Goodbye GTA4 - Here's What's Wrong With You...

[twkadventures]

Ode to the funky funkillers, and only YOU know who you are. Look guys, I'm 56 and I've played video games all my life. Even worked several years as a reviewer for a really cool site that's still kickin' adventuregamers style, when the payoff was a gratis game and personal access to devs. Point is, I'm not just blowing smoke.

 

I really hate GTA4. Even MORE so because what's actually playable, is all kinds of fun. It's like giving someone an ice-cream laced with arsenic. Then you're standing over them when it hits, and as they lay frothing in the fetal position, you say in a chiding tone, "Oh it's not that bad, you're over-reacting. Once you develop a tolerance, it's almost kinda-sorta fun to nearly die!"

 

The "Three Leaf Clover" mission is nearly as frustrating as the Venice level of Tomb Raider II. It's eventually beatable once you figure out what to do. The problem is: figuring out what to do stops being fun err um...a while ago. I just tried, for probably the fifteenth time, the "I need your clothes, shoes, pocket lint and whatever else because this is a stupid title for a mission" mission, where for the first time, you get on a crotch rocket with no previous bike/mission experience or graduated learning curve, to straight up 'strap on ya rice burner boots boi cause dis shiz is: really tremendously impossible to where it qualifies as emotional trauma and thus grants me instant honorary induction to Gen Z' -- I've actually minimized the game after yet another unsuccessful run, and I doubt I'll pull it up anytime soon - and maybe never. Which makes me sad, and angry in equal measure. It also makes me sound like I give up easily, but that's just it, I really don't. What I DON'T like doing, however, is wasting my time. When the game ratio is canted to 'way frustrated' for too long, that's when I bail. Because I am not a masochist. "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice" is easier than GTA4's stupidly hard missions, of which there are a handful. 
 
That's just it - it doesn't follow any kind of logical difficulty curve or graduation - it goes from fun and challenging to bludgeon-your-controller-against-the-fleshy-parts-of-your-temple-until-it's-stuck-like-a-sharp-axe-in-soft-wood hard, with zero preamble.

How could they get it so wrong in GTA4 and get it so right in GTA5, mission-wise? Who got fired, had an aneurysm, or accepted a covert 'Grand Siberian' Soviet offer, so that GTA5 is an Everest of difference in difficulty?

 

I get the logic behind the videogame reward system, and to a degree, you do HAVE to have some form of work thinly disguised as fun woven into the actual fun, to make beating a mission/level/assignment, etc worth the effort. To get that eureka moment, that fist-pumping, high-fiving satisfaction that only a multiple-try effort can bring. But when it's so stupid hard that the frustration level rises well above any fun levels on an unpredictably escalating sine wave, then you don't have a game anymore, you have some strange Mensa or Wechsler test in game guise.  Maybe it's just the Xbox algo, because I see vids of PC ports where the movement seems butter-smooth, and minimally related to the gross motor of the player. 

 

I like Nico Bellic, warts and all, and I can see him taking a sawed-off to whomever put him on an impossible-to-control-well-enough-to-learn motorcycle as payback. Again, it's equal parts frustrating as it is a shame, because the game as a whole is made unplayable IMO, and I really wanted to see where Nico went, and what happened to him.   I suppose one could skip these missions until they what...disappear? I don't know about that - the issue is, you shouldn't HAVE to. Oh well. Here's to a replay of GTA5, and eagerly awaiting GTA6, while mourning the in-game losses in the brilliant (and favorite of mine) RDR2. End rant.

[B Dawg]

 

Spoiler

Quote

The "Three Leaf Clover" mission is nearly as frustrating as the Venice level of Tomb Raider II. It's eventually beatable once you figure out what to do.

The game always tells you what to do and shows it to you on the radar.

 

Quote

I just tried, for probably the fifteenth time, the "I need your clothes, shoes, pocket lint and whatever else because this is a stupid title for a mission" mission, where for the first time, you get on a crotch rocket with no previous bike/mission experience or graduated learning curve, to straight up 'strap on ya rice burner boots boi cause dis shiz is: really tremendously impossible to where it qualifies as emotional trauma and thus grants me instant honorary induction to Gen Z'

So you somehow skipped No Love Lost and Ruff Ryder?

 

Edited February 10, 2024 by B Dawg

[Silver]

Sounds like you're simply bad at the game.

[Corndawg93]

Cool story bro, needs more dragons

[Jeansowaty]

>Nico Bellic

[Spider-Vice]

This is everything but constructive from everybody involved, so.