Grand Theft Auto Thread GTA

So my total play time to main missions ending for San Andreas says 15hrs 43 mins. So yeah the howlongtobeat is way over what is likely without cheats a 20hr game, not the 30 or so it says there. And scale it down for VC a much smaller shorter game at 10hrs and 3 even shorter but comparable to VC at 8hrs my guess from my playthrough. Whole DE trilogy is 38hrs which is decent but it's way overpriced at 60$. Should be 30-35$ for all three, maybe you could stretch it to 40$. I'd minus out 10-15$ for the launchers and online hassle so yeah this is a 25$ DE bundle when you take reason into account.

The big open world of SA is not worth exploring because you see it all during all the missions mostly, maybe the top of chiliad you don't see and a couple of the towns like the one at the other side of the GG bridge but otherwise there's little to explore in this game outside of the story. Back in the day it was different since it was new but it's not new and shouldn't be priced as such. Cash grab by justar obviously.

 

So I'm going to go ahead and install Vice City DE now. It's about 10gb to SA's 18 and III at 5. It's not my favorite but I still do remember the first teaser clip we got from RS back in the day lol have to look that up.

And now that I'm done with SA I looked at the map and it's obvious that for 5 all they really did was cutoff SF and LV and make the LA to Chiliad the map but also there is a desert in there and a salton sea type of thing which is new. The desert-Salton sea is like the desert-las venturas area just a smaller town and towns with a little bit of the central farming valley in there from real cali and of course the chiliad is analogous to Mt Shasta area just flipped with SF being north of there instead of well south in IRL. You could argue that chiliad could be similar to say the Big Bear Lake mountains area but I think Shasta is what that's meant to represent in the game. Ironically Big Bear Lake is a reservoir created for irrigation below and there is a Bear Lake in northern Utah that is natural and WAY bigger. Should have been called little bear lake lol

There's more comedy in VC with Lance Vance Dance but also the typical macabre comedy of the mafia themes of this game and most gtas. I don't get so much into the music as I don't like the music video effect much. In my car my audio system conked out for some reason related to rain and I like having no radio or cd music while driving now. It's more zen than the drugged type of experiene you get with music blasting and such. Safer too imo.

 

So yeah just going through VC and it's my least favorite of the 3d era games, idk why must be the annoying mission design that doesn't make much sense. Lots of trials and such where you have to beat the getaway guy in a race and similar to do a bank heist. It's a lot easier now I think they made this easier since it's a mobile port so there's less frustration.

But there is it's fair share of obnoxious missions like races, RC garbage, stunts and such in missions that make no sense to some dude who's just looking for some drugs and money stolen. At that point you're a kingpin making bank so just pay back your far away bosses in dope and money and be done. And you pay a driver, a shooter and such you don't need to be better than them at what they specialize it, it's pretty dumb.

Then for some reason you do missions for cubans and haitans in some gang war, which makes even less sense but I'm pretty sure the story is locked behind them. This old game design is not very clear what you need to do for the story and what's optional. If I hadn't read it online I thought the Zero missions were required for the story in SA but they are not, thankfully. So I have to do the haitan sniper stuff to then finish the cuban stuff which for some reason has to do with the main story, really dumb.

I've already helped the colonel who's gone, taken out the little guy and took his mansion and so far done with Avery the developer missions. From what I remember you do the sports star and the candy suxx politician thing, then the mafia from up north take out then you take out a crazy lance and that's it but it's locked behind these filler missions. I don't like building some empire being story requirements either, just makes no sense. The movie studio missions are pretty neat though, later on I guess.

The car handling is somewhat better than beach ball cars of 3 but also worse since the bikes have terrible turning radius nonsensically and the cars spin out for the smallest of contact. The Love Fist stuff isn't too interesting either tbh, which is locked behind doing biker gang stuff thankfully all done with all that junk. Just the exploding limo makes little sense, why can't you just bail while the car is going high speeds? head over to a field and you won't get hurt much even at 80mph. Have the driver bail last, done. But you have to drive fast until they disarm some bomb, then drive them to their gig. Sorry I'm not staying in a car that has even a disarmed bomb in it longer then I have to.

Just nonsensical story that's mostly filler stuff. I think a longer time doing the drug guys missions, more avery missions, more rosenberg stuff would have made more sense to getting what you need back for your pissed off bosses. How about Lance missions so he makes more sense as a character? Some dude who shows up and tails you and says he wants the drugs back and revenge for his brother that has his own leads, maybe follow up on those leads then? Flesh out Lance more and have a follower for a while until he goes psycho and needs to be taken out. Tommy is just out of jail it doesn't seem like he would want the publicity of taking over drug empires and such. I just don't get this game really. I get the nostalgia and the music and it being a big homage to 80s drug tv and movies and such but it's not enough to carry it really.

I've only played for about 4hrs and I'm very far into the story just doing the filler stuff to finish it off. I think this is only about 8hr game story wise or even less. Eh not the best GTA for sure.

