GTA IV General Chat

[IVCavalcade]

Been playing some IV online on the Xbox recently.. totally dead other than freemode but I found a cool guy today who wanted to get the Fly The Co-op achievement which I never actually did myself back in the day. He was an achievement hunter and had never played IV online before lol, I definitely had to carry our duo but it was a lot of fun revisiting those old missions and trying to remember the best strategies. I remembered the heli method for Hangman's Noose and the glitch into the cargo hold for Bomb Da Base 2 so those were pretty easy, but Dealbreaker took us at least an hour lol. We got there in the end though. Been a fun nostalgic evening.

[ChumCrumpet]

4 hours ago, Chazza354 said:

Been playing some IV online on the Xbox recently.. totally dead other than freemode but I found a cool guy today who wanted to get the Fly The Co-op achievement which I never actually did myself back in the day. He was an achievement hunter and had never played IV online before lol, I definitely had to carry our duo but it was a lot of fun revisiting those old missions and trying to remember the best strategies. I remembered the heli method for Hangman's Noose and the glitch into the cargo hold for Bomb Da Base 2 so those were pretty easy, but Dealbreaker took us at least an hour lol. We got there in the end though. Been a fun nostalgic evening.

 

Oh man I haven't played IV Online in so long. I think they'll struggle getting that achievement for killing a dev or kill someone who killed a dev, since it's so dead. I'm going to have to get the GTA Connected mod and re-experience some of these missions. It's funny, I remember playing those online missions to death, but even though GTA:O has more missions, I found their replay value to be much lower.

[GrudgefromSanAndreas]

does autosave work if i choose to save offline and disable gfwl and rgsc?

[IVCavalcade]

5 hours ago, GrudgefromSanAndreas said:

does autosave work if i choose to save offline and disable gfwl and rgsc?

Yeah as far as I know, the in-game autosave isn't tied to any online service. It should work offline. Obviously if you're playing offline your saves won't sync to any cloud service, but it will work on your local system.

[WanteD1]

I don't why I receive 80kb updates for this game almost every week! lol! 




 

Branches 

NAME	DESCRIPTION	BUILD ID	TIME UPDATED
qatest	qatest	7800305	10 days ago
qatest2	qatest2	7800217	10 days ago
public		6494866	8 months ago
beta		2734200	4 years ago

[ChumCrumpet]

13 hours ago, WanteD1 said:

I don't why I receive 80kb updates for this game almost every week! lol! 

 

Might be save syncing, if you have cloud saves enabled?

[WanteD1]

10 hours ago, ChumCrumpet said:

 

Might be save syncing, if you have cloud saves enabled?

Where can I see if it's enabled?
I didn't play this game for a long time but still I receive 80kb updates! 

[billiejoearmstrong8]

It's crazy how much choice you have of which order to do things after Three Leaf Clover. Already you can weirdly save the last two Brucie missions, both of Dwayne's missions and The Holland Play until after you've completed the entire story if you want. But before TLC the order is mostly quite structured. Afterwards everything is pretty much a free for all! On this playthrough I decided to leave Gerry and Derrick's missions as long as it would let me and amazingly it lets you complete all of Ray, Phil, Jimmy and Bernie's missions first! Totally finished the Alderney mob chapter before I went to see them. And you can start Jon Gravelli's (just have to complete the first two Derrick ones to unlock Dining Out - this means I helped Kim Young Guk in one mission and immediately killed him in the next one lol). 

 

It's almost too much choice. But I like how it means you don't have to be stuck just doing all Italian mafia stuff last (I naturally would want to do McReary missions first because I like them, and usually do missions that unlocked the earliest first, and missions in LC first before Alderney ones, so usually it's nothing but mob stuff at the end). This way I did all that closer to the middle and still have a whole McReary/diamonds chapter to do afterwards which is cool. Pretty impressive they made the rather complex interconnected storylines work with so much room for variation. I know you get some different dialogue from it sometimes, eg in Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend depending on whether Ray is still around or not. 

 

Probably a good idea to do the first Derrick mission earlier since it unlocks the Alderney safehouse and Stevie's car thefts. But it's been fun finding a different way to play this time.

 

Edit: I didn't even think about Francis and ULP. I bet you can leave at least some if not all of them for after the Alderney mob stuff as well. One day I'll play it in the most counterintuitive order possible lol.

