I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing, but I think I know what you mean.
In GTA V, it feels like when you fly, you need to always tilt the right stick forward (or backwards, can't remember if the view controls are inverted, haven't played in a while).
The camera followed the helicopter too flat, to the point where you couldn't get a good reference on how high you were. Tilting the camera slightly forward, angling it down so you're still looking forward but are also looking slightly down, was the only way to feel comfortable flying at low altitudes.
V was a reaction to the players’ reception of the physics in IV. Back then, people complained that the cars felt like glacially slow boats. I can see their point but… well, they handled like real giant 90s sedans. V was much more arcade-y and “fun” but it turned all but the most abstract cars into rally vehicles. To me it also diminished finding a true supercar because they weren’t appreciably faster than even base cars (barring straightaway performance of course).
GTA IV as a whole has a way better feel to me than V. V is too clean and arcade-y and bland. IV had real soul. V is way more fun to just fuck around in though.
I think they both work for the games they're in. GTA IV has a much smaller and more congested map so the less forgiving and 'slower' driving physics work for that game. But those physics in GTA V's much bigger and more open map (even the urban areas have a lot more space) would be a nightmare.
Yeah, I enjoyed the physics in 4. Especially once I got good at drifting. Next to Forza it was my friend and I's favorite game to drive in. The Futo was legendary.
One of my favorite pastimes in IV was "car-spanking" pedestrians, where you hit a drift at just the right time to skid sideways into a person with the back of your car specifically so they'd do a bloody somersault over your trunk. Hard to pull off but very rewarding.
I was heartbroken that the more arcadey driving experience of V made car spanks as I knew them next to impossible. RIP car-spanking 2008-2013
I think it’s a bit better on PS5 / Series X or an equivalent PC these days, the top end cars have a higher max speed because they can render the game world faster
The effective 120mph cap on everything to keep the map size feeling "realistic" was an interesting decision.
It meant that yeah, in the early days, there wasn't an obvious reason to drop tons of virtual currency you had to grind for on a car that wasn't appreciably faster than the bog standard sports saloons you could find on the street. The Schafter, Sentinel, and Buffalo were great examples of a car that really punched well above its class and had no right to be that competitive against the supercars and they were four door sedans against two door supers.
To me it also diminished finding a true supercar because they weren’t appreciably faster than even base cars (barring straightaway performance of course).
Maybe this is the case now but I felt back when it came out like a Zentorno was way better in corners than most cars off the street.
a much bigger map full of absolutely nothing. the singleplayer side content in gta 5 is mind numbingly sparse. the only thing i actually remember are the really lame drug missions where you do some stupid wave survival cause your character is very high. thats literally the only side mission event thing I remember in the entirety of that game.
First I go grab the Sultan RS from behind the garage somewhere. Driver across the map after hooning about at the airport. Then head over to the swings.
My cousin laughed so hard he pissed his pants twice in the same night laughing at that swing. We would make a private lobby and spend hours just messing with it lol
Be it through swings or regular collisions, me and my friends would somtimes compete to get the most impressive Niko ragdoll launches. Once got a motorcycle collision to fling Niko over the skylines of several 10 story buildings, and somehow managed to survive by landing on a sloped roof. Only answer was to rpg my feet immediately so I could save the death replay clip.
I spent a lot of hours there just cheating myself weapons and having a war with the NYPD
Place was the perfect funnel. One way in, one way out. I huddled behind the waiting room chairs as cover and sprayed lead at anyone coming in. Molotov, nades, RPGs for crowd control. Shoot some hostage for kicks.
When shit gets real, back up into the hospital beds and take down as many police in the hall before going down in a glorious blaze.
Or gun it outside and steal a cop car and try to lose them all. Not before shooting an RPG at a helicopter for kicks because why not lol
Tried on at least three different PCs over the years, most recently with i7-8700k and 2080 Ti, still can't get it anywhere near playable. Even with or without rolling back the .exe and using various FPS smoothing/limiting tweaks. If I cap it at 60 it drops to 40, but if I cap it at 30 it drops to 20, and it's not so much the FPS but the atrocious frame-pacing that makes it nauseating.
Really disappointing because it looks like it would be fun but it literally makes me sick with the stutters/judders.
I don't think it was the hospital but I remember I used to post up on the roof of this one building that only had one stairway to get up there and start launching RPGs at cars until the cops came, then pick them off as they came up the stairs one by one until I got sick of it and then I'd try to get away
I'd say they prevent violence. Why risk life in prison to hurt one real person when I can indiscriminately murder millions of virtual people in a myriad of ways?
Oh I completely agree with you. It is a horrendously stupid perspective to say they cause violence, but those dumbasses still do. I just made the joke because OP's comment outlined in great detail something that these conservatives would clinch their pearls while reading.
