Grand Theft Auto is back!!!

[bgmnts]

Can Rockstar be sued for calling this the definitive edition? Despite it having much less content than the original editions?

Or is definitive just a nothing word?

[ImmaculateClump]

not able to be changed or improved

Rockstar: "We've removed mod support and we won't be patching it"

[JamesTC]

They aren't even playable without mods. And they aren't even the originals without mods, they are the mobile ports IIRC.

What a bunch of disingenuous shits. Fuck off Rockstar. Shark card cunts.


I was at my brother-in-law's house earlier, as he wanted my perspective on a game he is working on right now. I mentioned the GTA Definitive Editions, and he went onto Pirate Bay and started downloading it. Rockstar have made it okay to pirate the games with their behaviour. When a game developer thinks it is okay to pirate a game because of your behaviour, you know it is bad.

[Zetetic]

Or is definitive just a nothing word?

They can define "GTA3", for example, to be whatever they like.

[bgmnts]

Still misleading and incorrect though. Bastards.

[Retinend]

For some reason, this cock-up by Rockstar put me in mind of PewDiePie, whose name I haven't heard in yonks - in stark contrast to his heyday of a few years back, when he was ubiquitous. Though he's going through the motions and enjoying the Schadenfreude to an extent, what strikes me is how exhausted he looks:

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Been replaying GTA3 on the PS2 and some of those early missions really are dire. The one where you chase laundry vans around in particular is hellishly frustrating, particularly as the mechanic for firing from a vehicle, which involves switching to a side camera view so you can't see where you're going, is total cobblers. On my last go I died right at the very last second before I could finish off the last one.

I think probably a good rule of thumb with revisiting this series is to play until you stop having fun and then move on to the next one. No point slogging through the crap bits again.

[Inspector Norse]

How does GTA IV hold up? Never played that one and it's on XBox store for peanuts

[Thursday]

How does GTA IV hold up? Never played that one and it's on XBox store for peanuts

Interesting article on that topic

https://www.thegamer.com/gta-4-nostalgia/

[Mister Six]

The line "But even if you weren't alive in 2008 and want an (admittedly highly distorted) idea of what society and pop culture were like...", makes me feel like I'm about to crumble to dust.

Despite the massive changes that my life brought, the mid-late 2000s and the 2010s have just kind of smooshed together into a single, undefined lump of stuff (and 2020 and 2021 basically being write-offs means this is likely to continue), to the point that I need to consciously think about what I was doing in particular periods to figure out what year it was.

I don't know if that's just a product of becoming middle-aged, or because of the fracturing of popular media by the internet means there are less clearly defined mass popular movements. And maybe that the things that are hugely popular - Game of Thrones, the MCU et al - tend to run for at least a decade each, with spin-offs and tie-ins extending their half-life indefinitely. It's not like it used to be, especially in film, where anything that went on past film 3 would be relegated to straight-to-video, and watched only by the hard core. And the universality of streaming media and the switch to at-home premieres means even that distinction doesn't matter any more. There's no distinction (other than descending quality) between watching Disney's animated Mulan, its StV sequel or its live-action remake when they all come via the Disney+ app on my PS4.

...maybe this is talk for another thread.

[JamesTC]

GTA IV is great, still well worth a play. The Ballad of Gay Tony is especially good. Lost and the Damned is tedious, though.

Let's go bowling.

[Noodle Lizard]

How does GTA IV hold up? Never played that one and it's on XBox store for peanuts

I personally didn't think it was very good even when I first got it, a year or two after it came out. The DLCs took some steps to negate the tedium and glumness of the base game, so if you can get it bundled with those for cheap then it's worth doing. The map is cool enough, and the "feel" of it is pretty unlike anything else in the series (including the heavy, plonky car physics).

[Cold Meat Platter]

I bailed on the 360 version of 4 because of all the performance and visual issues, in the end. I own it for PC but have never got it to run well at all. Not tried it on this build though. Anyone got any experience of running 4 on modern PCs? Do you need mods?

[JamesTC]

Anyone got any experience of running 4 on modern PCs? Do you need mods?

All of them bar GTA V need mods to give an optimum experience. GTA IV wasn't a great PC port (none of them really are) but the fans do a great job in fixing them. That's what makes it so egregious that Rockstar has sued them.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

How does GTA IV hold up? Never played that one and it's on XBox store for peanuts

Bear in mind that Rockstar have deleted about 70 songs from the radio due to the licenses expiring.

Actually, GTA 5 will be 10 years old (Christ) in 2023, which isn't far off. Seeing as Rockstar only seem to get 10 year licenses for a lot of their music, will they be deleting a whole load from 5 soon too?