Edited December 11, 2021 by billiejoearmstrong8

[IVCavalcade]

3 hours ago, billiejoearmstrong8 said:

On this playthrough I decided to leave Gerry and Derrick's missions as long as it would let me and amazingly it lets you complete all of Ray, Phil, Jimmy and Bernie's missions first! Totally finished the Alderney mob chapter before I went to see them. And you can start Jon Gravelli's (just have to complete the first two Derrick ones to unlock Dining Out - this means I helped Kim Young Guk in one mission and immediately killed him in the next one lol). 

Yeah bro I honestly didn't realise how flexible the story structure was until recently. I finished a playthrough on PC about a month ago so it was all quite fresh in my mind, and a couple weeks after I decided to pull out my 360 copy and play it through there. I approached the missions differently and I was very surprised how deep I could get into certain storylines before needing to progress others. Fantastic story design.

 

I couldn't resist the 100% temptation once I finished the story, so I've done two 100% playthroughs in the span of a month lmao. 400 pigeons in a month. This time I did all 200 pigeons in one sitting which was quite extreme, but I used a helicopter for all of them and it saved a fair bit of time, I had them all done in 4 hours this time, it also helped that the locations were fresh in my memory.

 

And yet I am already wanting to start a new playthrough. It's weird, I enjoy this game more and more with time and the more I play through it.

 

Also, a bit unrelated as it's TBOGT, but I hadn't realised until recently how damn cool and atmospheric the menu music is. Surely has to be up there as the best menu music in a game in my opinion.

 

[WanteD1]

3 minutes ago, Chazza354 said:

 

 

How deep was this game? => Read the comments!

[billiejoearmstrong8]

12 hours ago, Chazza354 said:

Yeah bro I honestly didn't realise how flexible the story structure was until recently. I finished a playthrough on PC about a month ago so it was all quite fresh in my mind, and a couple weeks after I decided to pull out my 360 copy and play it through there. I approached the missions differently and I was very surprised how deep I could get into certain storylines before needing to progress others. Fantastic story design.

 

I couldn't resist the 100% temptation once I finished the story, so I've done two 100% playthroughs in the span of a month lmao. 400 pigeons in a month. This time I did all 200 pigeons in one sitting which was quite extreme, but I used a helicopter for all of them and it saved a fair bit of time, I had them all done in 4 hours this time, it also helped that the locations were fresh in my memory.

 

And yet I am already wanting to start a new playthrough. It's weird, I enjoy this game more and more with time and the more I play through it.

 

Also, a bit unrelated as it's TBOGT, but I hadn't realised until recently how damn cool and atmospheric the menu music is. Surely has to be up there as the best menu music in a game in my opinion.

 

 

It's really cool. I have a "correct" order to do it in my mind (from how I first played it and the order things are first unlocked) but it's great to have the choice to switch it up. Not sure how I feel about meeting Darko before doing the whole McReary diamonds plot, did that last night and it's weird lol. Usually I wouldn't unlock that until right before the final missions. But it's just another chance to vary the story and break up the big events more so I like it.

 

I had sworn never to do the pigeons again because I hated it originally. But I wanted to 100% again so I did them as soon as I could in three goes as islands were unlocked. Doing it that way plus having taken a break from the game so I was happy just to go around exploring each area again plus already knowing where most of them were made it much better, I even kind of enjoyed it. 4 hours is impressive! I'm always paranoid that I'll miss one (like I'll think I shot it when I didn't or something) or that the game will randomly freeze when I've just done 50 of them so I tend to do them slowly crossing them off a list and going to save very frequently.

 

And yes! The TBOGT music is a hidden gem. Seems like it has a devoted cult following from those who know it.

[DEALUX]

I always forget the most wanted missions for 100%. I think I forgot that you had to do them on all 3 islands last time but at least this time I completed all of the friends activities.

 

The thing that I just noticed was that Niko was in Alderney in the intro to TLAD lol. How is that even possible? I mean I guess they retconned the bridges being locked and stuff (it was dumb in the first place) but there's no way Niko made it to Alderney that early into the story. If I recall, he kills the biker guy for Faustin and that's quite early in the game. He's still alive in TLAD.

[billiejoearmstrong8]

6 hours ago, DEALUX said:

I always forget the most wanted missions for 100%. I think I forgot that you had to do them on all 3 islands last time but at least this time I completed all of the friends activities.

 

The thing that I just noticed was that Niko was in Alderney in the intro to TLAD lol. How is that even possible? I mean I guess they retconned the bridges being locked and stuff (it was dumb in the first place) but there's no way Niko made it to Alderney that early into the story. If I recall, he kills the biker guy for Faustin and that's quite early in the game. He's still alive in TLAD.

