. When there is basically no risk to anything then everything will get boring pretty quickly.
Here's how the game gets harder: around the time you start working for Pegorino you start getting missions that make it very difficult to avoid getting three stars in inconvenient out of the way areas, so in addition to completing the mission, you then have to get rid of your wanted level. The difference in difficulty between 2 and 3+ stars is enormous. The mechanic is actually quite clever. You'll finish a mission on top of a complex with two stars and with the police entering the complex from the bottom. You then have to find a way out either through the police (which means shooting them and getting 3+ stars) or some alternative way to avoid them. There isn't always an alternative. Which means plenty of chases with 5+ cop cars, 2+ helis, NOOSE (their equivalent of SWAT), and the 5 and 6 star additions of FIB agents.
I suspect that this will be the game that finally gets me to sign up for a Live Gold account so I can run around in LC with some of you mob and raise hell.
Can't wait.
Author
Topic: The Fearsome And Mammoth Only Allowable Grand Theft Auto IV Thread (Read 46941 times)