People seem to love a lot of games, sometimes even not mentioning the bad and flawed aspects of the game. GTA IV - The reception for this game is quite mixed. Most people don't like the way the car handles, the characters and the smaller world. I personally love this game, but there are things missing. This was the first 7th gen GTA game and it was missing both tanks and planes, it was also missing car customization and it lacked character customization. Quite essential things, but the in my opinion, the game made up for it in other areas. Mafia 2 - How could an open world game like this lack a proper free roam option ? Luckily, the PC version received a free roam mod in the first weeks it was released. This just shows that they needed to rush this game out. Please, share your examples of popular games with major flaws.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim seems to get some flak for its combat system. I personally liked it and there are mods for the PC version that improve the combat system should you desire that.
Fallout 3, New Vegas and Skyrim were all three released on PS3 despite severe technical issues that still exists to this day because of the cache. Once the cache fills, the game starts to severely slow down or crash all together. The 360 and PC versions never had this issue.
Batman: Arkham City was fantastic (my favourite game of the last console generation), but the story was annoyingly bad at times - it was bad enough that so many major enemies were shoe-horned into the game, but to find Spoiler (a) a Lazurus pit was directly under Gotham, (b) that Ra's Al Ghoul was in the game too (they should have left him for the next game), and (c) worst of all, to see Batman's ridiculous shock and almost overpowering regret at the end when he carry's the dead Joker to the police and silently walks away, it was pathetic. Batman wouldn't take life, true, but he hated the Joker, and wouldn't be emotionally shattered if the Joker died. Great game (except for the weak boss fight at the end, and the lack of randomness in the game, so that when you've played it a few times, sadly you know where everything is, so it loses a lot of it's challenge), but the storyline had some really bad bits in it. I know that's not what the topic really meant (it was intended for gameplay flaws rather than story flaws), so I'll say Bioshock's re-vitalisation chambers. As if the game wasn't too easy anyway, with ammunition, food, and health packs available everywhere, they go and add reincarnation chambers every few hundred feet, that even bring you back to life with all of your weapons. It's like they didn't want to challenge the player. Also, they nullified the moral issue of do you save the Little Sisters or kill them - you have the choice of saving them, which gets you some Adam, or killing them, which gets you more Adam. And since you need Adam to toughen yourself up, then you have to choose between doing the moral thing (saving the little girls) or doing the practical thing (killing the little girls and getting more Adam). Only the game was written so that not only do you still get lots of Adam even if you save the Little Sisters, but you get free Adam and weapons/defences as a bonus for saving the Little Sisters, thereby rendering the moral decision irrelevant as regard how much Adam you get. I did read that this was forced upon the game's designers by the publisher's, who were worried of potential bad publicity if anyone complained that the game 'forced' you to kill the little sisters by making things too hard for you if you saved them. Oh, and not strictly gameplay related, but I hate how so many PC games aren't mod-able. Bioshock, Timeshift, Deus Ex: Invisible War, and other games could have been improved and built upon so much by modders, but the modding tool were never released, sadly. It's mods that helped make so many other games so widely played so long after their release, such as Doom 1 and 2, Half-Life 1 and 2, GTA 3 onwards, STALKER, the Elderscrolls games, etc.
The Tomb Raider reboot was really well received, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it took a lot of core elements from the Batman Arkham games, notably whatever they called Detective Mode BTW regarding Arkham City Spoiler the Lazerus pit under Gotham was definitely silly (though the city's geography changes so often it's probably no the strangest thing. Also Batman gets upset about any loss of life, even super murderous psychopaths like the Joker (he's died before), so it's not totally out of character for him to get emotional in that instance. Does he believe too strongly in the chance of rehabilitation? Of course, but that's why he's the good guy and hasn't decapitated half the Rogue's Gallery with giant batarangs like Oddjob.
Infamous and Uncharted. I like the platforming great, but it really sucks hard when I have to fight wave after wave of trigger happy freaks. Seriously! Grand Theft Auto IV had a great story. But I did not like the color pallet, and it made me not want to explore Liberty City for the sake of exploration.