 

They just wanted The Lost riding through Alderney in the intro and also wanted to give Niko a cameo in the intro and decided the bridge thing wasn't important enough to stop them, just a slight continuity error. I'm glad they went ahead and did it because it was delightful to see him as just another guy in the city in the background now, it was worth the inconsistency imo.

 

I do think the bridges thing is kind of ok though. Obviously it isn't technically consistent that there's no cops there in TLAD/TBOGT but I think it is implied that the main reason Niko can't go across is because he's an illegal immigrant and there's increased security (as Roman says at the start of the game, "you without a green card, you should stay in Broker"). Perhaps the others can cross earlier because they don't have that issue. 

Edited December 21, 2021 by billiejoearmstrong8

[DEALUX]

One thing they improved with the seagulls is that unlike with the pigeons, you can actually hear them from quite a bit of distance. In IV it was kind of frustrating to figure out their location at times because they didn't seem to make much noise until you were like 3-4 feet away and this was done with headphones.

[Donald Lov]

This thread makes me want to get back to the world of the original GTA IV! My only issue with replaying the game has always been a kind of a slow start. I've always thought the game properly kicks off only after you're done with Faustin, which means you already have to spend quite some time and get through a significant portion of the story just to get to the goods. Maybe I'm alone on this, but oh well, just my 2 cents. Still, gotta get back to it!

[billiejoearmstrong8]

14 hours ago, Notorious_Jack said:

This thread makes me want to get back to the world of the original GTA IV! My only issue with replaying the game has always been a kind of a slow start. I've always thought the game properly kicks off only after you're done with Faustin, which means you already have to spend quite some time and get through a significant portion of the story just to get to the goods. Maybe I'm alone on this, but oh well, just my 2 cents. Still, gotta get back to it!

 

In terms of the missions they don't take very long really, they're all pretty short. I particularly love the atmosphere/story during the start of the game and that makes up for the missions not being so great for me, especially after not playing the game for a while. It's kind of fun to take it at a slower pace and enjoy the city/story/details imo, then later the missions get more exciting.

[Yoona]

It's crazy to think online servers are still up for PS3 and Xbox 360.

 

Anyone wants to play online sometimes on PS3?

[DEALUX]

One thing that bugs me is that the pool game doesn't seem to be based on APA rules. I think it's meant to be more like the sort of 8 ball people play in bars but I was surprised by things like your opponent not losing when he scratches (pockets just the cue ball) during his shot at the 8 ball (final shot). APA rules are complicated but I remember that being an automatic loss. It's not in this game.

 

Edit: Also weird when you pocket either a stripe or a solid on the break but don't pocket anything on the next shot, the game acts as if the table is still open. I'm pretty sure this also goes against APA rules, where once you pocketed a stripe or a solid (not both at the same time), you have to continue with that type of ball for the rest of the game.

Edited December 25, 2021 by DEALUX

[GrudgefromSanAndreas]

6 hours ago, DEALUX said:

One thing that bugs me is that the pool game doesn't seem to be based on APA rules. I think it's meant to be more like the sort of 8 ball people play in bars but I was surprised by things like your opponent not losing when he scratches (pockets just the cue ball) during his shot at the 8 ball (final shot). APA rules are complicated but I remember that being an automatic loss. It's not in this game.

 

Edit: Also weird when you pocket either a stripe or a solid on the break but don't pocket anything on the next shot, the game acts as if the table is still open. I'm pretty sure this also goes against APA rules, where once you pocketed a stripe or a solid (not both at the same time), you have to continue with that type of ball for the rest of the game.

Darts are also inverted i believe

[Cheatz/Trickz]

On 12/22/2021 at 6:30 AM, billiejoearmstrong8 said:

In terms of the missions they don't take very long really, they're all pretty short. I particularly love the atmosphere/story during the start of the game and that makes up for the missions not being so great for me, especially after not playing the game for a while. It's kind of fun to take it at a slower pace and enjoy the city/story/details imo, then later the missions get more exciting.

 

I spend at least a few game weeks in that early portion of the game. Hanging with Roman and Jacob, stealing cars for Brucie, dating Michelle (as I believe it would be canon to do so as Niko is visibly broken when she betrays him, and she also seems to have gotten attached a bit), and of course helping Roman with the cab business. A proper 'serious' playthrough of GTA IV for me, where I play it realistically in accordance with Niko's character and all that, takes me months in real time. I've only done it maybe three times, each time years apart, but they remain the best experiences a game has ever provided. The levels of immersion at atmosphere you can reach are just unreal. 