 

So yeah briefly the #1 best GTA game is both SA AND 4. With 5 being next and then 3 and then VC imo. 5 is the most fun and silky smooth to play for obvious reasons, looks the best has the most QOL to it. The cars are cartoon handling making them a lot funner to drive then 4 and the others. The 3 character story and switching mechanic are nice. There are just a lot of details taken out compared to 4 and the story is action movie which is fine but not critically the deepest and most consistent with GTA ethos like 4 is. 4 is like the Wire to 5's Stallone etc 80s action movie.

I suspect 6 will be below 5 in there with the teaser and the woke type main character of today. Made with social programming in mind and pc in mind, marxist ladyboy protag and it's sidekick love interest I guess. From the teaser ladyboy gets out of prison and then proceeds to rob 711's and more of course but typical GTA stuff. We'll see about the story but there's not going to be much grit to it just looking at the SFlorida location. 6 will look the best, have the best QOL and such no doubt though. It will also probably be 200gb or more sized and have online integrated directly I'm thinking. Hard pass on it of course for me. I've had enough GTA for the rest of my life. As I've said an earlier post civil war RDR3 would interest me of RS two main ips.

 

Yeah so I'm to the final missions in VC after farming the assets missions that have to be done to get the final missions which I assume is both taking out Lance and Sonny. The game makes little sense other than as an homage, has the weakest story of all of them so far. The second worst is 5 but has at least some better motives and back story this just has some guy out of prison sent to VC to lay low but somehow that includes doing a major drug deal and it goes south so then he has to try to get the money back. Ok but then for some reason he takes it as taking over becoming a kingpin, nice laying low there. So once he starts buying businesses, which would likely cost more than what was lost in the bad deal btw, he then has to work for the businesses he bought with money? to unlock them to get money out of businesses he owns? Makes no sense.

And I already mentioned the nonsensical gang missions, why would he get involved in those? Not to mention why he even starts working for the colonel or the other guy there isn't much of a reason other than trying to figure out where the money is by finding out who took it. Seems like a crazy way to go about it. If you're working for drug dealers doing hits and such you'd make the money lost back and just ship it off to the bosses, why buy businesses with it? Faster the bosses get paid back the better. Just a weird story that's very thin. Weakest game of the whole franchise imo so far. Only nostalgia and liking the 80s vibe and music could be the reason, maybe the voiced stars unlike in 3 which didn't have that.

And I forgot that this must take place before 3 due to Donald Love being an apprentice in this one to Avery. So yeah the 3d series goes in reverse time or no it goes VC, SA then 3 I think. Love is a kingpin developer in 3, makes no appearance in SA. Catalina finds Claude in SA and they go to LC where she betrays him. Love disappears who knows where in 3, I assumed he went to SFlorida but nope wrong time sequence.

So yeah just doing what the story requires has been about 6-7 hours and maybe another hour at the most for the ending missions so yeah games only 8hrs long like 3 is about. And SA is about 16-20hrs long.

 

Howlongtobeat is not accurate much of the time. For VC it says the main campaign is 18hrs which I assume is a median NOT an average. So it throws out the outliers to focus on the center of the bell curve. Average gets dragged out of what most people experience due to outliers and so then median is a much better metric.

That site just takes anyones input so yeah it's going to be not the best for it. Unless I'm an outlier but by 10hrs? nah the people who report 18hrs for VC main story are lollygagging around a lot more than just going from main mission to main mission. For instance if I'm at the marina and the Colonel has another mission after I just completed one for him then I'm immediately going to turn around and do it until he's all done offering missions.

It's possible that they are mixing the DE mobile derived version in with the old original PS2 and PC versions which would skew it a lot. The old versions of these games are a LOT harder than the mobile derived DE versions. Just the RC missions in the old versions were a reason so many put these games down and never came back. Jewstar doesn't care as long as they've got your money and this was pre-steam 2hr refund times at least on early console versions it was. With VC almost right off the bat you do an RC mission for Avery, the dreaded building demolition RC mission. Modern devs are smarter and take into account 2hr refund limit no doubt.

So if they are lumping together the DE and old versions it's not going to be accurate at all. DE versions are a lot easier due to mobile limitations and adjustment for modern gamers who have little conception of the default games difficulty back in the day. Only those who play souls and rogue games no cheats and enjoy that would not mind the old games difficulty. Everyone else would abandon them for frustration. If they keep playing but NOT doing the hard missions then it's padding to the time to do the main story until they come back and finally get passed the hard mission. They're exploring and doing NON main story stuff for hours, adding huge inaccuracy to the main mission time estimate.

 

https://howlongtobeat.com/game/4075

You'll see there that probably plenty of NON DE players are there meaning this is really for the old versions that are a lot harder than the DE version. I'll put the link for the DE versions which HLTB doesn't break out per game. And it's in line with my estimate of 35-40hrs of main story only gameplay for ALL 3 games.

https://howlongtobeat.com/game/99299

So over 3 games 40hrs isn't much. That's about 13 hours per game average and like I said it's heavily skewed in the DE versions for San Andreas due to how much larger the map and missions list is. 8hrs each for 3 and VC then about 20hrs for San Andreas. This whole DE bundle isn't worth more than 40$ max if you go by straight 1/hr for videogames. So consequently jewstar went with all or nothing pricing out of pure greed, big surprise right?

