Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Answer honestly now.

Since I've been rebuilding my library, I managed to get all the PS2 GTAs for $50. Basically got the GTA III trilogy set and then found the ports of LCS and VCS used. Lotta gaming for that $50, I gotta say.

I played and finished the original GTA III around the time it was released. Got Vice City on release as well but couldn't really get into it. Got halfway through San Andreas and had to sell some stuff due to a financial crisis, so I never got to finish it originally.

Finished it this morning though and liked it as much, if not more than GTA III.

So I'm 2 of 5 on PS2 GTAs, can't play GTAIV yet as I don't have a PS2.

I hear people talk a lot about how awesome GTA games are, but when I ask them if they've finished a GTA game, I never seem to find anyone that has.

So do people really just buy this game to run around going on killing sprees and that's it? I mean, that's its own kind of fun for this type of game, but I was always more into exploring the lay of the land, doing stunts and the missions.

[Raydeus]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

I'd say if you can get them for PC go that way.

And at least for me GTA isn't great because of the sandboxing you are doing (although you can do pretty cool stuff, specially on IV) but because of the storyline and characters, and how the game evolves.

GTAIII and IV are by far the most engaging storywise, but VC and SA are pretty good in their own right. So you can't really go wrong either if you just want to try some wacky stuff in the city or simply watch the story unfold (specially for the current price).

[Ameroth]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

I beat VC way back when it first came out, and San Andreas probably a year after it came out. Because I didn't get a PS2 until sometime after GTA3, I never fully played through it, but I definitely put some playtime into it.

GTA4 has a lot of rich content and is by far the most engrossing GTA to date, but I've yet to fully finish the game so I wont speak much for the story yet.

[Effedup]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

So do people really just buy this game to run around going on killing sprees and that's it? I mean, that's its own kind of fun for this type of game, but I was always more into exploring the lay of the land, doing stunts and the missions.

I finished San Andreas, but all the other titles for some reason, I always ended up coming to a mission that was really hard for me, and ended up losing interest after a few tries, and from there it devolved into the endless anarchy of "see how long you can last with 6 stars". To people that aren't into that sort of thing I can see how that would seem boring, but just watching someone try to evade police, FIBs, and National Guard is actually quite entertaining in it's own right, let alone actually doing it yourself...at least, in my circle it is

I actually got closer to completing GTAIV then any of the other games, but I started getting into Deathmatch and Team Mafiya Work and now that's pretty much all I ever do with the game. I really do need to break away and actually finish the damn game at some point...

[Empedocles]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

I'm not certain on the context of 'finished' here.

Do you mean gone through all the missions to advance the plot up to and including the last 'story' mission or finished like getting 100% completion?

I've gone through GTAIII and Vice City, doing all the story missions and generally enjoying running around and doing random stuff, but I've never wanted or attempted 100% completion.

San Andreas was nice, but I didn't like the 'skill bars' effecting if you could actually attempt certain missions or not, plus the hassle of the girlfriend stuff and it killed my desire to complete. I wouldn't have minded if having appropriate skill high made doing those missions easier, but wasn't actually required. Too much swearing for my taste. (Swearing for emphasis I don't mind, but every third word?)

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

I'm talking about the story missions, not "finishing" the Vigilante or Taxi Cab missions.

I liked San Andreas a lot for the skill element and was disappointed to hear that GTAIV doesn't have it. It was nice to be able to scale up to Dual Wielding sawed-off shotguns and all that.

Only skill that somewhat annoyed me was gambling skill, but that was before I found out you needed to level it to gain credit with the casinos, which actually makes sense.

I'll agree the dating is somewhat annoying, but for San Andreas, it was really only for the casino heist that it really mattered.

[Feba]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

with cheat codes, I got through GTA3 and VC. I was burned out on Vice City, and never got out of the first area in SA (discounting cheat codes and such)

I probably could go back and beat them properly, now that I suck at video games less, but I don't think I'll be playing any GTA games until Chinatown Wars at least; with the exception of Godfather: Blackhand, which is a pretty shameless GTA clone (and a pretty decent one too. For $10 at least.)

