GTA IV – Problems – Welcome to Glitcherty City
May 20, 2008 | Filed under Games, Reviews
Grand Theft Auto IV is shaping up to be one of the biggest and best games of the year, but it’s still got a few chinks in its armor. One of the biggest drawbacks of the “open world” or “sandbox” genre of game (which the GTA series pretty much pioneered), is the fact that since almost anything can happen, it’s pretty difficult to predict and fix every single glitch or bug. GTA IV actually had its release date pushed back from Christmas to April, so it had extra time to cook. The game still lacks some polish and there are plenty of odd glitches here and there. With my time on the 360 version, I’ve had several “dirty disc” crashes happen, typically when I was driving at high speeds between areas. An early mission tasked me with breaking a shopkeeper’s window to intimidate him. When I threw the brick at the glass door, the brick actually went in between the locked door and ended up inside the shop instead of breaking it. Occasionally, in fast multiplayer games, you may see cars falling from the sky.
The game also suffers from an awkward control scheme. Some button placements are questionable (why is the e-brake on both LB and A?). Some are just awkward, like drive-by shooting. Jacking a car and entering a cab legally are both done via the Y button, but you have to hold it if you want to ride in the cab legally. Despite the pop-up window advising this, it still took me a load of accidentally stolen taxis before I understood the distinction. The controls are still an improvement over the old Xbox GTA controls, and crazy better than the PS2 default controls, but they could still use a little work.
As mentioned just about everywhere else, missions are still without checkpoints. If you fail near the end of a multi-part mission, you have to start the entire thing over again from the beginning. You’ll get a text message on your cell phone letting you instantly retry the mission, which is great for early missions. However, later missions will require you to be stocked up on ammo and body armor, which you will be short on if you’re killed or arrested during your mission.
And finally, the driving camera sits way too low. Even zoomed out all the way, it’s difficult to see traffic in front of you without manually moving the camera – and since the camera auto-centers as soon as you let off the thumbstick, it means that you have to drive with both hands, constantly adjusting the camera so you don’t slam into a cop car or indestructible tree as you fly through the city.
None of these problems keep GTA IV from being an amazing game. The frustration with these problems is that without them, it may well have been a perfect game, instead of a merely great one.
