Tendo City

Does it have new features or is it pretty much business as usual?

It has some new stuff, but the basics are more or less the same. They did fix the shooting aspect of the game, though, and that's much appreciated, even if it got beat by a couple of years by Saint's Row. It also has some multiplayer stuff, but I haven't had time to get into that yet.

The camera's kind of wonky though, it moves around a lot on its own and resists your efforts to move it. I don't like that too much, but it's just something that takes a bit of getting used to.

I don't actually own any GTA games... the first two (the 2d ones, for PC) are free, but I just don't care enough...

Is the shooting good enough now that the shooting aspects aren't a horrible chore? I love the freedom in the GTA games, but the shooting always made it difficult to get through the story. I beat GTA3 and Vice City, but I never ended up finishing San Andreas because I couldn't take the shooting missions anymore.

My issues with the series had a lot more to do with the world seeming "dead" to me more than any sort of camera or gun control issues.

Namely, can I actually talk to people and interact with them in any way other than hitting them with stuff? Is there an actual civilization there or a dead city with people driving in circles for no apparent reason, never leaving their vehicles, and people just sort of marching around with no purpose? Can I go inside buildings this time, maybe crash through a window and interrupt a family dinner, or is it still the case that the vast majority of buildings are solid blocks of concrete with no way to go inside?

I may have freedom to "do whatever I want", but the things I actually want to do aren't really available in these games.

For my part, I much prefer a game like Oblivion.

Of course its the best game ever made! Jesus, its GTA 3 (already, nearly the best game ever made) with HD graphics that are pushing the 360 and ps3 hardware to its fullest capabilities and not only that, but they added features in to the shooting elements that makes it nearly on par with games from 10 years ago.

The rating system is perfect the way it is. Perfect.

On a more serious note I hear the multiplayer is actually pretty rad. It gives you and your bestest friends a chance to basically play a multiple instance co-op through the full city with props/cars/ppls etc.

Is it incredibly fun - yes absolutely.

Is it better than OoT - I'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs! Heffing godsmack and Charlie's Angels better than OoT? Why not just slice a beautiful rendering of a lotus flower in to my eyeball using a thin exacto blade? You make one game where the entire point is to blow off some steam all because of your job waxing floors at the Astroskate where the much better looking people throw their Jolly Ranchers at you and suddenly you're better than OoT? I'm going to forcefully gag myself on my own hand for an hour and cry myself to sleep.

That sure gives "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" a whole new meaning... Thank you for that Spencer!

Yeah I have heard that the multiplayer is pretty neat. I mean having a free roaming world and then telling two people to wander aimlessly around together is basically saying "maybe at some point you'll notice the other guy's trail of destruction". That's interesting, but I still just think of the GTA worlds as more or less dead.

Quote:I mean having a free roaming world and then telling two people to wander aimlessly around together is basically saying "maybe at some point you'll notice the other guy's trail of destruction".

2? Try 16. And you respawn near other people and can see them on the map.

Quote:Is the shooting good enough now that the shooting aspects aren't a horrible chore?

It's got free-aiming and a cover system now. They take a bit to get used to, but it's a really big improvement over the other GTA games.

Quote:That's interesting, but I still just think of the GTA worlds as more or less dead.

How often do you want a new GTA game? Once every twenty years?

Sometimes it takes that long to make a good novel. I'm willing to wait that kind of time for a good enough game.

Besides, if Oblivion can manage that obscene level of detail...

Anyway, I actually wasn't making fun of the multi-player, I was sort of complimenting it. I actually like that idea.

Quote:Besides, if Oblivion can manage that obscene level of detail...

1. Oblivion has nowhere near the amount of NPCs as a game like GTA.
2. Oblivion uses way more procedural generation than GTA.
3. GTA has a hours of vioce-acting and cutscenes, maybe even more than Oblivion.
4. GTA was already the most expensive game ever made.

Great Rumbler - Defender of the Holy GTA 4

GR, I understand what you're saying, but GTA 4 is no where near as detailed as Oblivion. We're comparing an RPG to a free-roam, mission-based third person shooter with vehicles thrown in for good measure. Oblivion allows you to customize your character, weapon and armor grades, magic and enchantment systems, stat building, I mean good god it's a huge RPG. All in a giant world with NPC's that actually, yunno, interact with the player. :P

For argument's sake, do you really think GTA 4 out does Zelda/Oblivion etc, with 10 out of 10 across the board?