3 is worth less than 10$ and taking how old less than 5$, should be free really.

VC with the largely unnecessary music licenses and celebrity voices I could see more but we as gamers shouldn't be expected to bear the brunt of jewstars decisions for all that, the music gets OLD and I turn off all music for most games. Turned off the music within 15 mins of playing. I don't care about celeb voices in fact it brings along a LOT of baggage. If you've seen ray liota etc in movies then it's a skew to the character that's intentional of course but just adds layers to layers of cliche for no need really. VC without all that garbage is also worth less than 10$. For me the huge mistake by RS to start with the padding of RC missions difficulty and other things to pad the difficulty of this game makes it worth even less. The bad thin story and asset missions gatekeeping of the main story is also very cheap and off putting.

The only title in the DE that's worth 1/hr is San Andreas due to the larger world and systems they worked on. And it should be about 20$. The butchering of the lighting aesthetic and the drastic cut to the weather states from old versions and other stuff means it's really moot. Their work on it and deciding UE4 is better than just using the original engine and essentially super modding it which would have been way better and cheaper. Some layer to make it run smoothly on win11 could have probably been sourced free online. I last played the original PC versions about 3 years ago on Win10 and I don't remember it being hard to get up and running.

Most people wouldn't have bothered with 3 or VC, those are nostalgia games for those gamers. SA is really all you need from the 3d era of gta. It has it all there as far as gameplay and the best story of that trilogy. So therefore jewstar determined instead of making 20$ or less on sales for SA the vast majority of the time to lock everything up that even sales will give them more than the real value of these games. If you get this on sale for 30$ it's still 10$ a game. If 3 and VC were separate at real value of 5-10$ a sale would mean 3$ at most, instead they get 3x that even on sale for both games. A $20 SA on sale would be 10$ at most, they'd lose a lot of revenue.

As I recommend, you need to sail for these and any version of these games and it's pretty easy to do. In fact any of them so far are a much better experience if you sail to get them with Justars launchers and logins on top of steaming piles interface. Without all that the game is just the game, not a legal agreement for x amount of pleasure sort of thing lol

But especially OLD games like these have no business having socialist club logins and 3rd party agreements and such, don't do anything but sail the seas for these and so much more.

Just VC had so much removed songs and censorship as to not be even worth paying for, it's a bait and switch. If you use the same title VC and charge for it under the same title of the game released 2002 then that's bait and switch. Justar should be held legally responsible for that criminal activity and it's parent takejew. These scum got my money for the ps2 versions and the pc dlc of 4, as well as when I was dumb and bought an xbox 360 to then buy gta 4 only to play. So they got their money out of me, they'll get NO MORE money out of me whatsoever like so many other of these franchise games.

Far cry another one I paid for multiple times in the past, Assassins Creed, anything I have bought for console play in the past so NES, Sega Genesis, PS2, xbox 360 was the last consoles I owned and I bought at least 2 PS2's since one died on me. I also bought the Sony PSP, Nintendo 3ds and a few games to go with them. NO MORE. Just because the gov legal mischpucka mafia wing oks this stealing and reselling the same IP over and over because it's on some different media doesn't mean it's not just criminality. It's criminal.

And now with digital only there is NO medium at all, if I buy a digital game I own it, there is no media type excuse whatsoever for these criminals to lean on. I back it up on a hard drive it's good forever if the hdd lasts or if I don't move it. The whole launcher and online verification is the criminals way of heading this off. No online verification no play, you rent the game only. NOPE. Not going to fly, phuk you thieves. And just using their own supply demand fantasy nonsense digital items have UNLIMITED supply and LIMITED demand, therefore they are WORTHLESS. They have no value. We just agree that to be fair, which these criminals are incapable of being long proven, they should get their costs back and some profit as incentive and reason to invest in making more games. But there is a limit to that when you see the obvious cash grabs, bait and switch, blatant greed, online verification and accounts shenanigans and other criminal things they do. Phuk you devs.

