Grand Theft Auto

On a whim I bought the GTA series, the entirety of it from Steam. It was on sale at a ridiculous price (12 bucks for all games + expansions wutt!?!?) and well...I've always said I never played one-player games. Never was too into them to be honest, either because I am a failure at games in general and thus give up easily or much prefer playing games with other people, who knows. (I never finished the campaign in SC2 for example) Regardless, since I went and bought these games myself, I figured it'd be silly to just buy them and not actually play the game for what it is as opposed to just mindlessly faffing about like I usually do in sandbox games.

So I've finished the storylines for both GTA IV and SA. My only previous experience with these games were GTA Vice City, Chinatown Wars, and GTA II respectively. (I played GTA II a lot when I was younger, Rockstar let you download it for free and all P: ) 

I played GTA IV first, vanilla. No mods whatsoever and just went through as it was. It ran fine on my PC despite its notoriety for being a bad port (GTA originated from PC, the latest game being a shitty port is just sad) and thus I did not get to play much multiplayer with Cunchy as I had hoped. (It did NOT run well on his system) Most of the time I finished the missions on first try and a majority of the missions were to kill a specific person or to kill a group of people, for some purpose or another. It was indeed a dark game with a downer ending no matter which options you chose (though one was far less sadder than the other) 

Then I played GTA:SA with a Touhou mod that wasn't stable whatsoever and caused the game to crash either periodically or frequently. This didn't help at all because I had found the game far harder than GTA IV ever was (very few of the missions I played I completed first try) and I ran into so many roadblocks and obstacles playing the game, I had almost abandoned it. Eventually I removed a majority of the mods (mostly the spellcards) and the game ran mostly smoothly from there. Not only that but I had modified the mod itself, switching up the models with which models I desired. This aspect definitely gave me more motivation to complete this game. Not only that but I discovered the game wasn't nearly as hard when I removed those mods (though still more difficult than GTA IV ever was)

And so...which game is better? Which game had better gameplay, storyline, characters, etc.? Which game did I ultimately enjoy playing more? Well granted GTA:SA takes the bias away, due to the mods. (I only modded GTA IV after I finished the game, which felt kind of pointless...running around killing people as Alice with no goal in mind) But even without the bias, GTA:SA is a far grander game than GTA IV. Initially I was annoyed at the immense amount of driving required (especially those missions that threw you at the other side of the state, sheesh) but there was just...so much to explore and so much to do. There are tons of side-missions unlocked and offered and you can customize your character (which I did despite using the Mokou model 95% of the time.. a select few missions require regular model else it'd crash) and the missions were so much more varied. You could fly planes (which took a long time to learn how to use, steep learning curve there) fly about in a jetpack, bikes weren't nearly as annoying to ride as they were in GTA IV (they were my preferred mode of transportation) though cars exploded and died far easier (part of the reason for the difficulty spike) and oddly enough it was in a way much harder to avoid the cops than in GTA IV. (Yes, a pay-and-spray saves all, but if you're not near one you are pretty damned screwed. GTA IV gives you a radar on the map and you just have to avoid it, but a pay-and-spray isn't your saviour since you have to go in without any cops seeing you... which makes sense, but makes those places less effective) 

And also in terms of story/characters, I slightly favour GTA:SA over IV...perhaps it's because I just completed SA and thus it is fresh in my mind, but GTA IV was pretty depressing in a way. You can only really rely on a couple of people and you're mostly alone, working as a hitman. The female characters in GTA IV were pretty bad actually. The first girlfriend you get, Michelle, turns out to be a double agent but her voice-acting is so terrible I don't even. (either that or she was voiced badly on purpose to hint that she's a double agent, but that makes Niko (the protagonist) a very gullible and sad person instead if he doesn't pick up on anything, so uh...) The next girlfriend you get, what's-her-face (SO FORGETTABLE I FORGOT HER NAME) ...KATE, that was it, was so bland it was super easy to go for the ending where she dies. (as opposed to your annoying cousin dying, but he has a certain charm to him and is one of the few characters keeping the dreary BROWN-IS-REAL atmosphere from going to crap) There was also this drug dealer lady with a cool name (I think Elizabeta is an awesome name!) but she goes to prison pretty damn fast and is pretty unstable/useless/pitiful.

