Tue
Dec
9
32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
AWESOME GAME!!!, December 7, 2008 By Nathan D. Allen
(Bay Saint Louis, MS) - See all my reviews
Fun:
This is quite possibly the greatest game I’ve ever played!
In GTA4 you play the role of Lee Gulpurchaser, a guy freshly back from a computer store with a new computer game. Upon arriving home, Lee realizes that he’s been likened to a low-down computer-game pirate and is finding himself on the run from obscene digital-rights managements software, an impossible software activation regime, and an incompetent user-support system. Wrongly accused, he’s on the lam while also trying to get back in the good graces of his family as they’re wondering why he’s changed into a different person, shirking his familial responsibilities trying to play a game while also randomly shouting obscenities.
I’ve only played the “game” for about three hours, but so far I can say that it’s possibly the greatest experience I’ve ever had. I just completed the reinstallation mission, you know, the one where you install it again to see if there’s something keeping you from enjoying your game. It took me at least three tries to get through that mission for some strange reason, but the cut-scene after it gives a lot of exposition so you’ll know what you’re in for, game-wise.
Probably the hardest mission in the game is the one where you have to navigate the phone directory at Rockstar’s tech support. It’s a normal, straight-forward mission: you pick up the phone, press a string of numbers, and speak to a live person. What makes the mission so tricky is that you find yourself in a never-ending circuit of pressing a given key sequence, followed by a lengthy bout of being placed on hold. Combine that with the fact that it’s a timed mission as if you’re unable to complete it in 45 minutes, the mission ends as the main character gets too aggravated to keep trying to get help. I haven’t yet completed the mission but I hope that I can soon as I’m sure that the subsequent missions will be equally as challenging and entertaining.
One of the nice things about GTA4 is that there are a lot of side missions. One involves collecting information to determine if you have some substandard computer causing all of the calamities. So far I’ve gathered the 8800GTX badge, the standard Pentium-IV and Intel motherboard setup items, all of which seemed like it would be rewarding. Of course, none of this actually helps you to complete the game, as it’s really the core missions — referred to in-game as “the game’s over-protective, over-restrictive installation is what really keeps you from playing it” missions — that govern how far along you progress in the game.
I’ll try to write a follow-up review after the next mission, the one wherein Lee packs the game back up and returns it to the computer store, telling them that regardless as to whether or not he gets his money back, he just doesn’t want to deal with it anymore.
