Nopoe, not buying it here. In fact, I'm enjoying the fact that they seem to be breaking on both the PS3 and the 360.

But then, I think the game is about as vulgar a game as you can get, and I don't understand why people find it at all enjoyable. It's one of the few games I wouldn't mind seeing taken off the shelves, to be honest.

It's an adolescent, angsty interest. Give me a free-ranging game where you can do constructive things rather than promote organized crime and I'll be all over it.

Exactly. I mean, at least in Crackdown you were fighting crime, even if you were killing a bunch of civilians in the process. Or was that just me? ;)

I understand that as a game system, it (is/was?) ground breaking in that it develops more of a sandbox world than anything else out there. But I wish that they would make it more productive oriented.

Can you imagine say, a Batman game based on the same game engine?

I think they tried a Spider-Man game like that, but the repetitive "save the old lady's purse from the mugger" missions got boring.

it also didn't help that spidey's web was always sticking to an invisible magical flying girder just out of the camera's range rather than any of the scenery.

but that's not the fault of the world of the concept, that's a problem with the game design.

The way I imagine it, would be as such;

Each of Batman's (or whomever's) villains would end up with part of the city under their control. Maybe Joker has the north, and Penguin the south, and the Scarecrow the narrows, etc. As Batman, you'd have a scanner monitoring for bad guy activity - villain related or not. You'd get reports that maybe near you there's a jewelry store robbery and a bank hold up, while maybe you can see a little old lady getting robbed. You'd have to figure out how to deal with them - do you call the cops on the lady while you take out the jewelry store? What about the bank hold up? You'd have to make choices, and those choices would effect how the bad guys were able to do things - maybe if they successfully pulled off the bank robbery, they'd be able to buy more weapons.

Eventually you'd work your way up the chain, ala crackdown. Taking out lieutenants, and eventually the main villain. All the while you'd be able to research new equipment, via Wayne enterprises. Plus you'd have drop in/drop out co-op, with people playing Robin, Nightwing or Batgirl. You could get help from Oracle, etc. And if you didn't do enough for the city, maybe the citizens would turn on you, asking the police to bring you in.

Really, you wouldn't have to do much more than tweak Crackdown, put a new skin on it, take out the guns and put in more gadgets, and you'd have a decent sandbox Batman game.

Oh, could you imagine a sandbox based on "No Man's Land"?

WANT. DO MAKE.

sadly, I'm not as familiar with that story line.

But if you wanted to introduce story lines, you could definitely set up something like Knightfall into the storyline, or even show how the gangs retaliate ala Joker/TDK. You could start off just fighting the mob, and once that was partially underway, start having your super villains show up.

no man's land basically has what you describe: after a devistating earthquake, the US government declares the city a total loss and isolates the island. Each of the major villains stakes out a chunk of territory in it.

See, then it'd already be set up continuity wise. now we just need to sell the idea to DC.

Wow, as TC8 said, I just assumed that you channeled the storyline into your idea.

I mean, I totally did! I'm just that awesome.

Hey, sounds cool to me!

yes, I mentally catalog the series under "frat boy games", for lack of a better term. Along with Madden and, reluctantly, Halo. I've seen too many of that type playing Halo online to do any different.

There's a reason why I think most of us don't play Halo online nearly as much as we used to. Although I have had fun lately going back through Halo3's campaign with CJ and others.

But yes, I think in general, the online community is populated with your "frat boys" more than any other type, which is a real shame.

Except when they get pwnd by girls.

Halo is doubly frustrating because the multiplayer is really really well done. I just can't stand the people on it. Partially because they're homophobic racist assholes, and partially because I'm simply not very good at the game.

If we could get some big custom games going on Forge'd levels, I'd be all for it!

See, all the forge'd games I've played in just turn into people doing stupid things (and I include myself in that.) I mean, it's a great system, but at the same time, I don't know... maybe it's just the fact that I hate being competitive (mostly because I hate losing) that I'd just much rather play co-op anything.

yup, me too. I'm not very good, and sticking around to get better would mean dealing with the assmunches.

I'm waiting for my copy to arrive in the mail. I've never actually played the series, and this seemed as good as time as any to take a look and see just what the buzz is about.

I don't have a machine capable of playing GTA 4 (well, do they have a Windows version? Maybe I could technically pay it on my laptop), don't have an interested in playing it, and the first/last/only time I played GTA was back when it was a fairly blocky overhead view of a city that looked not unlike the original Sim City and ran under DOS.

