I still haven't finished the last one. I think that franchise peaked for me with San Andreas. May have to look into one of those "collection" disks for PS3 that includes it.
I loved GTA IV. That was my first. I playing a San Andreas port on my 360 at the moment and I see where it has some greatness, but GTa IV and Niko Bellic was awesome!!
But you can't eat until you puke, go get huge at the gym, then take boxing/martial arts lessons. There's no jet pack, no harrier jet, no leer jet (no planes at all!), no tank, fewer vehicle cheat codes in general. Also no parachuting. And no heat-seeking rocket launcher, dammit.
I tried to play GTA:IV, even bought the PC version since I don't have a PS3. It just didn't "work" for me on the PC. I had gotten used to the PS2 controls. But, yeah, it peaked, for me, at San Andreas. That was, hands down, the most fun I've ever had playing a game. Sadly, my PS2 was damaged during my last move and I have no way of playing it.
Wow, I did not expect this bit o' news, though they were definitely due for a new release. I played IV all the way through just before going to New York in 2007, so me and my cousins had a blast visiting the virtual NYC then actually seeing the real thing weeks later. They even had a huge billboard a block north of Times Square with Nico on it. I wonder what city this one is gonna be based in? Last I heard, there were rumors they were going to make it located in Amsterdam.
That's sorta what I figured, but a Washington DC one would be pretty cool too. It is, after all, one of the most violent cities in America.
If you're willing to spend a little extra money, get the DLC "The Ballad of Gay Tony" because it closer in style to San Andreas. Also (if you haven't already) go buy Saints Row 2 for like $5-10, it's the spiritual successor to San Andreas. Saints Row 3 comes out in three weeks and it looks to be even better.
I am thinking of checking out Saints Row 3... UA, GTA IV had chopper cheats weapons and vehicle cheats. I'm not far enough into SA to say either way, but they seem very comparable to me. GTA IV was the game where I first realized that video games used real actors and directors. Until then, I thought they used code geeks for the voice work. The story and game play was awesome!! The Liberty City and Gay Tony DLC was great too!! I love how everything came together in the end. If you haven't finished it and still have it, give it a shot.
I played GTA III. Could never finish. Had a nasty habit of getting the entire police force to chase me, me holing up in one spot furiously typing in cheat codes and just laying waste to the whole police department. And I was too busy running innocent people over.
I've only finished one of the games, the rest I've started and finished 1/2 - 3/4 of the main story, usually it seems like I get the newest one before I finish the previous one.
Hell, I liked turning on one of the radio stations, grabbing a motorcycle and heading out, just seeing the scenery.
I would occasionally take a jeep to that mountain in the lower left corner of the map, drive all the way to the peak, then pull a Thelma & Louise..
I liked the story in Las Venturas, but outside of that, it and Bone County didn't do much for me. I liked boating up in Tierra Robada, driving sports cars on the hills of San Fiero, jeeps in Whetstone, and just cruising around on a motorcycle in Los Santos, Red County, and Flint County.
The Las Venturas area was good for either crashing the military base and seeing how far you could get with a stolen Humvee or tank, or blowing up their anti-aircraft rockets so you could steal a jet and buzz them with strafing fire until you got shot down. Man, I'm starting to miss that game. Traded it in when I got my PS3, cuz it's not one of the really early ones that were backwards compatible.
I'd do that in "The Lost and the Damned." Better bike handling (other than the default storyline bike, that thing sucked balls.)
Saints Row 1 isn't really worth getting I have heard, but it is definitely worth checking out Saints Row 2. There is a pretty good character customization thingy so you can play as pretty much anyone you want so long as you take a few minutes to move the sliders around. It's more whacky than GTAIV for sure, but can also have some dramatic moments. There are mini-missions where you have to commit insurance fraud by throwing yourself at cars on the freeway, ruin entire neighborhoods by spewing shit on buildings from a truck with a septic tank, dress up as a cop and commit acts of violence for a Cops-style TV camera crew, run around flashing people for cash, fight off gangs of pimps with dildos, and also you can just go around punching people in the balls to death. My best memories with Saints Row 2 are me or one of my friends saying "Hey I wonder if I can do this..." and being pleasantly surprised that I could. The missions are interesting and more varied than GTAIV's "drive 15 minutes to shoot someone, hey Niko it's your cousin Roman" missions, and the plot is actually rather well done. You're the boss of a street gang and you just got out of prison, but you have had plastic surgery to change your appearance (hence the custom character creation) and can go to plastic surgeons whenever you want to continually change your appearance. As the boss you build up the gang and fight off three rival gangs and a private security corporation. There's really good vehicle customization and a plethora of different clothing options and costumes. However, I'd recommend against getting it on the PC--stick to the Xbox or PS3 instead. The PC port was supposedly very rushed and poorly done and tends to be glitchy. Also, http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/312-Saints-Row-2
One of the Youtube gamers I subscribe to is doing a playthrough at the moment. Sometimes watching someone play games is just as fun as playing them yourself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPkAIgvJAW8
Bone County was fun. Charge in there in a dune buggy, beat the hell out of some random ped and then race off with the cops chasing. Or just smack somebody and run, then stop until they catch up, then run off again.
One thing I enjoyed the hell out of with stock GTA IV as well as with TLaD and TBoGT was the easy moddability -- well, easy to an extent. Rewriting vehicle handling and so on was as easy as dropping rewritten files into the right directories, replacing visual elements with more true-to-life NYC landmarks and vehicle livery, not so much. Here's hoping that GTA V is as easy, or easier, to mod than GTA IV and its DLCs were.