[Pai Pai Master]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

I generally get bored of them by the time I'm halfway through, but they're all very good games.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

I'd start with the story and then get bored so I'd switch to freestyle and go do what I wanted to do. Then I'd get bored with that and go back to the missions and finish the game. Then back to freestyle and when I got bored of that I was done.

[MrMageo]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

Your vote is unfair, I acctually completed 3 GTA III, VC, SA on the ps2 and I imagine I am about 30% through GTA4 atm.

Awesome storys especially with SA and how they tie it all into GTA3. So far 4 has not really hooked me, Its fun to play but it is so much deeper it is hard to fully immerse yourself into it like the PS2 ones.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

Have they said anything about what Chinatown Wars was going to be about? I'm kinda hoping they're following up the storylines that Woozie (Wu Zi Mu) was involved in. San Andreas just kinda left the stuff with the Triads hanging after so much time working with them. I really liked Woozie

[Feba]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

Nope. Haven't even released any details about the game AFAIK.

I did see a screenshot once, but it could easily have been fake.

[Sabaron]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

I generally get bored of them by the time I'm halfway through, but they're all very good games.

So you consider a game that bores you half-way through it to be good?

Would you consider a movie that bored you half way through good?

Would you say...

"I thought Sense and Sensibility was a really good movie, but I got bored half-way through and fell asleep."

Would you say that about a book? TV show? Anything?I would say that any piece of entertainment media that is supposed to have some sort of plot that moves to some sort of inevitable conclusion that is inherently boring to the point where you won't finish it through cannot be considered "Good". You can say it has good gameplay, but I don't think you can truly give it an overall positive rating if any of it's elements suck so bad they make it so that you can't finish the game.

If a game has a good storyline, but you can't get to it because the controls are so wacked-out that you get carpal tunnel half-way through....

If a game has great graphics, but is based on the movie Zardoz with Sean Connery....

***WARNING (After the fact)***If you clicked that link, you probably shouldn't have.

Imagine that the LOTR games that they released with the movies (at the time of release) were actually... text adventures instead.... Good storyline, horrible graphics...

Would you consider any of those "good" overall if you couldn't finish them because of their inherent flaw?


BTW, I realize that GTA is a stupid sandbox game, but why add a plot if you're just basically taking a dump on a piece of paper? Why waste the resources to add a storyline if all you get on the other end is some half-baked C-Movie?

Oh, btw, I think GTA is retarded, and any statement that involves Feba and cat urine is fairly difficult to resist even if the part that's not about Feba is untrue.

[Feba]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

So you consider a game that bores you half-way through it to be good?

Note where he says "by the time". Which can be a HUGE amount of time in GTA. There's a ton of stuff to branch out and do. Fuck, you can spend so long doing side missions and screwing around and building up your character that you forget what's going on in the story. And these aren't bad stories, generally they're at least pretty good, GTA is renowned for its scripts and voice acting.

Another thing, many, if not most, people do not look at GTA as a game you "beat". It's something you play until you get bored with it and move on. You don't just blast through all of the missions and put it on the shelf after the closing credits.

When you pick up a book, or sit down to watch a film, and you're watching for the STORY, you're hopefully going to finish it. GTA isn't like that. GTA is more like sitting down to a game of Monopoly. If you want, you can play it through to the end, sure. And it's a great game. But a lot of the time you're going to call a draw halfway through because you've gotten your entertainment out of it, and you want to go to sleep, or go play Life. Monopoly is a great game, but that doesn't mean you have to play it to completion.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Have you played and FINISHED a GTA game?

I don't think the stories to GTA are bad, they just sometimes skew too hard and too often into the parodies and sexual innuendo. But then there are moments where it actually accomplishes what it sets out to do - put you in the middle of mobster flick or at least a tribute to several of them.

I also can't help but feel that the excessively immature sexual jokes are more to poke fun at the fact that people consider this stuff "Mature content" than to actually be mature. It gets to a point where it really isn't that mature at all, just stuff that's meant to offend the likes of Hillary Clinton or Jack Thompson.

All in all, there's so much ridiculousness in the game I'm amazed people bother to get offended by it.

I'd actually like to see a game in GTA's style that let you choose your own path. GTA games do have lots of freedom, its just all the freedom is to do bad things. I actually like the games where the choice isn't just good or evil, but also the ability to avoid confrontations, use complete stealth or even play both sides against each other.