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The Making of Grand Theft Auto
Edge Online has another fantastic feature, discussing the creation process behind GTA. From the article: "One of the defining moments of the series happened in early 1996, not long after Baird joined the team. 'At that time, we were still a series of small missions,' he says. "We had a long, long brainstorming session where we picked up on an idea for one long level containing multiple missions proposed by one of the level designers, Paul Farley. We took this and expanded it into the open-ended structure that the game shipped with. This meant a big expansion of the scripting and improvements to game systems — they had to handle the game running over multiple missions instead of the short structure.'"
Driving from the top-down perspective drove me crazy with the first GTA, and trying to walk around using the keyboard made me want to ignore the game and just kill all those virtual people. I can't imagine how many times I was killed while walking for a mission, for me it totally overshadowed the "living city" aspect they go on about in the article. Hell I don't even remember that I noticed it was "living" at all, since like most GTA games then and since you merely have to move out of the zone you're in and back into it to find everything "reset"; no crashed cars, dead bodies, etc. Where the hell are all the tow trucks, EMT's, and coroner's that mysteriously clean up behind me? Why can't I kill them too so the wreckage stays? Do I just need to install a "decal limit" hack? ;)
Jonah HEX
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Download GTA 1 & 2 for free from Rockstar. Gotta love it. 2 is just plain awesome.
is a hell of a lot of neighbourhoods that got trashed just for research.
The open-ended freedom of gameplay in the GTA series is the thing I liked already in the GTA 1. The graphics was mediocre at best, but it rocked. Although it had many flaws, it was still revolutionary in many ways. GTA 2 didn't introduce anything beneficial to the series, but GTA 3 rocked. Since that every sequel has been getting better and better. I don't have much time to play computer games anymore but I love San Andreas and every once in a while I forget myself in front of the computer, for many hours in a row.
I hope even more from the next title.
I've played almost all the GTAs. GTA 1 & 2 were fun little distractions, I played them when they were relased for free.
But people go on and on about 3+ and say how great they are and I just don't get it. To me, it's like the whole world is blind to what is right in front of their face.
GTA 3 was kind of fun. They all were. Driving around is fun, and I liked the radio and such. The driving controls weren't that great but they worked and that may even be one of the reasons why they were fun. But the rest of the game just SUFFERS. I know there is supposed to be a great story and tons of missions, and I've played some of them. But the shooting/targeting/aiming controlls have been abysmal.
Legend of Zelda: Occarina of Time invented the Z-Targeting system in what, 1997/1998? It worked great. So why is it that a game released 4 years later had such a lousy targeting system? It made fights with one person a struggle, and figts with a mob basically unplayable.
So I gave up on it and then tried Vice City a few years later. The music was fun and the story was interesting, but it had the same problem. The controlls were terrible. STILL.
So now there is San Andreas. It's supposed to be the best yet. I haven't tried it and I don't intend to.
Then there is Liberty City Stories. This is the game that is supposed to be so amazing that they put on the PSP. Guess what, the controlls are terrible. The lack of the second analog stick probably makes things worse. Too bad they aren't using Z-Targeting which would have made up for that.
But even on the consoles, they could have used FPS controlls and they would have worked just fine. Heck, the old Resident Evils seemed to have better shooting controls.
I've posed this before. What's the response I usually get? "Try the games on the PC!". So the solution to bad controls on a console is a port that they made later? If they can't get it right on a console (where I can at least rent it) then why should I shell out money for the PC version?
I know they are making another GTA. Maybe the controls will be decent this time. Probably not. But what score will every magazine and game website give it? A 5/5, a 98%, or something similar. Buggy graphics and gameplay? Doesn't matter (note: I never experienced that, other than the terrible pathfinding in GTA 3). Abysmal controls for some of the most crucial parts of the game? Who cares! Cram the game onto a console with even WORSE controls? We'll keep the score the same because they are the first to put a GTA style game on the PSP.
As long as your game is fun for those people who don't mind playing the same part over and over because they can't get the character to do what it's supposed to because the controls are terrible, it's OK to give the game a 100% type score.
PS: Yes, I KNOW this entire post is basically sacrilege. But when I see this series contine to get great marks and held up as this great thing when then controlls are just SO BAD while other great games get marked down for comparativly petty things, it infuriates me.
The living city thing is VERY cool (even if it has serious limitations in the form of PS2 games, maybe on next-gen). But as people say about Id shooter games: "Neat demo, maybe now someone will make a game out of it".
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Carefully attributed to "research."
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
It's had Z-targeting since 3. R2, or something.
GTA1, on the PSX, was the first game I played on that console that was really buggy. It froze, reset and occasionally let you unable to play the game. For example, if you left the vehicle when you were inside/under a building, you couldn't see what you were doing and sometimes could neither get back inside and drive off, or walk out. I think it's really important that you test properly stuff that you can't patch after release, and it made me a lot more cautious about buying console games after that.
