GTAIV vs Saints Row

[capncnut]

Andrew seems to think Saints Row is more immersive, more fun, and bigger than GTA IV. As someone who just finished the latter and enjoyed it immensely, I would like to know your opinions.

[bassman]

GTAIV no contest...

[Nathalie]

As Little Jacob would say; rhaaatid bredren, gtaIV is the bombast, nee'forgeeet.

[Danny]

gta 4 had characters, saints row had...things. i play games that need up toa hundred hours for there story, which gta 4 had in spades, and great characters, saints row ive tried getting into and it was a bunch of spike lee films mixed together in a cringe worthy way. vanilla ice cringe worthy. Whereas nico was an engaging character, one bit that sticks with you is when he visits one of his bosses and instead of the usual "listen to the boss yell at a phone then yell at the gta player to go kill someone" the boss has not arrived home yet and he just talks to the guys wife. dammit, now i wanna buy gta again.

[Andy]

First off, i didnt say anything about saints row being more immersive or bigger. I did say it was more fun and had more activities to do outside of the main mission, i also said that despite popularity, i find saints row a better game as it has more to the gameplay, isnt as annoying as GTA4 (a jamaican druglord phoning you up every 2 minutes, "hey mon lets go shoot some arrows".. NO FUCK OFF) definatly has better controls, GTA drives like its trying to be a forza game and it just dosnt pull it off and saints row is just generally more fun to play.

[capncnut]

dammit, now i wanna buy gta again. Oblivion on the streets, yo!

[SymphonicX]

First off, i didnt say anything about saints row being more immersive or bigger. I did say it was more fun and had more activities to do outside of the main mission, i also said that despite popularity, i find saints row a better game as it has more to the gameplay, isnt as annoying as GTA4 (a jamaican druglord phoning you up every 2 minutes, "hey mon lets go shoot some arrows".. NO FUCK OFF) definatly has better controls, GTA drives like its trying to be a forza game and it just dosnt pull it off and saints row is just generally more fun to play. I agree with most points here Andy. GTA4 had polish, depth, story, beautiful driving mechanics... But it's like someone's put a guy in an ice cream shop who's just lost the ability to taste anything. There's nothing there through all the asthetics... Ahh fuck it I'm gonna rattle off a small bitch list "Side missions" are pathetic. Flying a chopper to a set location, going bowling, pool playing or playing ONE stupid little arcade game is NOT what I call replay value. Neither is going "dating" - its only to hear the "funny" dialogue - which is of course, fantastically written, however that's not enough. I don't feel the incentive to drive across a whole city over and over to pick up some lawyer prostitute chick who can remove wanted stars when I get into trouble. The "multiple choice" missions are boring, and only basically affect the gaming experience. It's like a very minute stab at an RPG, but badly done and felt tacked on. The vehicles are great, fantastic - but you get one nice vehicle in the whole game, near the end. Even when you do have it, the stupid save system mixed with the auto save system means you'll probably lose the car after one mission, if you don't crash it and destroy it just trying to get there. If you're lucky enough to get it saved permanently in your parking space, it eventually disappears anyway. Great. Missions, are as usual, standard GTA affair. Take this package here, deliver this person here, avoid bad guys here and here and maybe rob a bank. That's boring now. Clothes shops and upgrading your character is nigh on pointless and is just a distraction. As are the side missions, and basically anything that isn't a main mission. This is annoying because it separates one's incentive to complete the game in a random order - it's just easier to blitz one part then come back and blitz the other. As for saints row, it suffers from very little of any of that...: Bad driving mechanics Shitty graphics silly, stupid gangsta rap story terrible, terrible script that JUST IS NOT FUNNY. And some side missions are frustrating and annoying. But hey, at least there are like 20 different types of side missions, at least you can save, upgrade and keep your car safe, upgrade all aspects of your character, enjoy silly but completely fun arcade style missions, don't have to drive back and forth over the city between missions, have good boss fights etc. So both have good and bad points but for me, it's not about "immersion" in the sense that I want to be stuck in a city with nothing to do - regardless of how alive it feels, I want to have fun with missions and essentially achieve something on completing it - something which GTA provides NO incentive to do. In closing, I think GTA4, along with MW2, is one of the biggest let downs of the gaming world. Yep, you read that right. Both of these games are polished turds, at the end of the day - only with COD having much more replay value, both didn't deliver what they promised, or what the so-called "critics" raved about. Sheesh. So yeah, thanks for reading!!