Oddly enough, in researching this post, I see that it's available as a free download (http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/gta.html). I may just give it a try again.

I have no desire at all to buy it. GTA3 was a fun rental for me, but I burned out on the game / got bored pretty quick for some reason. I would say I don't like open world games, but then that'd negate my enjoyment of Crackdown. So I can't really point a finger at anything in particular.

IAWATACEjwiv :P

could have bought it last night... but didn't want to, and had to get home. more about yesterday later though :P
passed best buy and decided to hop in line for the first 100 people at the midnight launch for an attempt at swag, heehee

wait, i'm confused, by this and your twitter account too

so, you were in line, but you didn't get it? looking forward to the tale

11:30 was the last bus out of TO. I coudl stay and take an expensive cab home, or wait until the first bus in the morning. Considering I wouldn't be buying the game, staying would only be for the 1 in 100 chance of winning a special Xbox, perhaps some minor swag. Worth it? .....meh. I gave my number to the guys I befriended, in case it was drawn. I was #83, the draw was #26 (I found out this morning by contact). So yeah, it was probably good for me to go home :)

Contrary to pretty much the entire thread here, I am getting GTA IV (either today or tomorrow, depending on delivery), and I am looking forward to it. I enjoyed the earlier iterations of the series. Yes, they are absurdly immature. I'm ok with that. I like that. I like having a wide open sandbox that I can just screw around with for a few hours if I so choose. Or maybe play some missions. Whatever.

I like the "bigness" of the GTA landscape. I like to steal a car and just tool around in it. I mostly play the missions just to open up the rest of the terrain and give myself more options for not doing missions.

I wasn't sucked into the hype for this game, but I do look forward to playing it. It's a fun escape.

And a relatively healthy outlet for road rage.

I do like that open world aspect, and I had fun playing Vice City (never had my own copy).

There's just something about the grittiness and the gangster attitude that rubs me the wrong way though. I can't quite put my finger on it.

See, I totally like that aspect of it. I like the inherent nastiness of it. It's just a mean-spirited bitch of a series, and I like that. Rampaging through a city full of people until the army shows up is just plain fun. Then stealing the army's tank and rampaging some more? More fun. Or standing on the roof of a parking garage and headshotting pedestrians until the helicopters come to take you out? Even more fun. Then taking out said helicopters and sending them crashing into said tanks? Still more fun.

Screw the missions. Give me chaos and explosions at my leisure.

This kind of sandbox game is old and done for me. I would like to see what improvements Rockstar has added for this iteration, it's nothing more than a passing interest that could get scratched by reading a review. And even with said reviews for it being a "10" or "100" or "A+" or what have you, it simply cannot be that good.

I also share your feelings with Halo multiplayer: game mechanics are fun, but everyone you play against are douchbags.

Not buying, not caring. :)

I think GTA IV is a great game, just not one that's to my taste. I, too, am more of a "Crackdown" guy than GTA guy myself, though the concept of the open-world sandbox is tantalising.

-- Steve'd be more tempted by Realtime World's next offering, "APB", if it weren't MMO. Still, since it's well-nigh a "Crackdown" MMO (just giving folks the chance to play the crooks as well as the cops) it does look intriguing.

I was feeling rather alone about this game, and this post helps. I don't really care about GTA much. I had GTA3, and didn't quite make it past 1/3 of the way through. Haven't touched it since. I think I'd enjoy it, if I could play the whole story through on co-op, simply because it would be a social thing. But otherwise... meh.

I'm very interested in this series, and I would love to buy GTA IV, personally.

I do own San Andreas, but I bought it at a time when I really didn't have time to devote to it nor have I devoted any time to it since. So before I go pick up IV, I'm planning on actually trying out the GTA game that I already own, particularly since I hear that San Andreas is actually a larger game (virtual acreage) with more weapons, accessories, and options than IV (though IV makes up for it in other ways, I hear).

I loved the old top-down view GTA games from way back before GTA III made its debut. They were all kinds of fun. I would waste hoooooours playing those games doing anything and everything. But I would even do the missions, too! Those games always had a particular sense of humor that appealed to me and I hear that humor remains in the series to this day. However, I'm willing to bet that the writing for the current GTA is far more "realistic" and "serious" and "mature" than the writing for those old goofy games ever was. I'd like to see how that works out for me.

Needless to say, sandbox games are a very interesting beast, because you either have fun playing them for dozens of hours or you find the all weapons cheat, play for a few hours tops, and then never pick it up again. I'm really interested to see how this games plays if you simply stick to the missions at hand and progress the storyline of the game.