[lilchris131]

On 12/12/2021 at 6:29 AM, billiejoearmstrong8 said:

 

It's really cool. I have a "correct" order to do it in my mind (from how I first played it and the order things are first unlocked) but it's great to have the choice to switch it up. Not sure how I feel about meeting Darko before doing the whole McReary diamonds plot, did that last night and it's weird lol. Usually I wouldn't unlock that until right before the final missions. But it's just another chance to vary the story and break up the big events more so I like it.

 

Yeah I once left all McReary missions apart from Packie's obviously and Francis' first mission which you need to unlock Packie's. You can certainly get through everything else until you need to start Derrick's in order to meet Kim Young-Guk before Dining Out. I noticed once you complete Derrick's first mission the safehouse will automatically appear without a text from Ray lol. You still get continuity errors though in that Phil references Niko's work for Gerry in Catch the Wave saying "you was helping the irish cause beef between the ancelottis and albanians...". And if you don't meet the UL Paper contact you still get an e-mail during the Pegorino missions as if you've worked for him. Clearly R* missed some minor prerequisites there.

 

I was surprised to find you can get That Special Someone after Undertaker (saving the Gracie plot until after). I presumed the trigger is Kate needing to call after Undertaker to talk about being invited to Roman's wedding, and Kate cannot be called after That Special Someone regardless. Interestingly though you can still go out with friends until the final diamond mission.

 

Personally yes it's a bit weird but doing Gerry's prison missions after finding Darko puts a slightly different spin on the story for me. You'll be getting a final antagonising call from Dimitri right before One Last Thing which makes Revenge an even easier decision. And in that cutscene Niko asks for a vodka on the rocks at Pegorino's club, clearly intended as if he's depressed after the events with Darko. But you could interpret that as his frustration over losing the diamonds and/or both dilemmas making him act that way.

Edited December 27, 2021 by lilchris131

[billiejoearmstrong8]

5 hours ago, lilchris131 said:

Yeah I once left all McReary missions apart from Packie's obviously and Francis' first mission which you need to unlock Packie's. You can certainly get through everything else until you need to start Derrick's in order to meet Kim Young-Guk before Dining Out. I noticed once you complete Derrick's first mission the safehouse will automatically appear without a text from Ray lol. You still get continuity errors though in that Phil references Niko's work for Gerry in Catch the Wave saying "you was helping the irish cause beef between the ancelottis and albanians...". And if you don't meet the UL Paper contact you still get an e-mail during the Pegorino missions as if you've worked for him. Clearly R* missed some minor prerequisites there.

 

I was surprised to find you can get That Special Someone after Undertaker (saving the Gracie plot until after). I presumed the trigger is Kate needing to call after Undertaker to talk about being invited to Roman's wedding, and Kate cannot be called after That Special Someone regardless. Interestingly though you can still go out with friends until the final diamond mission.

 

Personally yes it's a bit weird but doing Gerry's prison missions after finding Darko puts a slightly different spin on the story for me. You'll be getting a final antagonising call from Dimitri right before One Last Thing which makes Revenge an even easier decision. And in that cutscene Niko asks for a vodka on the rocks at Pegorino's club, clearly intended as if he's depressed after the events with Darko. But you could interpret that as his frustration over losing the diamonds and/or both dilemmas making him act that way.

 

Interesting! Yeah and it was weird for Gerry to get me helping him with work for Jimmy when I'd already just been working for him directly and probably didn't want much to do with him after killing Ray.

 

I agree about the diamonds plot, definitely puts a different spin on things if you save it for last. Doing it after finding Darko I was thinking Niko was just like f*ck it, I've got nothing to lose now so might as well give this diamonds thing a go. Felt like it kind of justified him being uncharacteristically harsh to Gracie as well. 

 

I'll never find a justifiable way for saving Brucie or Dwayne's missions for after the main story though, that would just be wrong lol.

Edited December 27, 2021 by billiejoearmstrong8

[billiejoearmstrong8]

7 hours ago, Cheatz/Trickz said:

 

I spend at least a few game weeks in that early portion of the game. Hanging with Roman and Jacob, stealing cars for Brucie, dating Michelle (as I believe it would be canon to do so as Niko is visibly broken when she betrays him, and she also seems to have gotten attached a bit), and of course helping Roman with the cab business. A proper 'serious' playthrough of GTA IV for me, where I play it realistically in accordance with Niko's character and all that, takes me months in real time. I've only done it maybe three times, each time years apart, but they remain the best experiences a game has ever provided. The levels of immersion at atmosphere you can reach are just unreal. 

