My issues with GTA IV come from a few different areas. Even at under 30 hours, which is far from the longest story in the series, I felt the story kind of dragged. You can only meet so many scumbags and get screwed over by them before it starts to get boring and repetitive. I’m not a fan of the mission structure. And I’m a bit bitter that despite this being a sandbox game that is supposed to give you freedom, Rockstar took away a lot of the fun little toys from previous games that made goofing off for hours and hours so fun.
- First off, have multiple playable characters. I would much rather have several, five hour stories than one fifty hour story. Make all of their stories intertwine so you see a lot of different perspectives on the same city and all of the characters. You might not have had a second of hesitation when you killed “Generic Mob Boss #7”, but what if you play as that character’s son on the next play through and get a little context? Mind blowing, baby!
- Secondly, make it so we can’t fail missions. Give us 2+ outcomes for every mission so that we can still make progress and not fail constantly because our AI partner is a moron. If, for example, Packie dies because he walks directly onto your grenade or stands in the middle of the street while the enemy shoots him, then fine. He is dead. And you’ll branch off into a different set of missions and the story is tweaked a bit. Of what if you want to make a moral choice and simply not do something? I personally would rather not help out drug dealers, so what if you could turn them in to the police instead? This would give the game a tremendous amount of replay value. It would be a hell of a lot of work for story writers and game developers, but isn’t something like this what you expect from the supposed best game of all time?
- Third, give us better missions. Most of the missions in GTA IV boiled down to this: A) Drive to location and kill everyone, or, B) Chase enemies as they drive away. Boring! The missions that didn’t do these things were easily the best parts of the game. Using your cell phone to identify your target. Picking up diamonds in a garbage truck. Kidnapping. All of these missions were way more fun than the rest of the game. Give us more creative missions and less of the repetitive boring junk we have been doing for 7 years. I also enjoyed the text message car theft missions where you had to find a specific location and a specific car. More of this, please!
- Fourth, give us more stuff to do! Darts, bowling, and pool suck. Give us back our toys from previous games. I want to deliver pizzas or do firetruck/ambulance missions. I want my parachute and jet pack from San Andreas back. Give us more vehicles like airplanes and construction equipment and military stuff. I think, also, I wouldn’t mind if they strayed from the realistic tone and gave us different weapons like lasers or light sabers or something in addition to all of the traditional weapons. This is supposed to be a sandbox game, right? Well, in my sandbox, I want to parachute out of an airplane and kill gangsters with a light saber and then make my getaway in a front end loader.
- Fifth, make money actually worth something. Through the story in GTA IV, Niko is constantly whining about needing more money even when you have hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when you do beat the story, there is literally nothing to do with your money. You can’t buy properties or businesses like you could in past games, so what was the point of collecting all of that cash? You also live in the junkiest craphole apartments in Liberty City. Why not spend that money to get a house or something.
- Sixth, maybe change the tone a little? For a game that goes such a long way to earn its “M” for Mature rating, it is funny how incredibly immature it all actually is. They beat you over the head with sexual innuendo (that never actually pays off … c’mon, the Conan game had bare breasts all over the place but GTA doesn’t?) and sophomoric humor and it gets old after a while. I also don’t really dig the “kitchen sink” approach to being a criminal. It just seems odd and a bit over the top to be a murderer, kidnapper, sexual deviant, thief, extortionist, drunk driver, drug dealer, and accomplice to all of the above and more all wrapped into one.
Bottom Line
And there you have it. How I would turn the next GTA into the best game ever. I’d say the first three are the most important changes that would really make a huge impact. But 4-6 definitely up the fun factor and make the core game more enjoyable. The game is already good fun, but it can be better.
