GTA 4 just got old really fast.

I played them all whilst my brother tried to complete the missions back in the day, whichever one had the overhead view was the nuts. Also the one with that in between island with the sick mansion lolll

Agreed, well said.

Also vice city>all

+1 - especially the soundtrack!!

Any speculation on where the new one will be based?

GTA2 ( ora 1 ) and Vice City

I don't care what any of you say this game is going to be awesome..

Yes, maybe there will be more friends who will constantly call you up and ask if you want to spend 10 minutes driving to them so you can spend another 10 minutes driving to a bar where you can walk in and order a drink before spending another 10 minutes driving back to what you really want to do! Or maybe there'll be yet another shade of "depressing black" for the cityscape!

And I'm sure the story will be awesome too! It might have some never-before-done message about how war is a bad thing and stuff! And then people who've never watched anything but Steven Segal-movies can fall over themselves while shouting about how it's better than even the best movies evarh!!

How could that not rock..?

well your all just negative!!!!

i enjoyed GTA 4, i spent a fair few hours just driving around doing stupid stuff. The missions were easy yeah but oh well.

SA was my favourite but I just cant go back to playing that with the current graphics!!

anyone know where the new one will be set?

You know that friends **** is optional right? I could say the same for the terrible RPG elements of San Andreas. Eating and going to the gym was really fun. The city was a pretty awesome take on New York so I don't really get the hate there. On consoles it looks average but on PC it looks great. You said you're looking forward to SR3 and so am I but I'm really not expecting much out of their city. The gameplay of SR 1 and 2 was really fun but the cities were mega bland and boring. Everything about the previews of SR3 so far have been awesome apart from the same old boring city. They have no life at all. I'm a huge SR fan but I'd take 4's city any day.

Every GTA has been bad satire and none of them have had a real strong story. Italian gangster in NY, Gangster in Miami, Black gangster in LA. Groundbreaking stuff. Not really sure what you expected by being disappointed in 4's story. Yeah it tried to be preachy and pretty much failed but it didn't really annoy me. Most of the characters were still interesting and the humor was still there. Gameplay is still solid as well. In the PS2 era GTA's you couldn't even run and shoot at the same time. In terms of gameplay, 4 and especially BOGT trump the PS2 era games. I miss the jetpack and a lot of the over the top stuff like every one else but it wasn't exactly a game breaker.

Haters gonna hate. It's a lot better than a glorified first person beat em up with dragons.

I guess that depends on your definition of optional, unless it was patched since I played it. Yes, you don't have to take them up on it, but they'll still call and if you don't, you lose their "friend-rating" or whatever.

That wasn't exactly a favourite of mine either, but at least it didn't interrupt stuff - keeping in shape was fairly easy and could be done without constant nagging (not counting people shouting about you being a fatass in the street).

I wasn't disappointed in 4s story (well, except for it being all brooding, introspective, reflecting hero silliness). The point is that all the reviewers were falling over themselves to proclaim the story incredible and the final proof that a game could tell a story at least as good as the best movies.

Screw the jetpack, how about just getting into a taxi and do taximissions?

That's where traditionally start my GTA-games - it's fun, you get to know the city and you make money. In IV you could not even do that - when you eventually got the chance to do taxi-trips for Roman you had to make your way to his station to pick up a car for every damn trip you wanted to take, then drive to the customer and take them where they wanted to go. Want another trip? Oh, have to drive back to Romans station for a new car. Fun?

And unless you consider walking around looking for pigeons to shoot fun, there was nothing much to do besides missions.

you forgot the carwash! so exciting!!

no seriously, singleplayer GTA 4 was the most disappointing gaming experience I've had in my lifetime and I play games since the mid 80s.

[ ] taxi missions were fun.

Los Angeles

I played the whole game without them so i guess i would call that optional. Also if you really give a **** you can accept then cancel and you wouldnt lose your rating.

I took off work for the release of GT4...and regretted it. It wasn't a Final Fantasy 13 level of disappointment, but disappointing still.

I hope not. LA isn't a very interesting city. San Andreas LA was great but that's pretty much just all LA is, a bunch of different sections. You don't need to expand them any bigger than what they were because they would just be more of the same. LA doesn't feel like a true city, it feels like a bunch of cities stuck together in a big one.

