Playing A Game Grand Theft Auto IV PC

My interest in replaying Grand Theft Auto IV piqued even before the news that it would be re-launched on Steam in a few weeks. (That said, the fact that this re-launch will likely be missing big chunks of the radio soundtrack was a strong motivation to get going.)

What I remembered of the game was that driving felt heavy and satisfying, and that the tale of Niko Bellic attempting to integrate into western society - via the sordid gangs of Liberty City - was more impactful than the sequel's story. What I failed to remember was... that this game is more than a decade old.

Tutorial moments, vestiges of GTA 3's in-game instructions on safehouses and Pay 'n' Sprays, are conspicuously dated. The glacial pace of new game mechanics - like, how long it takes just to get a handgun - is hard to defend against present-day open-world games. And the bowling mini-game is just ... well, at least it's not as bad as RDR's cattle-herding and horse-breaking.

But the real reason I'm typing this post up is to whine about mission checkpoints, and GTA 4's lack of them.

A year later, Batman: Arkham Asylum felt revelatory for its inclusion of auto-saving checkpoints at every room transition. The most you would ever have to repeat, if your caped crusader got shot to death, was a handful of takedowns in a stealth segment. This style of automatic and convenient checkpointing - highly respectful of the player's time - has become a base expectation for me.

So it's a bit irritating to go back to the lengthy missions of GTA 4 with minimal, if any, mid-mission checkpoints -- having to repeat a lengthy car chase to get to a convoluted shoot-out, or vice-versa. Especially when a mission is interrupted by being arrested, so the cops take all your guns away when you respawn. (I forgot this was even a thing, then restarted the mission, got to the shoot-out, and was gobsmacked at my lack of armaments.)

It shouldn't be particularly surprising that this blockbuster title's approach to incremental progress has become antiquated in ten years; I could say the same about Metroid compared to many N64 games. And, I don't want to over-emphasize this shortcoming too much: it's merely the stand-out wrinkle among the game's other signs of aging. In many other ways, GTA 4 does still hold up well today.

This bugbear, of making the player repeat gameplay purely to get back to where they were, just happens to be a particular pet peeve of mine. (It's why I have no patience for rogue-likes.)

And it feels pointless to tolerate for the limited payoff of said "glacial pace," when I could move on to the more-bombastic The Ballad of Gay Tony instead.