Quote:For argument's sake, do you really think GTA 4 out does Zelda/Oblivion etc, with 10 out of 10 across the board?

I haven't finished it yet, so I can't really say.

Quote:GR, I understand what you're saying, but GTA 4 is no where near as detailed as Oblivion. We're comparing an RPG to a free-roam, mission-based third person shooter with vehicles thrown in for good measure. Oblivion allows you to customize your character, weapon and armor grades, magic and enchantment systems, stat building, I mean good god it's a huge RPG. All in a giant world with NPC's that actually, yunno, interact with the player.

They're too different games. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses and both are completely massive and utterly expensive, GTA is just moreso in that last instance.

Great Rumbler Wrote:1. Oblivion has nowhere near the amount of NPCs as a game like GTA.
2. Oblivion uses way more procedural generation than GTA.
3. GTA has a hours of vioce-acting and cutscenes, maybe even more than Oblivion.
4. GTA was already the most expensive game ever made.

I really don't care if there's a street full of people if there's no method by which I can interact with them except maybe take out a side walk of them with a fire truck. A partially bustling street full of people I can actually talk to or get a quest from is far more interesting to me. I'm sure there's loads of cut scenes, but for my tastes I'd much rather they focus on interactiveness with the world.

More procedural coding is a plus if you ask me. It certainly works better than the idiot AI of "walking around a block in a circle forever". I wouldn't mind if they took procedural content generation and applied it to gameplay mechanics. I've seen the way that Spore's content generation mechanisms can determine how a creature you make should move and what means it uses to attack. Just imagine if you had an action game like Devil May Cry (let's put Kid Icarus in there) and the procedural programming allowed for on-the-fly gameplay. Instead of WATCHING the awesome combat cutscenes and then playing the not nearly as awesome fighting parts, you'd DO the awesome stuff. Someone hits you in the air, the gameplay determines that, the position of your limbs, the fact that there's a pillar behind you with an arrow you stuck in it before, and suddenly you have the ability to reach over and, say, either grab the arrow and flip off of it into the enemy, or pull it out and fire it at the enemy's sword, knocking it out of his hand and into your own and... and... awesome happens. Random events would need to be "weighted" towards awesome things (the direction a sword knocked out of someone's hand would not follow physics but the weighting).

Did GTA need to be that expensive?

Anyway, take a look at Majora's Mask. That game shows the level of detail I want in an NPC. Oblivion required a lot of work, but it was way worth it. If the next one keeps up that detail and revises the combat system to make it a lot more compelling, it'll be amazing.

Look I'm not saying you are wrong for liking GTA. A lot of people like it and it's a matter of taste and what you want out of a game. For my own tastes, there are certain interactions I need to have in a game, and GTA as a series doesn't really feel "free" to me because there are ways I want to act that aren't allowed in the series. As a result, I may be able to freely run in circles and blow stuff up, but when I don't want to do that, the world feels dead. It's a matter of taste and GTA does not match my own. Give me Oblivion instead.

Majora's Mask remains to this day the stand out title for me. It was whispered in WW and TP but the all-out streamlined-Shenmue-experience is MM. That 3 day dynamic is just pure genius. I would absolutely love to see that done again somehow.

I could totally see a game where you have to hunt down a criminal. If you dont find him after 4 days (or 3, a week, etc) time resets itself because you basically failed for whatever reason. After 4 days, he leaves the state, as an example, and time resets itself to day 1. But those 4 days within X town have those perfectly scripted events that bridge every NPC together in one giant swirling collective for the player to interact with and eventually by redoing the 4 day loop enough times and finding every nuance within the town, they make a perfect plan that takes down the criminal, before moving on to the next town and the next criminal to capture.

I loved the experience as well. Since they had all those interactions, Nintendo wasn't able to truly make it massive, and it was mostly limited to that town, but it was still amazing. Oblivion does this to a certain extent as well, but there are way more "standing" NPCs in that game, due to it's size, and the NPCs with all their own stories and schedules aren't all packed together like in MM, thus you lose the "step outside and know there's a story" feeling.

There are two approaches. The "intricate detail" approach, in which the designers themselves carve out their own story idea into every single NPC. The other is one that is still in it's infancy but shows a lot of promise, and again I speak of procedural content. The Sims works on the idea of a bunch of people having schedules and interacting, and then you have say Animal Crossing which also has that but you are a character IN that world (and there's less detail but it was still a very fun game). There are many more steps to take after that, but eventually it might reach the point where we could get full stories going on in a city that are procedurally generated, and at that point turning off the game will be a war crime.