San Andreas on the other hand gives you your SASSY and intelligent sister, Kendl. You get to date some girlfriends who are either extremely violent or extremely slutty, including the GTA III antagonist (SA is a prequel to III) who is, as her wiki article states "an extremely aggressive psychotic woman" which is already an understatement. Had my crashing not come to a pique at her missions, thus my constant replaying of them, I'd find her less annoying but otherwise she was utterly HILARIOUS. (Why did I make her Nue!?) And as far as my memory goes that's about it, but due to GTA's target audience I'm not expecting a large amount of female characters anyway. The point is the SA females were far more memorable than the GTA IV ones.

As for the non-female characters...my favourite in IV was definitely Bernie Crane, the incredibly flamboyant open homosexual. He runs so stereotypically as well. After I completed the game I downloaded a trainer mod, switched my model to him and spawned dozens of bodyguards with his model (which includes his mannerisms and voice) and when the cops came and started killing my fabulous army, the girly screams just threw me off my chair with laughter. Oh and his missions are all pretty damn amusing too. (I like how he was originally a really tough, intimidating Eastern European who has fought in a horrible war, seeing all his childhood friends except Niko get murdered, but his TRUE SELF is this fabulous gentlemen right here hahaha) 

I found other characters such as Roman and Little Jacob quite interesting but for some reason Brucie just really annoyed me. Perhaps it's his relation to cars that annoys me because I hated racing in GTA IV...thank god besides one mission they were all optional. Though I must admit, the line "WE'RE GENETICALLY DIFFERENT" was amusing. Dimitri was an excellent antagonist actually, totally didn't see the betrayal coming and the fact that he's not especially physically strong or anything, just extremely cunning with a complete lack of loyalty; it definitely gave him a love-to-hate appeal. It's too bad the ending I chose had the incompetent Pegorino end up as the big bad instead of Dimitri, but eh, all for letting Roman live I say.

As for SA...I enjoyed the characters as a whole more than IV, but my favourite would have to go to Wu Zi Mu, the Triads' leader. He's blind but a better shot than Big Smoke. (THAT TRAIN MISSION! RARRHGH!) I had expected Cesar (your sister's boyfriend) to be basically the character with the second-most screentime after well, the protagonist (thus assigning Keine as the model among other reasons) but Wu Zi Mu is totally the guy who has the most screentime after. (This is including the Heist missions) He tries his darndest to keep the protagonist from finding out he's blind, but it's all so futile lol. The Triads as a whole were all pretty adorable actually. (Here I am, complimenting a bunch of fictional members of merciless organized crime as 'adorable' but seriously...my god. I was so sad whenever they died fighting with me.) 

As for other characters, I must admit I prefer Roman over Sweet because Sweet can be insufferable. (I STOLE A FIGHTER JET AND EXPLODED SPY SHIPS TO SET YOU FREE YOU UNGRATEFUL PIECE OF CRAP) But well, he wasn't that terrible just...insanely flawed is all. (Why did I make him Miko? He's an incompetent leader!) Beyond finding Mexican Keine amusing, Cesar wasn't too three-dimensional. (The Aztecas were horned-Touhous, mostly onis except Keine :D) But I did like a lot of the bosses like The Truth and Mike Toreno. (The Truth is totally a peaceful person if you ignore the rocket launcher he gives you to shoot down helicopters, or his requests for you to steal things from secret bases, or asking you to kill guards and such which he was going to do himself but he sucks at flying jetpacks! TOTALLY A PEACEFUL GUY DUDE) Toreno on the other hand is mysterious, hyper-competent and charismatic. (It probably helps that this game had a lot of celebrity voice-actors, but still)

The antagonist was literally Samuel L. Jackson, but even though he's evil as evil can be he wasn't especially interesting. At least Dimitri seems like a good guy before he turns bad. Tenpenny is bad the entire way and in a very predictable manner as well, like those cartoons and their stereotypical villains. Big Smoke betrays you yes despite being a nice dude in the beginning, but he pretty much disappears entirely after the betrayal until you kill him, so we don't really see him actually agreeing to deals and all that stuff, we mostly just know him as the cool chubby guy with the terrible shot who for some reason backstabs you. As for the rest of the characters...eh, they're here and there, there and here. 