Bionic Commando 2009 is one game I'd love to know the development history of. I never got on the game's case for not being "open world," since I didn't believe every game had to be. Unfortunately, GRiN really mismanaged their talent, shoehorning in a multiplayer mode and leaving the single player campaign significantly unfinished. Not to mention the QTE final boss battle and hasty ending. I still believe that, with some more elements and polish, that game could have been something unique. In its release state, the game's just a miserable pile of secrets. That egregious mistake with Super Joe's character will never be corrected now.
-Castlevania - Symphony of the Night: while a fantastic game, it suffers from tons of unnecessary equipment (making it very unexciting to find shit most of the time), some clunky control decisions (e.g. Spells and certain attacks, because Street Fighter II-esque combos do not belong in a side-scroller; the Super Jump, since it doesn't work half the time; etc), and possibly the laziest second-half of a game I've ever seen. -Super Mario Sunshine: Blue Coins. Need I say more? -Legend of Zelda - The Wind Waker: well, first of all, there's the obvious issue of travel being a chore at times (this was made much less awful in Wind Waker HD). Also, I really feel that the quest for the Pieces of the Triforce was really annoying and IMO another dungeon or two in its place would've been better.
I personally love GTA IV's driving. While V perfected it by making it feel tighter, I still prefer IV's driving system. Once I got the hang of it, all I wanted to do was drive around. IV is a call back to III, which would explain the move back to the number system. In a way I guess they were going for a true sequel. It was pretty difficult to obtain a tank in III and there were also no planes. In addition, there wasn't any car or character customization in III. They were attempting to bring GTA back to where it was around 2001, focusing on the main mission and story. Although one glaring flaw is the game's inability to load the environment when you drive at high speeds. Get a really fast car/bike, find a stretch of road and punch it. You'll soon be driving into a big grey abyss and a few times I've driven into a big gray square box. I know I talk a lot about DOOM3, but not being able to use a flashlight while shooting was a huge deal. The poor engine just couldn't handle it.
GTA IV's handling was definitely more realistic. I'm using a mod for GTA V to have handling like GTA IV. Oh and the PC version with the latest patch has no problems with loading the environment. Just make sure you have a video card with at least 1gb of ram or more.
I once read someone saying they felt like you were driving on oil the whole time in GTA IV. I guess it would feel like that compared to III and VC where you were turning on a dime at full speed using the handbrake. Whenever I finally get V on PC I need that mod. As soon as IV goes on sale I'll be picking that up as well. I just want to get a deal since I already own vanilla IV on 360 and the complete edition on PS3.
I would love to jump in here -- I absolutely felt GTAIV's handling was like driving on oil. It was nowhere near the responsive, arcade goodness of the PS2 games. I'd like to mention GTAIV's cartoon-watching and cousin-sitting, as well. In the end, I appreciate the changes the developers implemented - GTAIV is definitely a unique experience among other games in the series. Unfortunately, I never felt as strongly about it as critics did. By the way, I should probably mention that I'm a GTA3 fanatic. Therefore, I have a tendency to compare all GTA's to the third game.
I definitely didn't play it as much as some people did (or still do), but Animal Crossing New Leaf bothered me on some levels. First and foremost, in a game that puts so much emphasis on town customization, it's absolutely ridiculous that you can't designate where animals can and can't live... at least to some capacity. It wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have the option of placing patterns on the ground. For example, I made a snazzy road texture to place around my village, but people keep moving in on top of it. It's like villagers are destroying my bypass with their houses. Considering that the player is supposed to be the mayor, it should be the other way around! I think most people were pretty annoyed by this, though... but I can't really think of anything else at the moment.
You can get GTA IV for very cheap on G2A.com. I actually don't have a video card at the moment and I'm using my RGH Xbox 360 for GTA V. I was very suprised that there were so many mods for the Xbox 360 version of GTA V.
They were going for a gritty, realistic game. If they had you driving like you could in III and VC it would feel completely out of place. But you're right, they did make quite a few changes. Wouldn't you say it's a good sequel to III, though? In terms of limiting the scope back to what GTA was originally all about? This site is amazing. Good looking, thanks a bunch. Time to get me some Max Payne 3.