 

And why isn't there used digital versions? If someone else owned it and is done with it and selling it , it should not matter if it's digital only content. But guess who nixed that idea? Steam was probably the scam there to head off people selling used digital versions of games. Do you know how many people have hundreds of games in their account due to just binging on sales? Most will never even be played. Why not allow them to then sell them off for used pricing? Nope not possible with steaming pile, not even GOG has that. IT's A SCAM! ALL OF IT! It's criminal shenanigans by criminals who know games are just a form of DOPE INC

So they moved the goal posts to "license" to "use" aka YOU ARE A RENTER NOW. The legal wing of the mischpucka jewmasontranny mafia came in with that little con. Somehow a disc means you own it, but not now, even a disc means you have to go online and say yes to some scam EULA and get verified through a launcher every time you rent time to play THEIR property you paid money to use. NOPE. Doesn't fly here with dope, at least dope you can store it, use it, not use it, resell it, etc

If I had a PS2 and a disc I didn't need anyone or anything else I OWNED it. Even just the disc means I OWN it. I want to resell it to someone for reduced prices OR if it's scarce or sought after MORE than what I paid that's fine since i OWN it. Well now I PROVIDE the hardware I own and paid for, they provide some software for it and yes I can burn the software on disc and have it physically. They only put in online launchers and accounts to make real ownership moot, to head off real ownership of digital items. In short DON't BUY anything that is rentware in the software space. The test there is can you burn it to a disk or put it on a pendrive or a hard drive and then take it to another computer to use? OR do you have to install and have a login to use it? That's not ownership.

We are getting forms of honest rental at rental pricing in the form of games services where you pay 5-10$ for all the gaming time you want and any game that's part of the deal. That's a lot more honest way of renting time playing games then the steaming pile etc model. GOG you can install the game as many times and many places as you want with no logins or verifications for the most part, you own the game you paid for. It's not bait and switch criminality of these dev scum.

 

So VC tells me my play time was 6hrs48mins and I just finished the main story.

I should have checked 3 before I uninstalled that but that game felt a lot longer than this one, by a couple hours so yeah 8-9hrs for 3 makes the main story longer in 3 than VC. 3 was better than VC because it was more mission focused more missions and less about music and vibe. 3 was meat and potatoes workman game Vs. VC a showgirl fast food game. The parallel is similar to 4 Vs 5. Sadly so many dumbos means VC and 5 are going to be more herd appeal. And online garbage is the ultimate herd eating herd hamster wheel stuff. Dumbo circus.

So yeah the howlongtobeat site needs to break out the DE versions separately because the VC up there is the old version that had a lot harder RC and other missions which took a lot more attempts to beat. So frustrated players went off and did something else in the game that had nothing to do with the main story. So the 18hrs main story for VC is not applicable to the DE version at all. And it's certainly not accurate to the older harder versions either.

Modern sensibilities and wide audience gaming means easier games and now trainers and mods and other cheats make it even easier. RS just adjusted. They're still largely a pain but at most 2-3 attempts is enough and most of the hardest ones only took once for me to do since I've played them on hard in the past.

And getting to VC they missed a ton of opportunities there with the ocean setting. Surfing minigame would have been cool. Actual swimming in the water needed to be included, even just surface swimming no diving would have been better than death. None of the main missions had anything to do with the huge beach or beaches. I know they didn't have parachutes in this one either, strangely. But they could have had boat parasurfing or whatever it's called when you're in the air on a parachute being pulled along by the boat. Idk just more beach ocean stuff. A simple golfing minigame would have worked too, had to wait for 5 there afai remember.

So 7hrs VC, 9 hrs 3, 16hrs SA means about 32 hrs with cheats and main story missions only with some side missions I did in both VC and SA not knowing they weren't required for main story. So yeah I think in todays mod, trainer, other cheats environment only about 2-3hrs could be added to these games for adjustment or not at all since many gamers now use mods and cheats etc.

As I said the whole 3 games in the DE bundle have about 35 hrs of gameplay total in them in line with the HowLongTB 38hr or so time. So yeah it's way overpriced bundle for sure. And the older harder versions are longer due to them being harder especially VC which has way too many RC missions to pad the time and half the game is just time padding by RS to make it longer. Farming money, buying assets doing the asset drudgery to then unlock the last 2 missions. It's pretty bad imo. Smallest map of the trilogy too.

And the free versions are broken out into 3 separate installs and even downloads, talk about convenience. I didn't need to have all 32gb or so installed to play any of them. VC is about 10gb, 3 is about 5, SA 18gb. Already deleted 3 it's not worth going back to again, VC going to be gone shortly or whenever I need the 10gb back. SA probably keep on here a bit longer. And repacked they're even smaller. 3 is 3gb, VC is about 7gb and SA is about 13gb. The rental versions you obviously have to install the whole 32 or so gb no matter what.

But I've got the old PC versions too which might be better in SA due to it being only 5gb sized with mods and cheats and such. 3 old pc version is about 5gb but I might have more mods and other files in there. VC old version is 1.73gb, lol very telling. That includes all the original songs and stuff of the 02 version afaik. A half decent camera mod etc.

 

So I booted up SA again just to do some exploring but it's fairly stale already without the driving force of the main missions, worlds not that interesting and likely the old memories of playing it in the past are making it not so interesting. I played it on PS2 back in the day, then got the pc versions about 2-3 years ago and replayed them, mostly SA but I have all 3.