MONEY was far more valuable in SA than IV. What the hell do you spend money on in IV anyway? Beyond weapons? Like...nothing? Maybe some clothes for certain missions but really, nothing! When I did the bank heist I had too much money to use. SA you actually have houses you can buy (thus more safehouses) which were only given to you in IV via storylines. Weapons were much more expensive in SA, if you want more ammo it's the same price as the entire weapon. Then there's upgrades to cars you can get, or way more variations of clothing. In fact one of the missions requires you to have 80K to buy an abandoned airstrip. As for making money, granted SA gives you more ways of making it than IV as well so yeah, but certain SA was much more fulfilling than IV in terms of earning and spending.

MOVEMENT/SHOOTING...in GTA IV you get two modes of moving, walking or running. In SA you get three modes of moving, running, running fast, or running insanely fast. While running ALL the time in GTA SA looked unnatural, you did get to places faster. Not only that but SA actually has bikes you can ride, and while the BMX is a terrible, terrible bike, the mountain bike rivals slow cars with its speed and handling. Sadly the mountain bike is rather rare, but I stupidly captured gang territories during the riot in SA, so I used the mountain bike as my main mode of transportation since it can't catch fire or explode. GTA IV gives you a pretty useful cover system to keep from getting hit IMO, which is partly why its missions were much easier while the only thing you could rely on in SA was crouch. Also the weapons in IV, while much less in number allowed you to zoom in much easier, so headshots were a common fare for me unlike SA which, while I could still get headshots, Touhou models tend to be shorter than the originals so I didn't know exactly where the hitbox of the head would be...so I just swiss-cheesed them with bullets.

DRIVING...is very different between the two games. GTA IV had more physics implemented which confused many GTA veterans at first, but since I played this game before SA and hadn't played GTA in a while I picked up this way of driving instead. So when I started SA I was like "wtf am I doing" for a while. Again, cars explode far more often and more easily in SA than IV, so being shitty at driving is more tolerable in IV. Unfortunately it is the other way around if you're on a motorcycle. (MOTORCYCLE CHASES IN IV ARE THE WORST THING EVER) Nearly anything you smash into on a motorbike will throw you off and hurt you immensely in IV, while the same is in SA initially (besides the hurting you)...because it has RPG-like elements and the more you ride a bike the better you are at handling it, eventually it's far easier and a much more preferable mode of transportation. (I certainly liked them better, anyway)

BOATING... (is that a word?) is far less emphasized in SA than IV, mostly because SA has so many other ways of travelling the boats aren't as important. It's pretty easy to steer a boat in both games actually, but I think they capsize easier in IV. Swimming on the other hand is far preferable in SA because not only can practice allow you to swim much faster, but you can go under-freakin'-water! In IV swimming is just tedious and asinine, and if you're for some reason far off from land you best find a boat to get back rather than swim the entire way.

AIRCRAFT... only helicopters are avaliable in IV, but I do prefer IV's helicopter controls over SA's. On the other hand I may not have been used to the helicopter controls in SA since I preferred flying planes and most flying missions required planes over helicopters. (I despised that one mission where you have to pick up a security truck with a helicopter, blargh the controls, blargh!) The plane controls took a long time to get used to, but once you're actually able to fly planes it isn't too hard to fly them... but the one mission (Freefall was it?) where you have to leap from a slow plane onto a fast jet, while chasing it? Yeeeeah, the best way to beat this I discovered was to turn the moment you see the jet, not when you're already behind it, otherwise it is too fast and you will NEVER catch up to it. Turning was awkward too because I cannot freely-control the camera and so I can't particularly tell what direction I'm trying to go to, since that mission there's only clouds and sea all around. If I didn't have War Thunder experience, piloting would've been MUCH harder.

As for the single most difficult mission in both games...for IV? Definitely definitely DEFINITELY the final mission (the Revenge route, not Deal) where you have to drive the motorcycle onto the ramp and jump to the helicopter. There's a barrel lying between your path and the ramp, and if you turn too late you won't be able to turn back in time with enough speed to hit the ramp AND you have to be driving fast the entire time or the helicopter will leave... took FOREVER to complete, plus being the last mission I had to do the entire lengthy thing over and over and over and over and over again. Compare this to the "Stowaway" mission in SA, where you have to drive a motorbike into an aircraft before it takes off while federal agents are shooting at you and barrels are thrown in your way the entire time. Again, there is a short timeframe to complete this so you have to be at full-speed without any turns the entire time, else the plane takes off without you. THIS part of the mission was 9000x easier than IV's final mission simply because I much prefer how motorcycles handle in SA over IV. 