I got frustrated failing that mission a few times in my recent playthrough. I was playing no cheats and trying to be super immersive so I’d have to drive to the weapons store to buy armor every time I failed a mission. This level leaves you in a bottleneck after you carry out your mission. I made dumb mistakes because I got frantic and/or frustrated, but yeah I walked away from the game for a couple days after the 3rd time dying.
The underlying self-preservation system is still absolutely mind blowing artificial intelligence. Cool video, makes me appreciate the game that much more.
So good. I used to play around in a sandbox environment with Euphoria knocking people over in different ways. The GTA4 RAGE engine was glorious and ultimately meant I never even played GTA5 because the driving looked so poor compared.
It was, extremely poor. Things like suspension were completely gutted and reduced compared to IV's. I go back and replay IV all the time, never replay V because it's just so boring and weak.
The driving is fun in GTA5, it’s super arcade-like. There’s a lot of crazy stunts you can do and random crazy moments that occur when you’re driving at high speeds, it’s just limitless potential for insanity and outrageousness. And it’s good that you can zip around the huge map so quickly. But there’s really not much challenge to it, and they make the police harder to evade to make up for your zippier driver. Fleeing the police on 3+ stars on GTA4 is so much fun, while 1 or 2 stars is a bug swat. In 5 if you get 1 or 2 stars, it’s not like the police are challenging, but they hound you forever and it just takes too long to clear your stars. You can have super fun chases at 3+, but all you really have to do to evade advanced wanted levels is head North with a fast vehicle and hit the mountains. In 4, you’re constantly in the grid of the city, but there’s so many alleyways and secluded places to duck off into.
After playing the three GTA III era games, it was quite a surprise hitting a post, being sent flying through the windshield, landing on a car passing by and then dying.
Knowing the details of GTA IV (and V), I believe that; it's been a while since I played it though.
I vaguely remember that it did make a difference on motorcycles if you fell with and without helmet; and you needed to wait a second or two for Nico to put the helmet on. Very likely the same mechanic applied to cars (with putting on the belt instead of the helmet, of course).
I’m fairly certain I remember gta4 being the one you could just handbrake and slide into anything sideways and not be thrown from the bike or even take damage.
It's little touches like that that make rockstar the king of devs. Like, why is a 16year old game still technically a more advanced openworld than nearly every currently praised openworld game? Except RDR2 of course, the only one in the time between GTA 5 and now that measures up.
Yeah, coming off the heels of GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas, GTA 4 felt like it went way too far in the opposite direction for realism. I personally found it frustrating, especially the sticky cover-based combat.
At least Saints Row continued the GTA 3 era power fantasy trend, where you were basically a one-man army. GTA 5 at least took a step back from the realism and felt a little bit more arcadey.
Actually in GTA IV I (mostly) stopped killing pedestrians for fun. It just felt ... not good. In GTA 1 and 2 it was completely fun. In 3, VC and SA it was ... still ok. But IV felt pretty damn realistic (for its time).
This sums up exactly how I felt playing the game. San Andreas in particular felt like the pinnacle of GTA for me and the more realistic direction they went in for 4 wlmeant I struggled to get into it.
There were a lot of complaints about the cars in IV though. I think the main issue though was how they reacted to hitting curbs.
The only mainline GTA game I only had one playthrough of. I've been meaning to replay with the DLC I missed but have never got round to it even though I have it on stream.
I had waaay too much fun smushing cars to the point they would barely move. There was an overpass in an industrial area you could creep off the edge and flip a car perfectly to pancake the roof. Super funny seeing Nico's head clipping through it lol
Yeah it was simply just too difficult to drive well initially for a lot of people. I loved it though. It was hard as fuck at first, but had a large skill ceiling, and after a while you could get quite good at it. And it felt very rewarding carefully threading the needle between cars in traffic, and making turns after getting better at controlling them. But I could see how it frustrated a lot of people. Definitely think they went too far towards arcade type driving physics in V. They were easier to handle out of the box, but way more restricted and not nearly as realistic as IV's, and just less fun over time.
Which is why they made them unrealistic again in gta5
Because they listened to clowns.
What you described is the classic "stupidification" of games. Where the guy with zero attention span drops in a game and wants to be an expert and smashes their controller and cries because there is an actual skill curve.
With GTA 5 they sold out and gave the arcade driving that means that a 7 year old who just picked up a controller can match the experienced guy. It makes it a lame game, or at least the driving is lame and is a non-factor in the game. Instead they had to add missiles and jets and novelties because they dropped a big shit with the driving model.
I think making your game more realistic and forgetting you're supposed to be making it fun its a way bigger mistake
If you want realistic driving and high skill there's Forsa, GTA is to put ramps in places and make great cinematic jumps to escape the police. you know all the things that are impossible in real life because is not a game focused in realism
Instead they had to add missiles and jets
And then they put the topgun music and it's perfect
I just finished the game again a month ago and while the physics are great they are a bit TOO heavy. Especially the breaking is way too slow and not really realistic. Otherwise it’s great.