So I'm done with the trilogy then. Probably delete VC later, keep SA for a while longer. The sad thing is that some indy dev if they could just have an agreement with RS to use the engine and assets could make a game that's better than most modern games and SA is still better than at least 80% of the games I've played this year easily. With a source material book or TV series or comic using this world assets and creation engine to make a different version it could be great. Never happen though obviously. Just basic graphics at that level of the DE version which is remade in UE4 and AI, systems and such is more than enough for an art style that works today. Car handling is totally fine, the cartoony npcs and main characters is fine, whole thing is fine just needs more stories and such.

Anyways I've gone back to Far Cry 2 doing a replay and more exploration and it's great, my favorite over FC3 now I think. With the jackal mod making it much more balanced and more empty world it's not a chore to drive and walk around it. I had the idea of installed FC4 for a replay but the 30-40gb I'd have to find is kind of a turnoff right now. I doubt other than graphics it's any better or different than 3 which is still the template for FC games today.

The muted serious colors of FC2 are a nice change from the cartoony color of the DE trilogy and FC3. And interestingly a game released in about the same year, GTA4, has the same muted serious colors as it was serious drama like FC2 is. I like FC2 as a game better than GTA4 though, it's first person and more nature type world than the crowded LC of 4. Games were better with less overwrought dialogue, cutscenes and such.

Also played Rush Rally 3 a fair bit today and it's also a straight game experience, no teammates, no RPG elements to a racing game etc of newer racing games. It's not trying to be some sim just a fun racing game with no frills to it. No mega system needed etc The way to do all that for racing games is New Star GP which has funny and lite versions of all that but not intrusive and required.

 

So coming back to this the IRL timeline goes like this

1,Vice City 80s game. Donald Love aka trumpinasteinberg in there, Rosenburg shyster lawyer in there likely based off of sean penns(a jewtranny btw) character in Carlitos Way, Liberty City reference I think with the forellis or whoever sonny is with. WEAK THIN story and filled with padding to make the main story longer aka rc missions, business owner missions, Love Fist stuff, etc This is an atmospheiric movie and music homage game mostly. It's by far the smallest map of the GTA games.

2,San Andreas mid-1990s gangster saga, CJ odyssey. Along with 4 has the brothers story, most focused stories of the series which organically make sense. Carryover characters are Rosenberg in LV, Catalina is introduced here, Claude intro, Salvatore Leone is in this game, CJ goes to LC briefly for a hit, ties to the LC mob of course. I'm not sure but the Maccre-etc band may be Love Fist carryover from VC. The best game of the 3d era trilogy by far and the last one in terms of release date. World that feels a lot larger than the actual map size. Tons of missions and side stuff. Only GTA game that has 3 large cities in it, LA, SF and LV. Introduced micro managing character, car customization etc

3. GTA 3. Late 90s setting pre-911. Catalina and Claude go from the california to LC. Claudes main arc here is getting revenge on Catalina which he does. Donald Love ends up here and then disappears at the end of the game. First of the 3d era games released but last in world time. 3 goes into 4 which is shortly after 911 say 2002-03.

4. GTA4. Post 911 by a few years, terrorism themes, immigrants themes etc. Tied for best GTA ever with San Andreas imo. Niko and brother story, immigrants, shady russian mob in there and also ethnic mob of eastern euro country bellics are from. AFAIK no carryover characters from previous games. INCREDIBLE graphical leap from San Andreas, still amazing AI, npcs and world details to this day only RDR2 is on the same level. Muted dark desaturated gritty color scheme, RS went overboard on the car handling and weight transfer which is the most realistic of the series but this isn't primarily a racing game. Turning radius on bikes is ridiculous, not realistic. The dirt bike is the worst one. Serious drama, most serious of the whole series. Only GTA with SP standalone DLC both pretty good EFLC. Biker gang story and night club story both in the main games map. Likely the only DLC we'll ever get from a top line GTA game. The cancer RS Social Club introduced, also had xlive garbage in there.

5. GTA5. 2010 or so post 2008 financial coup meltdown, bankster wars, bailouts etc. 3 character switcher so 3 stories intertwined. Action movie story. Mike, Franklin and Trevor. Biggest longest world and story. Most graphically amazing, went back to more cartoony car handling thankfully. AFAIK no carryover characters from other games. Over 10 years as the latest GTA and 6 isn't scheduled til 2025 so 12 years as newest GTA. Heavily online focused, no new SP content ever released, online money printing for a decade by greedstar. Funnest just to open world play post main story. No SP offline DLC ever offered. Shark card garbage. My final GTA, series is over and done for me. No interest in 6. Characters here are not that engaging like CJ or Niko were, features required story torture session participation, similar to Bioshock Infinite DLC if you make certain decisions. Characters have motives of getting rich or resolving old score type of thing, not too interesting. Just a straight crime and adventure simulator. Can look photorealistic with mods or in some places vanilla, still holds up really well vanilla.