As soon as you turn it off, the global economy is somehow hurt.

The dynamic of the limited time frame is a key aspect tho. An example would be:

Day 1: a child was kidnapped just 16 hours ago, search parties with hounds are out and the town is in shock. On this day, the parents are in the town hall making a plea to the local and national news for the safe return of the child. There is a car accident on 5th and Main at 2PM. Because of prior events that day, its nearly impossible to get there before the car crash to stop it (later you discover that it was caused because of reckless driving from the kidnapper), but by organizing your time, you can stop the accident and even retrieve a make and model of the kidnapper's car as well as a license plate number, generating a new side quest. This is also the first planned day of the local fair which is all but empty due to the recent events of the kidnapping. At the fair, a few families cautiously keep their eyes glued to their children. This is the only time you would be able to find a family that was victim to a kidnapping several years ago in which their son was taken by what they believe to be the same criminal, they offer valuable insight in to their own investigation and are able to provide pics and descriptions of the kidnapper, as well as their lost son, now 8 years old.

2nd day: There is a wind chill advisory for crops as it will be dipping down below 30 degrees tonight. The homeless shelters are packed and here you can find several people, one of them a Vietnam vet who claims to have found bones and human remains right outside the town at the local dumping grounds. If you dont collect this info on day 2 you wont get this valuable info, at the dump you find other things of interest including the types of garbage bags used to hold the human remains (which as a matter of fact, just happen to be sold at only 2 stores in the town). Also during the day, the fair has decided to take a portion of its revenue towards the search for the missing child, this prompts a huge burst of good faith by the town's people who attend the fair in droves. Security is also bumped up. This is the day you can also finally meet the parents of the kidnapped child.

3rd day: The annual fair is experiencing record numbers despite the cold, this is the day that you're able to save the kidnapped child if you had played days 1 and 2 properly. If not, his body will be found and a second kidnapping will take place in the fair that night. The power generators to the fair are cut and in the darkness of the crowds a little girl is taken. This sparks a chase by foot and by car, also highly dynamic based on how you have played the previous days.

Day 4: The kidnapper will make his only public appearance this day at the local mall where he's buying a "pretty dress" for his newest victim or a toy for his previous victim (again, depends on how you had played). This will be the only chance you have to take him down but you must have completed the previous days properly to do so, to have the viable information readily on hand so that you know he'll be there, that he likes to buy his victims toys and clothes before sexually assaulting them and killing them. He arrives at 4PM, the child restrained and firmly grasped by the hand, the entire scenario reaches its climax on the roof of the mall where you have one chance to fire one shot to sever his connection to the child (now his hostage) and either kill him or wound him so he can be taken in to custody. Even if you played the previous days perfecty with no hiccups in the flow of events, this split second gun shot can make or break the entire ordeal.

At the exact moment of the gunshot failing, the child is killed and/or the kidnapper escapes, fade to black and begin day 1.

...sorta like that

I can see a game like that taking shape. I think that due to the scope of a city, the old solution of "taking the subway" might need to be done. That is, to avoid creating an entire city, you go to key parts of the city through some shortcut system, and are unable to visit the rest. That could hurt the "let's follow the guy everyone" thing though...

So that a "town" is actually a collection of mini-towns (levels)? I dunno, i'd want to keep it open. It would probably start off with small towns and rural areas, populations of a few thousand but by the game's end reaching cities of millions or even multiple states. Such as a car chase from California to Mexico or a serial killer who travels the world ala Hannibal.

Basically, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego meets free-roam and Shenmue style gameplay with an emphasis on the full gambit of investigation in a CSI style. You could meet up with a forensic pathologist at one point who becomes a partner, then find a criminal psychologist, etc slowly building your team and becoming an independent investigator and bounty hunter. Maybe you started out as FBI but one particular case finds a criminal within the FBI that causes your departure. I dunno, there's lots you can do.

Quote:I really don't care if there's a street full of people if there's no method by which I can interact with them except maybe take out a side walk of them with a fire truck. A partially bustling street full of people I can actually talk to or get a quest from is far more interesting to me.

It's just not feasible with the size of the city in GTA. You either have to go the route of having a collection of smaller cities with a sparse smattering of NPCs, many of whom are copies of other NPCs elsewhere, or you spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars trying to give thousands of NPCs personalities and routines.

