Was this game rushed?

[ZaxxerDog]

I'm slowly playing through VCS in the last couple of weeks and I find it a bit baffling how uneven this game is. I really like the story, it genuinely feels like the best written 3D era game and when it comes to gameplay it's just packed full of features to the point where it feels like the most advanced one out of the old titles.

 

On the other hand every 3rd or 4th mission is "follow the damn train" levels of absolutely awful game design, like if they didn't have the time to balance it properly or something. In the late game I regularly have to keep retrying missions simply because something unexpected happens or some other sh*t where by the time you're able to comprehend what the game wants you to do you've already failed the mission. And how the AI can just shred you when it's in a car is the most dreadful thing ever, for example now I'm kind of stuck on a mission where I have to bring weapons back to Diaz after taking out some snipers and I just can't get back to him in one piece because the AI just kills the f*ck out of the truck you're driving. It just feels random and I can't do a damn thing about it, guess I'll get lucky once and that will be it? There was another one where you have to put out fire with a firetruck and I swear to god I failed that one at least 10 times by the point that I figured out that you have to aim the water at the ARROWS pointing at the fires instead of the fires themselves to put them out. It's kind of crazy how jank it is and how it just makes a habit out of bothering you with artifical time limits and trial and error.

 

The empire building stuff is also this weird thing where it feels awesome at first but then the AI just won't leave you alone. You constantly get attacked to the point where exploring the city just becomes impossible, it got so f*cking annoying that I just ended up taking over all 30 businesses before moving on with the story just so that the gangs would leave me alone. And when I did take over everything I still had to shut the game down and relaunch it so that the attacks would stop and VCS would just let me play GTA again.

 

So on one had VCS is this absolutely excellent story and a content rich experience, meanwhile a lot of the missions are just horribly unbalanced and certainly have a bit of RNG and trial and error to them. Would love to learn a bit about this game's development because it feels like as if it was thrown together in a year or something.

 

Edit: Oh, another interesting thing is that when it comes to the overall systems VCS is just very forgiving and full of highly appreciated quality of life features. You can buy back your full arsenal after getting wasted or busted for just 2000 dollars, you can skip the boring driving sections on mission retries, the map is full of health and armor pickups, you can make money easily etc. which is all great stuff but also adds to the feeling of "unevennes".

Edited November 22, 2021 by ZaxxerDog

[ZaxxerDog]

Wow, the mission Light My Pyre is actual garbage. HOW did these make it in, Rockstar Leeds? It's so sad that this game is basically everything I wanted from a 3D era GTA game while it also has the worst designed missions ever. You had Phil Collins, game and now you're throwing dogsh*t at me? You had Domestobot and now you're throwing your own sh*t at me?

Edited November 23, 2021 by ZaxxerDog

[GTAFanLuca]

The mission in which you take guns back to Diaz is easy to do once you take the path going through Prawn Island and Vice Beach. You will be driving quickly past most spawning enemies, but you must be careful because there is a roadblock at some point in Washington Beach. Also, in VCS, fires can be put out by simply entering an interior. For the empire missions, it's easier to split the job in half: taking over all the sites on Mainland before "From Zero to Hero" and then taking over the remaining ones in Vice Beach after that mission. Of course, you may still spend ages fending off enemies before having a bit of peace in order to save the game, but at least it's not like going for all of them at once.

 

For "Light my Pyre", first make sure you have full health and body armour. Then, you should just focus on enemies in front of the house (and the ones who may appear behind) and then you can just run to the basement door for the final confrontation. No need to spend ages dealing with the respawning enemies.

[ZaxxerDog]

18 minutes ago, GTAFanLuca said:

The mission in which you take guns back to Diaz is easy to do once you take the path going through Prawn Island and Vice Beach. You will be driving quickly past most spawning enemies, but you must be careful because there is a roadblock at some point in Washington Beach. Also, in VCS, fires can be put out by simply entering an interior. For the empire missions, it's easier to split the job in half: taking over all the sites on Mainland before "From Zero to Hero" and then taking over the remaining ones in Vice Beach after that mission. Of course, you may still spend ages fending off enemies before having a bit of peace in order to save the game, but at least it's not like going for all of them at once.