6. GTA6. So Florida setting likely around 2020. Hispanic ladyboy protag with looks like white wigger sidekick. Unknown if they'll have the switching mechanic or not. Lots of social issues, social media, probably BLM nonsense, trannyism, drugs of course, maybe covid in there, likely Donald Love will return here as that was the Trumpinasteinberg era, Love likely either running for prez or already prez or maybe just a local bigwhig. Perhaps rosenberg returns, Vercetti? certainly mafia in there in some form, scarface stuff maybe. Possible soflorida rappers in there as an homage to the gangster rapper ethos of San Andreas. Would maybe Claude make an entrance in a short cameo? Possibly Victor of the hispanic gang from San Andreas who married CJ's sister make an appearance? So lots of unknowns but going off of 4-5 likely no relation to previous same location GTA games.

 

Spent a bit today trying to mod my v107 version of GTA4, enb's mostly but no luck. Something about the dx9 dll that enb uses won't load the game. I have the old razor1911 version and the xliveless mod always worked fine for years. This doesn't have the dlc, I have a separate complete version with that. So it's about 13gb which is almost the same size as my RDR1 ryujinx game, not a surprise I think they came out around the same time, similar world size but 4 has more advanced systems and I think better graphics.

Soo I'm just doing some small mods and play it a bit, 4 and 5 are more daunting to get back into as it's a whole thing more complex than the arcade like previous trilogy.

 

So yeah I have a few basic mods for various things like car handling, small texture mods here and there, I've had the simple trainer for years works great, some rain mods etc I have to say it is a very desaturated game which matches the gritty story but it would be nice to get some better color to it. That usually requires a reshade or enb but I've had little luck with those.

I may try a timecycle instead which is supposed to work with the games color files only, no reshade injector or enb which I've noticed the game won't start with any other dx9 dll other than the dxvk version. Likely has something to do with the replacer dax dll file that enb uses to apply it's settings, there's some conflict with the game files I have still haven't figured it out.

Another big problem w this game is the camera autocentering, especially on foot it's' very aggressive and during high action it's unbearable, headache inducing since the camera is swinging all over the place to re center when I want to look around a lot to avoid the police. How RS thought that was a good idea is baffling. The amount of time you have to run from the police makes this terrible. So likely I'll just use the trainer to disable the police coming after me at all. I've never found a camera mod that either tones it down or eliminates autocenter. They fixed this in V with a host of options for the camera, they really needed to go back and patch up 4 with that.

Niko runs terribly slow in this game too, seems to limp really.

A full on DE version of 4 would likely be 50gb and then you add on the DLCs it would be 80gb probably. Going off just the base game I have at 13gb and taking SA as a guide. The original PC version of SA I have with very small mods is 5gb, the DE version of SA is 18gb, over 3x the size. 13gbx3=40gb. The complete version of GTA4 I have with both DLCs is 31gb or so. So double the size of the base game. So 80gb for a DE version of 4. I really doubt at this point RS has any interest in that.

The original 3d trilogy was very simple compared to 4, a major leap forward. But 4 is 15 years old and could use a DE version. However with how badly the DE versions came out overall I wouldn't have much confidence that RS would be able to manage some 3rd party to do it and they've been on 6 development for years now and years still left. RS and TT just got too greedy with GTAO and screwed up their own dev cycle so badly that games that really deserve to be updated and preserved better like 4 will be neglected and rely on the hodgepodge of modders. Modding GTA4 is not easy at all, it's not like a bethesda title or cyberpunk. It's not as bad as Far Cry-Jubisoft games but seems to really only have a handful of meaningful mods that improve the QOL of gameplay. Most are about textures, reshade, enb and such. There's nothing for cameras, movement, some hit or miss car handling mods, the awful sluggishness of the whole character and such, weapons sluggishness, etc

So it's pretty much as it was, not bad but showing it's age and requires patience more than the games before it and V for sure. I fear that 4 is going to be like yakuza 3 which never got but the minimal updates to run on modern equipment so isn't the best to play. I did get through it but it's super not memorable compared to the others in the main line series.

 

So yeah I finally have GTAIV v107 modded to where it runs fine and using dxvk for smoothness. The native trainer I have works ok as well. I lock it to 45fps for not too big of jumps, it does really chug during some high action high npc counts but overall works fine, has a mix of individual files replaced with others like timecycle, hd cars, hd player, modpack stuff etc I don't have zoika or fusion patches as they always seem to make my game not load. I also grabbed the 12043 complete version for maybe installing later on.

I also have the 108 complete version installed for the dlcs. Don't have too much interest in the dlcs tbh other than the cars and guns that come with them. One features a jewish biker guy and the other a homosexual club owner and has the fruity colors and such, ugh. I played the mission where you find florian dravic and the homo there is also much. Justar likes to put this stuff in there and the perversions in V are well known but of course whole series is a crime sim so there you go. 6 is going to be heavy on that starting w the tranny protag.

Eh it's a lot more colorful but still overall drab even with the responsive+ timecycle in line with the tone of the game. Kind of interesting to do a couple missions per session and rando stuff just appreciating the details of the world.