Quote:More procedural coding is a plus if you ask me. It certainly works better than the idiot AI of "walking around a block in a circle forever".

GTA would benefit from procedural generation in that regard, but I was more referring to the way that the world is designed. Everything in Liberty City is hand-crafted and hand-placed. However, in Cyrodiil, most of the landscape was generated by procedure, a fact made more obvious by some of the landscape mods out there.

Every location in GTA is unique, that takes a lot of time to do and its something that procedural generation just can't do.

Quote:Did GTA need to be that expensive?

High-quality cutscenes, talented voice-actors, huge world full of unique enviroments, over a hundred licensed songs, and HD graphics. What do you want to cut out?

Quote:Anyway, take a look at Majora's Mask. That game shows the level of detail I want in an NPC.

Majora's Mask shows how that concept can be applied to a small scale. The problem is that the amount of time and effort required increases exponentially when you try to apply to a larger scale.

Shenmue scaled up and it cost Sega tens of millions of dollars.
Oblivion cut back on that in a larger enviroment and it still took years to make.
GTAIV cut back farther in an even larger enviroment and it still took years to make.

Quote:As a result, I may be able to freely run in circles and blow stuff up, but when I don't want to do that, the world feels dead. It's a matter of taste and GTA does not match my own. Give me Oblivion instead.

The problem is that you want GTA to be a free-roaming RPG and it just isn't. It's a free-roaming action game.

GR, I know what GTA is. That's the reason I didn't bother buying it. I'm only explaining why here. I don't want nor expect all this detail from them. I just am not interested in the series. That's all. It's like a new Madden game. I could explain why I didn't want it and the games I'd rather play. However, I'm not saying "Madden should have had red shells and power stars", I'm saying "I'd rather have those things, so I'm going with Nintendo sports games and that's it". There's nothing I expect from EA really in that department, they can't win me over without alienating their main audience and I know that. So, I just walk the other way.

I also don't like sushi and prefer my fish cooked (I've TRIED to like it, I have, but eventually I realized I was lying to myself and just didn't like the taste at all, and besides uncooked food so very easily can become dangerous), but I'm not saying sushi restaurants should change to get me as a customer, I'm saying I won't go to one.

So don't misunderstand me. I know full well that taking a game with the EXACT scope of GTA in terms of NPCs and giving ALL of them full personalities and stories would be infeasable. I don't expect that. I'm saying "I don't like GTA, I prefer Oblivion".

For me they need to have a international game; You can go to London,Moscow,D.C,Paris, Rome,Istanbul.

You take flights ; Change map.

I guess we will have to wait for that.

Now for me I don't really care. All the cities are more or less made up and I think all Rockstar knows is the stuff in American cultures to make fun of.

When it comes to voice acting, one of the best examples I can think of is KQ6.

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Dark Jaguar Wrote:Now for me I don't really care. All the cities are more or less made up and I think all Rockstar knows is the stuff in American cultures to make fun of.

Their pretty much spoofing real cities.

New York is Liberty city

Vice city is Miami

Los Santos is Los Angeles

San fierro is San Francisco

Los Venturas is Los Vegas

The expansion pack to the PC GTA2 was in London

Some people have mentioned the idea of a Detroit spoof called Motown with a canadian border crossing.

Yeah I get it, but who in Rockstar has ever been to, say, Tokyo, or Sidney? Ah Sidney... *Walks to bank* "She left in a car saying she was heading to a movie." THE WARRENT!

Okay, I did some soul-searching today and I finally came to conclusion that I feel is representative of the sum total of reality, at least insofar as this thread is concerned. And it is thus:

Taking away all the hype and rose-tinted glasses and wiping away the glossy vinear of HD graphics and textures large enough to wrap around the globe and you're left with what must essentially be labled the third best free-roaming action game on the Xbox360.

Yeah, it's fairly sacreligious to speak that way about the gaming communities new sacred cow, but that's the truth of the matter. GTAIV has its graphics going for it, maybe the multiplayer too, and that is, unfortunately, about it.

To be more precise, the handling of all the vehicles in the game is terrible, enough to make any car chase a hassle at best and a complete pain at worst. The shooting element has been bumped up with free-aiming, but it's still not that good. The story is a bit more serious this time around with an attempt at serious social commentary and Oscar-worthy human drama, but it's more or less the same thing we've seen since GTA3: some nobody works his way up through the ranks of various mobsters and gang organizations by doing oddjobs and driving around the city a lot.

