I never really played GTA like that, maybe with the exceptions of Liberty City Stories and Chinatown Wars. To each their own, but I enjoyed the serious approach from IV, but still having activities like bowling, vigilante, dating, gang wars (DLC) and friends to fool around with.
I found that "ludonarrative dissonance" from Saints Row 2 more than GTA IV.
It might be an age/friends thing. As a teen, I played old GTAs that way almost exclusively and barely touched the campaigns. The PS2 era I played as a mix. Campaign at home, faffing about with friends. GTA4 was the last remnant of that. We did a little of that kind of thing for GTA4 but it didn't facilitate it. And I've never really done that since.
You've never played the campaigns for older GTA games? Hell, those games pushed you to the campaign for better weapons and unlocking the world. Otherwise, you're practically playing a demo.
The new gta games also have shit combat AND shit character movement. Driving has always been the series' strength. As for cop mechanics the new games often end cop waves on their own from bad pathing because losing the cops is just a matter of pulling into any alleyway.
The optimal way to play GTA games would be to play through some missions with side activities or exploration in between to familiarize yourself with the city, find secrets, or even just have some unadulterated fun from just busy work. I know the first Saints Row FORCED the player that route through tying campaign progress through "respect" that could only be obtained THROUGH the side activities. I see where they were going from with that style of play, but gatekeeping progression through arbitrary leveling isn't always fun since it encourages repetitive play.
Lost and the Damned was, to me, a genuinely great GTA game. I would even go as far as to say I would've rather had that storyline expanded into the actual "GTA 4" over the Niko story.
everybody knows renegade shepard best shepard.
this is the most nostalgianigger cope i've seen, cars and motorcycles are shit so much so they had to change the bike physics for TLaD and toned the soapiness+springiness down in TBoGT, for "muh pysics" you can always shoot enemies on the foot with the mp5 and go for the head because bullet physics don't affect niko unless you mod it:
are you sure about that?
You could barely do anything fun in GTA4 because of the vehicle physics. What happened to all the crazy stuff you could do in 3, VC and SA?
I love this game, but it has too much crap cluttering the screen, no matter what you change in the settings. I still put many hours into it, though; it has much more skill required and depth possible than most auto-attackers.
i think it could probably be done if you actually engineered a game to accomplish those goals instead of just using them as marketing claims to puff up barebones adventure action games
New vegas, papers please, Baldurs gate 3. Good writing is just rare.
Don't forget Dragon Age Origins and Vampire Masquerade Bloodlines.
Haven't played dragon age. I'd also add Deus Ex but a lot of people will dispute it because they overfocus on endings rather than material changes within the game. There's a lot more I'm sure.
Doom Eternal was better for the first like quarter of the game. I still haven't finished it because every fifteen seconds the game introduces yet another mechanic that plays off every other mechanic and it's just way too much. Doom was never supposed to be about pianoing your keyboard because if your APM falls below 5000 you die.
Not saying games where your choices matter don’t exist. It’s just that stretching them out to multiple episodes/games for some grandiose has never worked out.
Oh, I haven't played it so I shouldn't say it but I heard the Witcher has a few significant changes that can happen with save imports. Resident Evil Revelations 2 is a successful episodic game with small scale decisions that impact later events.
what a funny giveaway that you can't read the weapons descriptions or even their alternate fire modes descriptions to properly prioritize enemies, literal skill issue case, let me guess, marauders are hard too? even though you can use the shotgun grenade mines to kill them with aoe damage without having to worry about their shields...
that's a situational issue because DAO to DA2 works well as ME1 to ME2, then writers drank the faggot aid and fucked up the merge from ME2/DA2 to ME3/DAI because some nods from the first game kind of help you or are just a nod back in the third installations of said games, not to mention outside material like books and whatnot, kai leng in ME3 comes to mind, a book character being added to the game that was received with a "what in the fuck" because Soy Baker wanted to voice a character in that game.