 

I've got gta4 107 main game only installed and a few mods too and it's working ok, takes forever to load into the game I may need to look at that. Very low cpu usage while loading at 15% so there's likely a core balancing issue or priority issue there. It's amazing that a game 15 years old still looks good and has most of the major controls and cameras right. Bioshock 1 original from about a year earlier or so has aged much worse but of course that got a remaster a few years ago that most people play now. Anyways it's still fairly fun for a here and there thing and only about 14gb in size, the two dlcs double that when installed.

 

Got back into V lately as I'm burned out on 77 and 4 is to the last mission so not much else there to do other than start over and it's not as fun to play open world as V is by far, not as much to do side things like the racing and the diving stuff. V's story is action movie so it's not as good as 4 and 4 has more detail to it all over but V is still amazing and looks great to this day vanilla runs awesome etc.

My problem is that something was corrupted in my 1.50 install from 2020 so I would get predictable crashes every session. Invalid resource 5 corrupt game error. I though this had to do w a disabled mod and likely did but never found which one. So I reinstalled from original repack and did just the bare minimum menyoo, asi's, and such but it won't load past the startup. So it's a crc mismatch between two files. I'll have to reinstall, UGH. 1hr20mins down the tubes. This time I'll run in win7 compatibility, do the 3gb ram limit and such and do it tonight, not going to crowd my computer w that right now.

I could grab the latest repack 1.68 but not worth it, they haven't added any thing to offline SP for years, all the updates are for MP and growing install size and such. 1.50 sits at 88gb and 1.68 is like 142gb with some pre applied graphics mods and such not interested. Fitgirl isn't the most reliable repacker tbh switched over to dodi a long time ago, you end up dling 5gb more but it just works. FG tries to be too fancy to get the size down and ends up having buggy things in larger releases.

There's no reason for a crc mismatch on a repack I've had for 4 years and an old install that worked fine for years until lately when I disabled some mods which likely corrupted vanilla game files. Even if I don' t use the ram limiter option I have 16gb on here, it shouldn't be a problem and I was not using the computer for at least 1hr 15mins of the 1h20mins install so ridiculous. I'd avoid fitgirl for anything over a few gbs, below that who cares but when you get into 40gb repacks and 88gb installs that take that long it's better to go with a more reliable repacker or just download the whole uncompressed installer which usually will add 20gb or so to the dl.

 

I've now reinstalled this original 1.50 V repack 2 times and both times it gets crc mismatches for missing files, even though the files are there. I went ahead and force checked the files w a torrent file and they all check out and also I ran the md5 check of the installer files and the ones I used checked fine and also the force checked w a torrent file worked fine too so I don't know why I keep getting these crc mismatches after install. I'm going to try to install it one more time then grab a newer version which trannygirl thankfully even after 4 years reuses the same few bin files here and there so can save 38gb of a 47gb download once I force check those. I'm kind of flustered.

It took 1hr20mins the first time and the second time as admin, win7 compatibility mode, pc not touched the whole install time, 2gb ram limiter that took 1hr28mins so this eats up a lot of time for a corrupted game that won't run. Tried the last one 3-4 times and everytime a crash on startup. I should have just kept the original 4 year old install that crashed every session somewhere due to this corruption. I played this same version extensively before redoing missions, free roam etc w no problems so I'm not sure how it got corrupted.

What's worse is on all this time reinstalling it won't fix the issue and won't even start. GTA V SP offline was abandoned years ago before the 2020 update version I have so I really don't know what the issue is. The only difference between the latest 1.68 version is more online garbage was added to it that I can't use without mods and it's largely useless anyways, bloat. So I go from a 88gb size to like 108gb for little benefit. Even their last major game RDR2 has been abandoned SP for years now too. It's too bad I was enjoying the limited replays and amazing open world and now it's kinda soured but there's little else right now. 77 is stale, 4 is pretty much done, Dying Light 1 replay is to the last mission once again and most of the side stuff I just did so not interested other than the best ones I redid already this time. I guess I could do another The Following replay which I finished a few weeks ago eh

 

The same SP offline game that was 88gb install in 2020 is now 112gb install 4 years later with little to no benefit for sp which is all cracked versions it's ridiculous. The online assets can be unlocked using mods but it's not missions and new things other than cars, weapons, clothes and possibly some new buildings or interiors like the horse track casino but it's largely useless for anything but looking at. I had the open all interiors mod that opened past mission stuff and also the add in online stuff and it wasn't anything that adds much to the game other than a bit of immersion to go back to some empty places I guess.

I'd much rather have a stripped down no online mp files version that would likely be less than 75gb install and say 40gb dl. Much more manageable and you can then get the user mods that would add something that are usually mbs in size. There's a racing mod that has tracks around the map and such that is like 5mb and track packs and such that is much more fun than what I can unlock from the gbs of mp garbage. HERE's a game that RS should have separated out from SP-MP not RDR2 which is the whole map for both SP and MP. No need for the useless MP stuff if you get the free version and stay w it, not update it every year or so but RDR2 still has denuvo so there's only the last one in 2022 1468 out there. They haven't even added anything to the MP version since then almost. RS sucks really. I love the open worlds but they don't make good games from a space used and buggyness standpoint. RDR2 STILL will occasionally FFFFFF crash for me and I have to go in and change the DX to Vulcan manually in the settings file and vice versa to get it going again. Changing settings or too many at once just bricks that game which means it's terribly made.