I want to put a bullet in the head of the guy who came up with stupid Helicopter/Plane training missions.
I like all the games in the series, but with the move from GTA2 to GTA3 they lost one of my favorite features. In 2 there were three gangs in each level. They each had a gang they hated and a gang they were indifferent about. So to do missions for one gang, you had to be hated (to a certain degree) by their rival gang. The fun part was that when you finished all the missions for one gang you could go on a rampage in their turf and get jobs from their enemies. It felt like you got 3x the gameplay for each level.
Also the humor was lost in the transition to 3D. For example the wandering line of Elvis impersonators who were especially skittish, but if you managed to run over all of them at once you got a bonus and the words "Elvis has left the building!" Or the announcer's voice when you got an insane stunt bonus.
The score multiplier, which would get zeroed by an arrest, along with charging in-game money to save the game, added real tension to the game. You didn't want to save very often because it was expensive (the way to get out of the level was to get a certain amount of money), and you loved the multiplier which gained +1 each time you completed a mission without getting busted or killed. So, by the time you had a 6x multiplier you were on edge for any sign of the cops since you would lose so much. Naturally, the missions were designed to get the cops all riled up which was very thrilling.
In the 3D ones, you save whenever and don't care (which limits the risk to repeating once single mission), there is little humor, and the levels are pretty linear, as far as the missions go. That said, I like the 3D versions, and absolutely love Vice City (80s music + the PCJ = ftw!)
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
I really enjoyed the way there were a bunch of mini missions within the whole thing. I t made me wanna go back and play some that I missed not knowing in the first levels, but it reall made a huge difference when I had trouble with a couple of the missions, I wasn't STUCK. I twas nice to be able to continue enjoying the game play when finding a portion beyond my capability.
I bought a PSP a few weeks ago. I know, I know... I really wanted to play Loco Roco (it's out in Europe, and it's an awesome little game - not worth getting a PSP for it, though).
I've never played a GTA game before, but I read all the hype and figured it was a save buy. I played True Crime, which I liked and which was supposed to be a GTA clone, but worse than GTA. So I figured I would like GTA even more than True Crime. Played GTA last week. Man, that game has issues!
The main problem seems to be that it's basically three genres mashed into one. There's driving, which is decently done. The cars don't feel too well, but it's okay considering that it's only part of a larger game. The bikes are okay, and bikes are really hard to do, so good for them. The problem is walking, fighting and shooting. It doesn't work. Walking, jumping and running feels awkward. But shooting and fighting just plain suck. Lock on somebody, hit the button as fast as you can, figure out that you accidentially locked onto an old lady instead of on the drug dealer you were supposed to beat up, but couldn't see it due to the fucking crappy camera, and he beat you up instead but you didn't notice it due to all the crap going on on the screen.
Also, it has the "sudden death because of stupid actions" issue: Buy a gun. Since you play the game for the first time, you're not sure how to aim. Try a few buttons. Find the aim button. Die since the gun dealer shoots you as soon as you hit the aim button while still inside his shop. Start again. Thanks a lot.
Man, this game is crap.
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(From the Laws of Japanese Animation) Law of Inherent Combustibility -- Everything explodes. Everything.
I hate GTA:SA with a fiery passion. GTA3 was fantastic, the city was incredibly immersive, I loved just wandering around its streets and listening to the sound of the city, I wasted hours doing this. People complained about the Joe Nobody main character, but I liked him, he WAS ME, not some goof ball in the 80's or some lame gang banger in the 90's, neither of whom I could relate to in the least. The story was minimal and unobtrusive, and the creativity of most of the missions was great. Then GTA:VC happened. The new emphasis on the main character I did not like. I didn't care about this guy, and I didn't like the 80's Miami Vice setting. I guess I'm just a bit too young to be nostalgic about that. But the gameplay was still great and it introduced some truley addictive features (Who hasn't cruised around town at top speed on a bullet bike, hit a ramp and then ditched in mid air?). And now we come to GTA:SA. Call me any name you want, but I hated everything about the story of this game, the lame cliched characters, the crap writing, the complete lack of humour, everything. The gameplay expanded to feature tons of mostly broken features. This is a game that does EVERYTHING... badly. The missions were just tedious as all hell, I only played them far enough to actually be able to explore this whole world at my own pace. And oddly enough, the PC controls took a large step back, perhaps to take the emphasis off the fact that the console controls still sucked. We had a huge world to play with, but with so much space to fill, every particular location lacked any attention to detail or style. This game is just so insubstanial, it's like eating a bucket of cheap gravy, sure it feels you up, and there's a lot of it, but it's just not very good.