Chicago would be cool.

I get that some people didn't like IV that much but to call it the biggest dissapointment ever seems like a huge stretch.

I played it all the way through 4 times and enjoyed it each time.

+1.

2 times for me, as I enjoyed IV, not as much as SA or VC though.

SA I actually finished 100%, but had no inclination to go too far past story completion in IV. I agree with one of the posters above that TBOGT added the fun back in to IV.

The last thing I'd want is another dreary northeastern-ish city like Chicago.

"L.A." does look likely at this point - hopefully it means San Andreas though. If it's just the city of L.A. that's a big disappointment. The wilderness of RDR and SA was awesome. One of the gaming sites (not IGN) got insider "confirmation" on L.A., but I can't link to them because I'm boycotting them for downgrading my commenting privileges for criticizing them (and by "criticizing them" I mean they published an article that gave the odds for the next city at NYC 3:1, LA 5:1, and Miami 750:1 and I told the guy he's a massive moron and I would be happy to bet with him any day).

San Andreas was the one I always lost interest in. Played it twice, the first time I lost interest halfway through the second city. The 2nd time I played I lost interest at the beginning of the third city.

Vice City was the best GTA game.

Haven't played any Saint's Row games. I have Saints Row 2 on Steam but heard it was a ****ty port so I have never played it.

GTA: San Francisco ONE TIME DEALER

I think it's mostly misaligned expectations and the fact that so many things are done so well that it's easy to get caught up in the small details. Similar to the phenomenon someone brought up in the COD or BF thread where no one cared much about the lack of realism in graphics back in 1996 when everything looked pretty unrealistic, and then in 2011 when everything is looking good a couple of texture gaffe's or minor plot holes has everyone laughing and pointing fingers. The issue with some of the missions being linear is case in point. The GTA series has always had instances of strict linear story advancement like that, but GTA IV is the one being called to the carpet for it?

The theme of GTA is about bringing a city to life and letting you run around like a fool and do what you want in it. I'm not quite sure why some people are so shocked and disappointed when every new GTA is just another city with a new story that is bound to be uninteresting to those with high expectations. Given the mostly real to life theme of the game it's inevitable that the series begins to level out in a lot of respects eventually. That doesn't mean it's not a great game with a lot of crazy hilarous stuff to do if you're looking to have some fun and not critique every single detail.

This was my opinion as well. I didn't like the car controls and the missions got boring very fast. Too bad because I loved SA and, esp. VC.

San Andreas (on computer so manual aiming with mouse ) is right up there with starcraft as my favorite video game evar.

played that at least 4 times through, also spend loads of time just driving around wrecking havoc, and doing that jump at the LV airport w/ fast cars.

GTA4 was a v good game, but not as good, and driving sports cars just wasn't as fun for some reason.

It was optional from day one. All you had to do was press down on the d-pad and it would hang up the phone, not really a huge annoyance. The friend-rating didn't really affect your progress, it just gave you extra perks which personally, I never used.

Yeah I agree with that. I learned long before GTA 4 that most game review sites, especially mainstream ones like IGN and Gamespot were to be taken with a grain of salt. Most of the reviews contradict each other and are just generally bad. This is off topic and I'm not accusing you of doing it but people are taking reviews way too seriously these days. The whole Uncharted 3/Eurogamer debacle is a perfect example.

I personally didn't find the taxi missions to be fun but that's just my opinion. I would get to know the city by driving/flying around doing stupid ****. I did find it funny that you first complained about having to drive your friends around in GTA 4 but then also complained about not having enough taxi missions to drive other people around.

As for other activities apart from story missions, there was a ton of stuff to do. Police missions were much better in 4. Stunt jumps, mini games like bowling etc, gang missions in TLAD, hitman missions, races, drug dealing and skydiving in BOGT. With that said I still would have liked some of the side missions from SA to have returned though.

I had a bunch of friends that played 4 online and we just messed around in free roam a lot. Apart from RDR free roam, nothing else comes close to the sheer stupidity you could get up to. Holding down the museum with a bunch of friends while people try to storm in and take you out was awesome fun. I understand that GTA 4 might not be everyone's cup of tea but calling it a bad game and saying it killed everything good about GTA is just ridiculous.