[childofgilead]

Honestly, I think that Rockstar could learn a lesson in the character customization aspect..aside from the storyline, driving and shootings aspects, Saints Row 2 was a great game.. Uh.. Moving on, I was able to make a character that looked EXACTLY like me..and yes, that REALLY helps with the immersion.. And whatever happened to Xbox Live Vision? Why don't more games support this thing? Rainbow Six Vegas 2 even had an achivement to use the thing to capture your likeness.. On a sidenote, to hell with Wii.

[SymphonicX]

The character thing in Vegas was awesome and SOOO much fun!

[MinionZombie]

GTA IV - simples. I've got GTA IV and Saints Row 2 both in my possession, and both were pre-orders. I've played the main story of GTA IV twice, and the story of SR2 once. I've gotten a good 170 hours of gameplay (estimate, and I shit you not), while I've only managed to get about 40 to 50 hours out of SR2. Now that's not a bad amount of gameplay, but compared to GTA IV it's not an awful lot. And that's just GTA IV, add on an extra 40 hours roughly for Episodes From Liberty City, and I've at least had 200 hours out of GTA IV. Insane I know, but surprisingly true. ... GTA IV has its flaws. No silenced pistols (wtf is that about?), the cops are too hard on your ass, you can rarely get a right old rampage going (although Ballad of Gay Tony had some missions that were essentially "go on a rampage" and you get away with it scott free, which is nice) ... it also needed to have a bit more fun with itself (which is what Ballad of Gay Tony did). The cover system is occasionally jacked, but most of the time it worked nicely. It does needed regenerating health though - that's one of the things I dig most about SR2 (and indeed The Saboteur has regenerating health) - afterall it's a feckin' videogame, not a virtual reality machine. SR2 is half-baked generally speaking. Poor vehicle control (they feel lifeless, unrealistic, and handle poorly), whereas GTA IV's vehicles were initially hard to get the hang of, it really paid off in the end for added realism and joy once you'd mastered them (which wasn't a tall order) ... SR2 also insists on being all "hippity hop", which is fucking retarded. All this faux gangster shite - can't stand that crap. GTA IV had characters and a story I cared about and enjoyed. SR2 had characters and a story created by a 13 year old 'wigga'. Graphics wise GTA IV kicked SR2's ass also. Liberty City feels like a real place - although more variety, and more indoors areas would have been nice. The city in SR2 (forget the name) feels unpolished, undercooked and a bit tacky. SR2 did have fun things going for it mind, plenty of silly things to play around with - unfortunately these were hampered by wildly unpredictable and varying difficulty (even though the game had difficulty settings itself) - some side missions were insanely easy, while others were literally impossible. Add to that the instability of SR2 - where the game would crash, freeze or fail to load after you'd just done a long and complex mission - thus forcing you to do all that shit again - fucked me right off. GTA IV is a much better built game, and the saving has been improved upon in Ballad of Gay Tony. A downside to GTA IV and it's spin-offs though, is the streaming of content from the disc to your Xbox. It's unpredictable, and sometimes it simply cannot keep up when you're driving a fast car. Sometimes it fails to load at all and the game needs restarted - so that's one of my big annoyances at GTA IV. However, I have few grievances with GTA IV, but quite a few with SR2. GTA IV is better made, with a better script, array of characters and superior gameplay. There is fun to be had with SR2, but it doesn't half make you work for it, and you don't half have to compromise on a variety of issues to get there. GTA IV needed to have a bit more fun with itself (Ballad of Gay Tony pretty much got the level of fun spot on), and SR2 needed to finish cooking in multiple aspects. No contest. GTA IV ftw.