 

Same with the first part! It's great to immerse yourself in the world like that especially at the beginning. I do find I tend to rush through the missions a bit more once it gets going - but I guess that makes sense once Niko gets on his revenge mission and things become more urgent for him. I always take time to do side missions and fit in all the friend/girlfriend hangouts in between as well though, I love all that stuff as it adds to the story and realism so much.

[lilchris131]

3 hours ago, billiejoearmstrong8 said:

 

Interesting! Yeah and it was weird for Gerry to get me helping him with work for Jimmy when I'd already just been working for him directly and probably didn't want much to do with him after killing Ray.

 

I agree about the diamonds plot, definitely puts a different spin on things if you save it for last. Doing it after finding Darko I was thinking Niko was just like f*ck it, I've got nothing to lose now so might as well give this diamonds thing a go. Felt like it kind of justified him being uncharacteristically harsh to Gracie as well. 

 

I'll never find a justifiable way for saving Brucie or Dwayne's missions for after the main story though, that would just be wrong lol.

 

Yeah the mission structure after Three Leaf Clover is very loose like you said. In fact even after Blow Your Cover and Puerto Rican Connection it's pretty loose as instead of finishing Elizabeta's missions you can instead do all the Francis, PBX and Dwayne missions first. Which is actually pretty funny because it means Elizabeta and Jacob are arguing for that whole period of time lol. Regarding Gerry and his first two cutscenes it is certainly assumed you haven't even met Pegorino yet, it does seem that despite the loose structure some missions are written under the assumption that certain others have already occured (or in this case, not occured).

 

I could never justify not going to the diner to kill French Tom (which I know is possible to do) as Niko has agreed to the job and will only get pestered by Roman for not doing so. I mean I could see him ignoring NO.1 though as when Brucie greets you in the cutscene it's like he hasn't seen you for a while, so I guess you could say Niko goes to visit him when he has nothing better to do anymore. But then you miss out on his friendship along with the hilarious dialogue until after the story.

 

Dwayne's missions always feel they should happen with Playboy's and plus PBX is telling you to go and see Dwayne so yeah it makes little sense to ignore doing them. Especially since you'll be driving past him to get to other missions.

 

[Mindshower]

This game has an embarrassingly addictive life sim element to it. Dating, friend activities, public transportation with the subways, once you start playing a bit more realistically it can be hard to revert back to the chaos. I think that is a product of the 2000s and downer, dialogue driven TV series like The Wire and The Sopranos. The mundanity of criminal life, and the philosophy of it all. I doubt we will ever get a GTA IV again.

[EL_FUGA]

On 12/25/2021 at 9:16 AM, Yoona said:

It's crazy to think online servers are still up for PS3 and Xbox 360.

 

Anyone wants to play online sometimes on PS3?

Sure

 

[String]

GTA IV a contender for GTA with the best mission names? Remember a lot of cool sounding mission names in this game, my personal favorite being Shadow. 

[billiejoearmstrong8]

4 hours ago, Wayne Kerr said:

GTA IV a contender for GTA with the best mission names? Remember a lot of cool sounding mission names in this game, my personal favorite being Shadow. 

 

I like the Russian literature/history themed ones

 

The Cousins Bellic = The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment = Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky (also the surname of the main character in that book is Raskolnikov)

Uncle Vlad = Uncle Vanya by Chekhov

The Master and the Molotov (where you kill Mikhail Faustin) = Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

 

Plus Russian Revolution and Ivan the (not so) Terrible. These have to be the most high class mission titles in GTA!

 

I like "A Revenger's Tragedy" as a final mission name as well. Also I think the ONLY reason they gave Florian the new name Bernie (which seems like a very random choice) was so they could do the Weekend at Florian's/Weekend at Bernie's gag with that mission name lol

 

[Mindshower]

Just did the diamond deal as the last mission before the ending, the taunting phone call works very well as revenge incentive. The way Tony seems distraught over the state of Gracie hits harder when she has spent two weeks tied up listening to Gordon chew french fries in a barely there apartment in North Holland. I always pictured Niko having a depression drink over his dead buddies, now I'm not so sure. 

[shadyslady]

Any news to a remaster? 2023?