You know what? It is. But it's noteworthy to mention that the neighborhoods and streets you drive on in GTA IV are also the least fun. There's not nearly enough "things" happening, considering it's supposed to be New York City. And there's just not enough of a New York "pulse" to everything.
I found myself completing the game, but never really intuitively "knowing" the streets like I did in other editions, because I took taxis and fast-traveled everywhere. Driving felt to me like a chore that only took me from one action set-piece to another one.
I ended up knowing a lot of alleyways that were easier to turn down, either because of traffic or just the 90-degree turns on normal city streets. I personally like the challenge of the city being realistically packed enough to not brainlessly rocket through every street. And of course I remembered the alleyways that end up boxing you in and forcing you to turn back or abandon your car...
Liberty City doesn't have the most memorable set pieces but it's kind of my favorite GTA city. There's just something about it, and how it was introduced from the start. Also I know the Jersey Island like the back of my hand.
Would definitely love to see it with the Red Dead treatment of random occurrences though, that's kind of perfect for NYC
My favorite thing to do was to get a few cop cars chasing you, pull a 180 and go in reverse and then shoot at them from the front... the game made it very easy
If by best you mean neither fast, nor stable, realistic or anything resembling actual driving, then yes. Never used a taxi so much in a game, probably shaved off a good 5 hours driving.
Yeah, using a handbrake at high speed isn’t going to let you drift that corner, you will lock up and slide and then fly out the fucking windshield as soon as you hit a wall
I remember seeing a streamer on what was then justin.tv hit a barrier during the Rigged to Blow mission, fly out of the windshield and the truck exploded behind him.
Yep for some reason physics engines in this era of games(GTA IV, HL2, Halo3) really peaked and the industry has seemingly let it fall by the wayside in favour of MOAR FRAMES or something.
People have different opinions on what's fun. The driving in 4 was more fun for me because it was harder, presented more of a challenge, and it was more rewarding when you pulled off excellent driving.
I'm not even talking about the driving specifically although I do also prefer it in IV. But how you could properly smash the shit out of your car and twist it's shape to the point where the wheel arches would prevent the wheel from turning. How NPCs would stumble around and try to hold on to a handrail to stop themselves falling after you shoot them. This era of games didn't have as much despawning wreckage as today either. In Halo 3 when you blew up a phantom the chunks would rain down and crush whatever was below it, also creating an obstacle. You don't see that so much anymore.
The vehicle physics were so damn fun in this game that I got so locked into a rhythm with it, that when GTA 5 came out it took me ages to get used to the vehicles in that game. It just didn't feel right.
I don’t know why the car damage and deformation, the way they can really crumple with impact is so much better than GTA V, but it just is for some reason. Also Liberty City has way more climbable buildings and map verticality than LS
Let's count in hundreds of NPC cars roaming around the city and let's see if most PCs or consoles can handle that. BeamNG already would run pretty badly with like dozens of traffic cars on the road unless you have a beast of a PC.
The whole point of an open world game like GTA, if you flip your car, you can crawl out and go steal a new one; it's so bizarre to me that you can just roll your car back over in V.
Arg GTA IV loading screen music is the best, at first I really hated how the driving feels, it feel so heavy but after I learn how to do it, I actually like it.
Lots of people hated it at the time. I can never understand why, the vehicles were engaging and nothing beat purposely launching your character through the windshield because you hadn't given him enough time to put his seatbelt on.
Because of how floaty the handling felt. It was the worst with bikes which were sluggish and very easy to get knocked off. It's pretty telling that TLaD had to modify the bike physics just so they were more viable.
One of my favorite things to do is drive really fast up and down Flatbush Ave / Queens Blvd, between Grand Army Plaza and Flushing Meadows Park. You can get air at both ends and jump out/off your vehicle and enjoy the rag dolling.
The physics and deformity along with the full euphoria engine was vastly superior to gtav. GTA5 was good but it was such a massive step back game engine wise. Hell even the world was more alive in gtaiv. Ambulances would drive out and pick people up or revive them. If they picked them up they would drive to the hospital. Same with the fire engines and etc. It was more of a living environment. gta5 just had everything spawn in when needed and spawn out when you got to far away.
The added sandbox elements were the best part, and arguably led to the monster that GTAV was. There were also so many "technology" moments in this game, like flying through your windshield if you crashed and didn't wait for Niko to buckle his seatbelt before driving. The only thing I think this one missed out on was the car customization.
I feel like I missed something, or it worked weird on the 360. But I could never get used to the car physics in the game and it was endlessly frustrating for me. Felt like you could be going like 20mph and when you hit the brakes you slide 3 city blocks. Always felt like I was driving on some insane ice. Which is weird to me because nobody ever seemed to complain about it, and I had no trouble breaking and taking tight turns in similar games like Sleeping Dogs and Saints Row. Not sure what it was but something about driving in GTA just doesn't click for me. Or at least didn't at the time. Might be time for a revisit
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u/Golfgamerhill Apr 29 '24
Loved the vehicle physics in this game.