[Andy]

I agree with most points here Andy. GTA4 had polish, depth, story, beautiful driving mechanics... But it's like someone's put a guy in an ice cream shop who's just lost the ability to taste anything. There's nothing there through all the asthetics... Ahh fuck it I'm gonna rattle off a small bitch list "Side missions" are pathetic. Flying a chopper to a set location, going bowling, pool playing or playing ONE stupid little arcade game is NOT what I call replay value. Neither is going "dating" - its only to hear the "funny" dialogue - which is of course, fantastically written, however that's not enough. I don't feel the incentive to drive across a whole city over and over to pick up some lawyer prostitute chick who can remove wanted stars when I get into trouble. The "multiple choice" missions are boring, and only basically affect the gaming experience. It's like a very minute stab at an RPG, but badly done and felt tacked on. The vehicles are great, fantastic - but you get one nice vehicle in the whole game, near the end. Even when you do have it, the stupid save system mixed with the auto save system means you'll probably lose the car after one mission, if you don't crash it and destroy it just trying to get there. If you're lucky enough to get it saved permanently in your parking space, it eventually disappears anyway. Great. Missions, are as usual, standard GTA affair. Take this package here, deliver this person here, avoid bad guys here and here and maybe rob a bank. That's boring now. Clothes shops and upgrading your character is nigh on pointless and is just a distraction. As are the side missions, and basically anything that isn't a main mission. This is annoying because it separates one's incentive to complete the game in a random order - it's just easier to blitz one part then come back and blitz the other. As for saints row, it suffers from very little of any of that...: Bad driving mechanics Shitty graphics silly, stupid gangsta rap story terrible, terrible script that JUST IS NOT FUNNY. And some side missions are frustrating and annoying. But hey, at least there are like 20 different types of side missions, at least you can save, upgrade and keep your car safe, upgrade all aspects of your character, enjoy silly but completely fun arcade style missions, don't have to drive back and forth over the city between missions, have good boss fights etc. So both have good and bad points but for me, it's not about "immersion" in the sense that I want to be stuck in a city with nothing to do - regardless of how alive it feels, I want to have fun with missions and essentially achieve something on completing it - something which GTA provides NO incentive to do. In closing, I think GTA4, along with MW2, is one of the biggest let downs of the gaming world. Yep, you read that right. Both of these games are polished turds, at the end of the day - only with COD having much more replay value, both didn't deliver what they promised, or what the so-called "critics" raved about. Sheesh. So yeah, thanks for reading!! FINALLY somebody gets my point almost exactly

[mista_mo]

I only bought GTA IV for the multi player. Me and my buddy would fuck around on that for hours on end, and I don't think any multi player experience has beaten that yet. riding shotgun in a car being driven by your best friend, running over/gunning down the npcs, and other people...helicopter battles, trying to see who could crush the most pedestrians in a single sky dive. Yep, GTA IV multi player was fun. I tried the single player story, and found it boring as hell. Bare in mind, I haven't played saints row 2, but I have heard from people that have played that it is far more fun than GTA IV could hope to be, and that is what counts in games today. Not realism, not "physics" nor graphics. But good old fashioned fun. I dont think people even really know what that word means sometimes. Oh, and all those 10 out of 10 reviews are ridiculous. That implies the game has no flaws whatsoever, and is perfect in every imaginable way. I still think major review sites are paid off by the gaming companies, or are at least told that if they don't give their games a high score, they will pull their ads. Shit pisses me off brah.