What I ended up doing was I just got out of the truck, killed the first two cars coming for you and then just blasted back to Starfish Island through the most direct route. Only took two tries that way so guess that's a working strategy.

 

As for Light My Pyre I think you have that mixed up with something else: it's the mission where Lance is goes off on a bike getting himself killed so you have to chase him and kill the cars that are after him. It's "great" because you start without a car so it seems like you have to use a nearby bike to do it which is of course very messy and random.

 

Anyway another one where the game wowed me with its bad design was this one:

 

I just kept dying at the part with the girls until I figured out what the problem was: once you kill one of them another instantly spawns in ready to shoot so if you kill a bunch of them one after the other too fast then you'll have a bunch of new enemies surrounding you from all sides and you get shredded.  Like you can't make this sh*t up.

Edited November 23, 2021 by ZaxxerDog

[GTAFanLuca]

38 minutes ago, ZaxxerDog said:

As for Light My Pyre I think you have that mixed up with something else: it's the mission where Lance is goes off on a bike getting himself killed so you have to chase him and kill the cars that are after him. It's "great" because you start without a car so it seems like you have to use a nearby bike to do it which is of course very messy and random.

 

Anyway another one where the game wowed me with its bad design was this one:

 

I just kept dying at the part with the girls until I figured out what the problem was: once you kill one of them another instantly spawns in ready to shoot so if you kill a bunch of them one after the other too fast then you'll have a bunch of new enemies surrounding you from all sides and you get shredded.  Like you can't make this sh*t up.

No, that is definitely "Light my Pyre". I guess I offered you a spoiler, believing you went past the Lance portion. The game will punish you if you are far away from Lance by spawning more enemies, but if you stick close to Lance all the time, you may be lucky enough to have to deal with just 3-4 cars along the whole route. 

 

As for "Unfriendly Competition", I do agree it is very difficult to go through. Full health and armour are a plus, but if you are not careful, they can be gone in seconds. Also, there is a respawning health pick-up close to the entrance, and you may want to try to hide behind the palm trees and get a good angle to tackle the attackers. Luckily, some of them may fall down in the pool. Leave those as the last enemies to handle once the others stop respawning. Just throw a grenade or molotov cocktail down there to finish them off.

[ZaxxerDog]

Oh yeah I managed to pass the "follow Lance" section and yep, what's after that is even worse.  I died before killing Mendez because the game spawned in a bunch of guys around me, the auto aim targeted one of those instead of Mendez who had minimal health and I got burned to death.  Just astonishingly bad game design and now I have to start it from the dumb chase section. I think I'll a take a few days off.

 

Nobody tested this? What were they thinking, seriously.

 

Edit: Thankfully I tried one more time and got it... and then the next two missions were excellently put together bangers that managed to end the game on a very high note. If only this game had an extra month of testing...

Edited November 23, 2021 by ZaxxerDog

[GTAFanLuca]

Sounds like it was fun. I hardly am bothered by most missions when playing them again, but that comes after many playthroughs. It does have its shortcomings, but overall, it is a great game. It's certainly much more polished than the Definitive Edition. 

[Ash_735]

The Stories games tend to have a higher level of difficulty by design, the expectations were that IF you're playing these, then you've already played GTA3 or VC, that's why the missions in LCS and more so in VCS are quicker to throw you in the deep end and keep you there at times. In LCS you're already triggering Three Star wanted levels by the third or fourth mission, in VCS you've got sh*t like Boomshine Saigon, etc. But yeah VCS tends to have a higher count of very difficult missions compared to other games which highlight the usual GTA jank controls even more.