Can you imagine the nightmare that 6 will be 2-3 years from now for PC? Probably the first 200gb game that needs an NVME only and 4070 req or something. $100 game, etc Lots of cloud nonsense, justars sucker club connection and such, probably denuvo on top of all that. No thanks eff justar. I don't think I'll ever give justar any money ever again really. Last time I paid them was for the EFLC disc I still have. I paid for all their games up til 5, bought an xbox 360 just for 4 so nah they've got all the money I'll ever give them. The free version of 6 likely won't come out for 6months to a year after PC release so you're looking at 26 or 27 not interested. The formula has been fleshed out enough for me enough. You can change the satire to 2020 but the actual game is the same, crime simulator and the protag fatranny isn't too appealing either. Some dumbo doing crimes in a nasty version of SoFL from what I saw in that teaser video.

 

So after force checking my old files that are said to be compatible with the 1.52 version I'm going to try to install GTA V one last time then I'm done if it won't get past the opening credits. I've tried multiple times to reinstall and always get crc bad files and a crash at the opening of the game. I should have just kept the old installed one and tried to fix the consistent crashing I got in game sometimes 15mins in sometimes 2hrs in. I don't know what happened with that, worked fine for years as it's from 2020 and is somewhat decently sized only 88gb vs the 112gb latest version. And like I said there is no benefit to SP who don't care for the 200th car or clothing or such and want to mod unlock it. Otherwise that's all wasted MP files, Justar are such effing idiots.

This time I'm going to install it directly on my second internal nvme, restart pc first, admin-win7 mode, 2gb ram limit, at night when I'm not using the pc etc etc I did that last night with a totally checked CRC install files all good 1.50 onto my external ssd and it still found 3 bad files after install and the game would crash at the starting sequence. So I'm at my limits w this game and really the fitgirl repacks that are larger are GARBAGE. Don't bother with anything that's over 20gb dl size and 70 install size, go for dodi or some other repacker that doesn't use the tricks to get it that last 5gb smaller than the rest, it just adds tons of problems for a lot of people. Only reason I stick w this one is that I've got 1.50 repack and thus can force check the files FG says are fine to reuse in the descp. So I saved 20gb of downloads for the 1.52 which is about half the torrent. If this one doesn't work I'm going to just chalk it up to some bug on my system and maybe download a different version not from FG.

Such a freaking shame as I was enjoying getting back into it, it looks awesome and top notch gameplay. The open world is alive unlike the dead 77 open world. The 77 story is just dumb really so it was the style, graphics and mods that kept me into it. I was having fun doing the racing of all type in V and some random stranger stuff, diving to get the collectibles, tons of cars and such with the menyoo trainer, some rampage stuff and the occasional mission replay so I didn't have to bother formally starting a replay and all that. Only things I would install is Menyoo trainer and what that needs, the heavy modding I did with online mission unlocker, mission maker custom missions and such likely corrupted my game files. But idk why installing a vanilla version has failed so many times and it's 1.5 hours each install tying up my pc.

 

Ok so FINALLY the 1.52 version works. I had it install last night started before bed so no idea how long it took likely a couple hours. So I'll delete the 1.50 repack I have and replace w this 1.52 version. It's about 5-6gb larger and the game installs about 10gb larger due to the Cayo Heist that was added for that update. Of course that's all online MP bs so it's mostly useless for offline SP play which is all I'm interested in. Only things I could use there is if I grab an add on spawner and menyoo to then load the extra MP cars and other small add ons into my SP game but I'm hesitant after what happened in 1.50.

So yeah it passed the md5 check last night and this morning booted up briefly with just a fling trainer and it worked fine saves and all. I DO NOT plan on all the modding I did in 1.50 a few years ago like mission maker, custom missions, red house bodyguard stuff or anything like that. Just likely add on spawner may as well get some of the new cars and such from the MP files. Menyoo or similar trainer to load the mp addons is needed. I'm used to menyoo so try that first. I'm hoping the asi loaders and such for 1.50 will still work ok for 1.52, difference is about 7 months back in 2020.

I also grabbed v141 repack which is only 30gb and installs 72gb about 30gb of less online BLOAT for just SPs, totally ridiculous the way RS forces those interested in only SP mode to install all that junk. And if you use their launcher they likely make it "illegal" to load online stuff into SP mode who knows, gave up on paying justar years ago or using any of their online junk, they didn't force their shyster launcher until later in the gta 4 revisions like 107, it wasn't present in below that in 4. 141 repack has a compatible menyoo already so just need add on spawner and the asi loaders etc I don't plan on installing 141 just have it for backup. The 30gb difference from 141 and 1.5x versions is a whole nother game install or several small games which is nice. I can live without the 100th car or weapon from vanilla in V.