[SymphonicX]

I only bought GTA IV for the multi player. Me and my buddy would fuck around on that for hours on end, and I don't think any multi player experience has beaten that yet. riding shotgun in a car being driven by your best friend, running over/gunning down the npcs, and other people...helicopter battles, trying to see who could crush the most pedestrians in a single sky dive. Yep, GTA IV multi player was fun. I tried the single player story, and found it boring as hell. Bare in mind, I haven't played saints row 2, but I have heard from people that have played that it is far more fun than GTA IV could hope to be, and that is what counts in games today. Not realism, not "physics" nor graphics. But good old fashioned fun. I dont think people even really know what that word means sometimes. Oh, and all those 10 out of 10 reviews are ridiculous. That implies the game has no flaws whatsoever, and is perfect in every imaginable way. I still think major review sites are paid off by the gaming companies, or are at least told that if they don't give their games a high score, they will pull their ads. Shit pisses me off brah. I've said the same thing re: magazines/sites that score a game so highly. We've seen it a couple of times from hugely hyped games and it just won't do. No game should EVER get 10/10 IMO...I mean if you hark back to the first appearance of Street Fighter on the Sega Megadrive, that only got 97% and that was the highest score ever awarded to a game by the (official (!)) magazine at the time. The reason why? The audio wasn't as sharp as it could have been. No game is perfect. None. And COD was the next in the line of those shitty overhyped moments that have you queuing outside the store to get it, then be thoughtful about it a week later, then fostered into resentment. It IS a jaw dropping game, but where was it? 6 hours? You're kidding me. THAT was the biggest insult I thought could be afforded to the COD series, but then of course, I learned that the co-op would be a silly cutdown affair with no balls or immersion. Great. Basically that game failed to deliver to me (who loves single player games more than multiplayer) what I wanted, which was a good 1 player game. They concentrated only on multiplayer, and that short changed everyone out there who doesn't enjoy that stuff too much. As for GTA, I played it online with my mate and we'd spend ages collecting weapons, then we decided to block a building with cars, get on the roof, and then spend an entire evening seeing how much police attention we could get. The trouble was, my mate was being a dick and decided to keep running me over/sniping me jsut as we were about to start, so I got pissed and that was the last I played it. Damnit.

[ProfessorChaos]

my vote went to gta4 for a better overall experience. almost all of my complaints/issues with each game has been already stated: gta4 has amazing graphics, a very detailed and life-like city, a compelling story, and all the other staples of the gta series: great tunes, vehicles, and characters you like. however, there isn't much going on once you beat the game and all the side-activities are pretty lame. no character customization really sucks, the outfits and clothing choices are a waste of time, and the tiny amount of safehouses and proper vehicle storage was a complete let-down after the awesomesauce of san andreas's customizing (cars, clothes, body-type, hair-cut, tatoos, etc) and the dozens of cool safe houses, airports, garages, etc you found in san andreas. while gta4 was awesome, it was nothing to what it could have been, given the evolution from gta3 to vc to sa....the online multiplayer could be a lot of fun with friends, but the controls made it too frustrating for competitive online play. for online gaming, though, i'm more of a halo3/mw2 kinda guy, for what it's worth). sr2 has tons of customization, lots of places/properties to obtain, tons of cool side quests (even a fucking zombie mini-game, which is something i'd been dreaming of showing up in gta for years), businesses to collect $$ from, good tunes, some fun vehicles and probably a lot more i never got around to doing. i just had to put it down cuz while there was so much stuff to do, the game just felt so flat and dull, with characters that were annoying, a story that i couldn't begin to care about, and almost a cartoonish feel overall. to sum it up, it pretty much felt like exactly what it is: a gta-clone without a soul. while it's a great game and is a load of fun at times, it's still not quite a gta game and can't really compete. i'm a former gta junkie, though, having invested way too much time in vice city and san andreas and dreaming of what the next-gen gta's would be like....so i'm a bit biased. while i'm satisfied overall with gta4 and think it's the superior game, i'll concede that rockstar ought to take a page from thq's book and jazz up the next gta game a bit, cuz sr2 is way more appealing on paper when you look at total overall content, customization, and replayability. (on a slightly-off topic note, who's excited as hell for the next rockstar sandbox, "red dead redemption"?) *raises hand*

[capncnut]

(on a slightly-off topic note, who's excited as hell for the next rockstar sandbox, "red dead redemption"?) *raises hand* Yeah, I'm bang up for it too.