Increasing complexity in the console market is causing them to lose their "it just works" status. They seem to be inexorably marching toward the status of "poor man's PC". Let's hope they remember why some people like consoles better in the first place: simplicity.
I saw this run on my friend's 60GB PS3 today. And there are definitely some issues there. No freezes, but there were a few times when the game would stutter stop a bit when there was a lot going on onscreen. He says the problem is if your hard drive is full of downloads and other crap, it'll slow it down. Makes sense, since it happens on a computer too. Computers need scratch disk space.
It might also have something to do with the internet connection... My game hung twice yesterday... 1st time when starting the game up it didn't get past the black loading screen so i removed all gtaiv files and started over... Later while driving in the game everything froze... I did remove some game files from games i haven't played in a long time and disabled the PS3's network connection, and it seem to work...
In my city, you can't find the game anywhere either. It is sold out. I didn't pre order mine, but I walked into HMV the afternoon of release day, and picked it up. I have not seen it anywhere since.
Sold out in my area too, i'm waiting another week and will just rent it from blockbuster to see if it's worth getting.
We have an abundance here in Dallas. I was in Fry's earlier and there had to be 100 or more on display for both PS3 and xbox.
My friend grabbed a SE copy on launch day, no preorder, and I walked in and picked up a copy a few days ago. But there aren't a lot of them on the shelves here.
I cruised through Best Buy last saturday and there had to be about 50 tops on display. I imagine by now they're all gone.
The one where you gotta pick up Elizabeta's coke? Well, depending what you're having trouble with I'll just through out a couple tips. Don't rush to clear the hospital, kill them all cleanly and carefully so you can stave off on grabbing the health kits and body armor before the cops arrive. Before you grab the coke, kill all the gangsters collect their ammo and make certain you know your path out of there- the cops won't show up until you grab the drugs so take your time. The cops DON'T stop spawning, don't bother trying to kill them all or you'll end up facing huge clusters in the more open areas which is bad news for bongo. Pop a few and run, straight for the waters edge since there is a boat waiting down there tethered to a dock, which you can grab and jet away to safety fairly quickly and easily. If it is a question of firepower try buying some better guns, or a suit of body armor before you start the mission. Don't forget that Little Jacob will sell you guns and armor for cheaper than the shops once his like of you reaches above 75%. Hope that helps.
A few funny thing that happened so far. (very mild spoilers contained). In one of the assassination missions, you have to chase down a guy in a motorcycle. I cordon him off, so he tries to turn his motorcycle around. I pop a few shots off and he falls off, so he start shooting at me. Civilians start running all over the place, so I take out the AK-47 and blast away - only to have a lady run right by the crosshairs and die! Another incident had me trying to escape with a stolen bike. I killed all the gangsters, but then I took a few wrong turns, and the cops had me surrounded. I was cornered, and there really was nowhere to go, but then one cop car came in a little too fast, and rammed into me and my motorbike, sending me flying over the fence and into the freeway, where there were no cops. I barely escaped with my life, and had one sliver of health left, so I took off on the motorcycle, trying to get out of range of the circle on the map. Well, I wasn't paying attention to the road because of that, and then a median came up. I slowed down, but not fast enough, so the motorcycle just NUDGED the median, and I went flying off the motorcycle, and hit a street lamp. Getting into an accident like that any other time would've barely scratched me, but since I was living on one sliver of health, a minor accident falling off a bike finally killed me off.
Going purely on anecdotal evidence, it appears that this is the game that will get people to buy PS3s. It seems everyone is either buying one, or trying to sell their Xbox (two guys in my company alone) so they can go buy one.
I am about 30% done, and so far, no way you can "buy" property. You are given property as a reward for completing certain mission.
360 sales are up 50% over the last week, and 60% of all GTA4 sales are for the 360. Check it out. And yeah, it's probably the typical posturing and all, and good points were made about how the 360 install base is, of course, larger, so it'd likely sell more. However, the comments from the Sony fanboys on the article are hilarious.
Going to a bar with one of Nico's friends is freakin' hilarious... Especially trying to get a cab... Hey Yellow Car!
So damn hard to do that AND missions at the same time, not to mention one of the achievements on the 360 is to beat the main story missions in under 30 hours of play time, so a tad bit of rushing is in order.
If those people call you at an inconvenient time, just say no to them. You only lose about 1% favor from them. Some of the phone calls are scripted too, so you have to at least listen to them. Like Roman will call you in the middle of some bad situation, and Niko will tell him something like "Can you hear the gunshots over the phone??? Not now, I'm kind of busy!"
You can avoid the 1% drop by initially accepting, then calling back right after and canceling. I do it all the time.
I like the realism involved in the driving. I know it isn't super-real, but I like that when you crunch in parts of your car it actually effects its ability to drive. Having wheels off balance from too many corner collisions, car stalling out mid chase with Niko yelling "C'mon, c'mon!" Little touches that make the game better.
I love this game, soo much. I think what's made it awesome so far is that I haven't tried to find any guides yet. I just keep going in to everything blind. It's pretty sweet.
Just had a fun six hours killing hookers at night and missions by day. Anyone else notice poodles radio channel in the game?