[Waking Life]

Why is the music not like a film? Surely once it's released, it's released? Given their financial resources, I'd have expected it to be a permanent licensing, so it seems odd it is somehow timebound - did they just not consider longevity of a game? Or not care? Or is it due to re-releasing on different platforms, that reset existing agreements?

So many questions. I expect the answer is banal.

[Mister Six]

I guess the logic was that a movie might be sold and sold and sold again on VHS, DVD, whatever, whereas back then having games be endlessly remastered and republished, and also connected to the internet (allowing for the removal of tracks) wasn't anticipated. So fuck it, get the cheaper, time-limited licence, what's Sony Music gonna do, go around and scratch out the tracks on people's PS2 discs with a pin? It's not like we'll still be selling these games digitally in 2021.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I cant think of any other game series that gets fucked around to this extent though, like the Saints Row series. This seems to be something uniquely Rockstar. Other games that were released eons ago with licensed music still get sold digitally and you don't hear about the music getting yanked.

[beanheadmcginty]

Why is the music not like a film? Surely once it's released, it's released?

They sometimes do remove music from films on later releases too. I distinctly remember seeing a version of Weird Science where the very final scene with Kelly LeBrock teaching a gym class, which should have the Rocky anthem over it, just had the Weird Science song over it instead.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

The DVD of Wallace and Grommit has some generic tune in place of "How Much is that Doggy in the Window?"

[Sonny_Jim]

So years ago I 'took a break' from video games, in so much that I couldn't afford anything to replace my PS2, consequently the last GTA game I had played was Vice City.

Fastforward to 2016-ish and I was housesitting for a mate who had a PS3, I got really high and was looking forward to immersing myself into this amazing GTAV that everyone had been banging on about.

Played it for about 30 minutes, thought it was shit and was really confused as everyone said it was amazing.  I went to take the disc out and realised that I'd been playing GTA IV.  I put V in and it was like that bit in The Simpsons where Milhouse plays Bonestorm.

[kngen]

The map is cool enough.

And amazingly accurate. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but we were in the middle of Manhattan on tour IRL and the incredibly dated GPS they gave us with our rented van stopped working (too many high buildings apparently) but I was able to navigate us back almost perfectly to Green Point in Brooklyn, thanks to GTAIV making me endlessly tool back and forth between the two because of one particularly tedious mission.

[ImmaculateClump]

I personally didn't think it was very good even when I first got it

Yeah, me too. For me it felt like the turning point where Rockstar started to take themselves a bit too seriously and forgot why their games were fun.

San Andreas was the last good one and you could see the warning signs there. That horrible, soulless button mashing grind in the gym to up your stats. Jesus fucking christ.

I'm sure every one of us had that moment where you're doing your 100th bench press of the day and you go "what the actual fuck am I doing! The precious seconds of my life are ticking away in return for slightly improved lung capacity on some none existent twat"

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

The stat grinding stuff wasn't great but I found it innocuous enough. In however many dozens of hours I played San Andreas, I probably only spent several minutes doing gym stuff.

I didn't make it far enough in GTA4 to find out if the notorious phonecalls are as annoying as everyone says.

[ImmaculateClump]

Yeah, you had to constantly be baby sitting your uncle or something? Yeah, I must have bailed before that as well.

[Thursday]

Pretty sure you could just turn your phone off anyway so it wasn't that bad.

With GTA4 I remember completely losing the thread with that convoluted diamonds story and a series of bosses where you're like "Wait, why am I working for this guy?" It wasn't any longer than any other GTA I don't think, you could probably argue that it's true of all the games, but more than any other it felt very padded and dragged out to me.

[Inspector Norse]

So the answer is "probably not then"

[Consignia]

Ballard of Gay Tony is worth playing, it brings some of the mad stuff back from earlier GTAs but will all the (relative) moderness of GTV IV. Didn't care for Lost and The Damned either, but you'll only be able to play the former with at least getting the latter.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

So the answer is "probably not then"

I heard they're remastering GTA IV, so you could wait for....

Nah, fuck it off into the bin.

[falafel]

Yeah, me too. For me it felt like the turning point where Rockstar started to take themselves a bit too seriously and forgot why their games were fun.

San Andreas was the last good one and you could see the warning signs there. That horrible, soulless button mashing grind in the gym to up your stats. Jesus fucking christ.

I'm sure every one of us had that moment where you're doing your 100th bench press of the day and you go "what the actual fuck am I doing! The precious seconds of my life are ticking away in return for slightly improved lung capacity on some none existent twat"

Think I beat the whole game without going to the gym at all. Except maybe the tutorial? Is that possible? Even then all that stuff felt decidedly optional