As for SA...there were tons of frustrating missions, my god. It took me longer to complete SA than IV that's for sure, but the one mission that totally made me want to kill myself was actually not even a mission. It was the gang wars during the riots I had to to do to unlock the last mission. If i had read a guide or something that informed me capturing territory was hell during the riot I definitely would've complied, but I didn't. So I just went and spent a good six hours failing constantly at capturing territories one-by-one (needed 35% and a territory was like 2%, my god) Even the mission beforehand, Grove-4-Life I kept failing because it for some reason began crashing, or I got swarmed by enemy gangsters from all around (took me a while to find a spot where I can't be shot from behind) then when I DID start figuring it out cars kept RUNNING OVER SWEET! In fact the LAST time this happened we were both on a sidewalk, but some jackass STILL RAN HIM OVER! (or Miko in this case, P: )

Which leads me to the next category...ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

The NPCs shoot better in SA than IV...marginally, but the enemy can generally hit me more often than in IV...however they are still both terrible, terrible shots. (Thank god for that though) Perhaps that is inaccurate due to the cover system in IV, but still. The driving, well in IV whenever my car was damaged...it was mostly my fault. The driving AI wasn't bad in GTA IV unless you're a cop and you're chasing after someone I'm chasing as well, then you're inevitably going to explode or flip over or explode again. the AI in GTA SA however...

Well I just laughed...because man are the drivers morons in SA. On the other hand it gives them more personality. For example if you hit (most often a Taxi but other cars too) certain vehicles, the driver may get angry and just keep chasing you wherever you go, trying to ram you in retaliation. See? Personality, but it can be very annoying for certain missions. (Missions where I have to drive a car without damaging it and I cut off some guy? He'll fail my mission for sure :C) Also racing in SA is easier than in IV because your opponents are more idiotic (however these are only the missions required for the storyline, didn't really race much in the side-missions) Also the fact that there is a driving school in SA allowed me to learn how to turn better and such, and I never figured out how to drift in IV. 

Oh and don't get me started on the pedestrians. If you're driving towards a pedestrian, their instinct is to jump to the side to not get hit, but this coding isn't done very well, so if you were driving towards them but turned slightly left to avoid them, they will have inadvertently leapt IN FRONT of you because they assume you're going to drive straight (even if just ahead is a wall or the sidewalk) so you'll hit them anyway and they die, then cops will notice and chase you. It was FAR easier to obtain police attention in SA because of this. 

I think my favourite part of SA that isn't in IV at all is really, the missions where you're not driving but the one shooting and you can shoot behind you, ahead, and basically destroy absolutely everything. These missions were the funnest to play and definitely the most spectacular. I much much much prefer the drive-by controls in IV though, because having to switch camera angles in SA means you have no idea where you're driving and you're going to slam into a wall most likely. (It's like switching to gunner-mode when you're in a bomber in WT, can't tell where you're flying at all) GTA IV allows you to shoot as you drive so it's much easier and preferable. 

And uh, I've been thinking but cannot figure out what's in IV that isn't in SA that I miss in SA, soooooo.... 

So yes, the penultimate question...which game is better? Well...I liked the colours of SA more and the storyline/characters, but it was also overall a more frustrating game. However, despite its difficulty its experience was far more complete than that of IV. Even though I had to drive forever from certain places to another, I think I like it better. Also way more Touhou mods so I can be Mokou, whose mission is to destroy Kaguya and her corrupt Lunarians while helping out the Ministry. With my insufferable older sibling Miko and my sassy and intelligent younger sister Akyuu. (THERE IS A PERFECTLY GOOD EXPLANATION FOR THOSE CHARACTER CHOICES. If you know your Touhou, yes even beyond my own preferences and favourite characters and such) I fight it out in a similar situation with Akyuu's lover and my best friend Keine, as we work for the completely strange Byakuren Hijiri, somewhat morally questionable Shikieiki, and the honourable but silly Komachi. We will work to revive Kyouko's career and save Tenshi, Parsee, and Yamame from the evil hands of Utsuho and her underground mafia, while defending Komachi's people from those dastardly SDM members. It is indeed a fulfilling feeling to have beaten both IV and SA without cheats.

This has been Spotto and with this game completed, I now consider myself a gamer.