So why is it third? Because Crackdown has the awe-inspring ability to leap dozens of feat into the air while simultaneously firing a rocket at a car full of drug dealers and Saint's Row is funnier and has good car handling and gun shooting.

There. I said it.

I played Crackdown for a few minutes in a demo station several months ago, it did seem awesome.

Crackdown is superb and exhilerating experience, which unfortunately got overshadowed by the Halo 3 beta,

But the Halo 3 beta was packaged with Crackdown wasn't it? I mean that's part of the reason so many people bought the game, they saw it came with the demo. As a result a lot more people likely played it than would have otherwise.

It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people bought Crackdown just for Halo 3 beta and then sold it once they got their beta card.

*bathes in the light of redemption*

Great Rumbler Wrote:It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people bought Crackdown just for Halo 3 beta and then sold it once they got their beta card.

And what do you base that on?

Instead of programming personalities for hundreds of thousands of people, they could have a vast majority of the people distrust strangers and act the same way if you try to approach them. It is a big city, after all.

I got a free-roaming action game for Game Cube, I can't remember the name of it. It was basically a poor man's GTA (it didn't even have real-time environment changes, like night/day, weather, etc). L.A. Story, I think? That's how forgettable it was. Plus, the main character was characterized to be a badass cop with a 'tude, and that was pretty lame. I think I played a total of three hours.

I don't know what I'm trying to say, I guess I'm just trying to participate in the discussion without having GTA IV, or even an X-Box 360 or PS3. v:shobon:v

Quote:And what do you base that on?

The popularity of Halo 3 and general lack of Crackdown being mentioned?

http://blogs.ign.com/MarkRyan-IGN/2008/05/02/88528/

It's an IGN editor who doesn't love GTAIV!

Quote:It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people bought Crackdown just for Halo 3 beta and then sold it once they got their beta card.

Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me at all. There definitely seemed to be a tone of "buy it for the beta, who cares about that game" out there... which is obviously too bad given how good it is.

Great Rumbler Wrote:The popularity of Halo 3 and general lack of Crackdown being mentioned?

A lot of people talk about Crackdown, and though this is a very limited sample that doesn't say much overall, my own friends who bought it for the demo ended up never even touching the demo in preference of the game itself.

Hahaha so you can watch TV in this game too, huh?

I didn't watch this whole thing, because it's kind of unoriginal/heavy-handed, but it's still pretty damn funny.

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"Sshh. Don't ruin it." :D

[edit] Aww, youtube took it off. :( I was talking about the Republican Space Rangers.

I bought the interactive movie GTAIV, Its entertaining.

why is the xbox so damn loud?Sounds like a fucking vibrator!

If it sounds like a motor is vibrating wildly there may be something wrong with it.

That said, if sounds like a loud fan, then that's normal. Annoying when you pay attention (it's still basically white noise) but normal.

ASM uses loud vibrators.

What color is your vibrator, ASM?

Is it the color of shame?

What color shoe would you like sir?

Brown would be fine.

Okay, we have many shoes in the color of cowards.

Sadly, the reference has passed me.

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Free-roaming multiplayer in GTAIV with a couple of friends is an absolute blast! It's basically pointless meandering, but good grief, is it fun.

I think that Nicko is a Serbian or of a former Yugoslavian nation , He is often called a "balkanite",He states many times about being in a war and seeing atrocities,He worked in the Adriatic sea. He often denies being Russian , I think the ambiguity is because they don't want to go out and say he is a Serb or a Croat.

Often you hear "malaka"*wanker* shouted at you by a obvious Greek NPG.

Yeah, it's pretty clear that he's from one of the former Yugoslav republics. Probably Croat, Serb, or Bosnian.

A Black Falcon Wrote:Yeah, it's pretty clear that he's from one of the former Yugoslav republics. Probably Croat, Serb, or Bosnian.

Not likely a Bosnian given that his name is Nikolai and not Mohhamed, Wikipedia says that he is a Serbian veteran of the Bosnian war.

Bosnian Muslims don't have names like that. Some may have Slavophied versions of some standard Muslim names, but they aren't named "Mohammed" or anything like that.

If they say he's Serbian then he's Serbian, though.

Well you don't know his family history. All we know is what country he's from, not where his parents are from.