Online play ruins single player. It is why that Role Playing Games like Fable 2, Oblivion, Lost Odyssey and Final Fantasy 13 will never touch online as it always ends up making single player less feature equiped and generally shorter, this is because the developer wants to get the player onto online multiplayer faster, where hopefully they will stay there playing the same game for 6 months spreading the word of how good the game is, when it is infact no different to any other online game as it is always a rehash of deathmatches and team games that have no purpose and are more repetitive than the shit they put you through in single player...

Online is the future yes but it is overused in games that don't need it half the time. GTA did not need online and now it has it is it a surprise that the single player is a short and feature less mess of boring action and gameplay, that is almost acting as a contrast to make people enjoy the online side of it more because Rockstar know for a fact that people will not play single player for 500 hours this time around, but they do hope online will do that job. In my opinion GTA IV online is shit but i have played much more refined open world online games like Crackdown which is an absolute blast with a friend... GTA IV is a good game don't get me wrong it could have been better, bring on Saints Row 2 to severely punish Rockstar for dropping the proverbial ball on this one.

What made Crackdown's online so good was it lacked game modes, you were in an open world environment that starts as a free roam but if you like you can still do missions, you can turn it into a deathmatch by attacking each other, they got rid of these options and made it an all in one. At the end of the day the online still didn't come without its flaws it made the game ridiculously short and rather easy but when online it was a blast quite literally but i don't get that from GTA IV online, it is still the same mess of arcade gameplay under a mask of poorly implemented realism, its just not fun even with 16 people having a mass free roam the map is so big and transport is so slow, it is just like playing single player all over again because you barely see other players unless they die when you die... The other gamemodes are repetitive and just drone on and on, there is one uplifting factor Bomb Da Base II is pretty fun but once you have played it 5 times it gets old...

I wish GTA IV was better but i guess now that i have faced life, the daily commute to work and having to put up with traffic jams and other bad drivers, i just want to relax when i get home not have the same hair pulling frustration in GTA IV... As Chiro theorises this game was made for children that haven't had to experience life and its annoyances.

To a certain extent, I agree. However, since the next gen consoles came out, and I believe even back when San Andreas came out people were clamoring for an online Grand Theft Auto experience.

Had it not been implemented, reviewers and fans would still be asking the question why online play wasnt featured and people would be speculating and talking about how cool this and that would be. In short, GTA online was inevitable.


The online is not without its faults, but in my opinion it is a total blast to play when you have a room full of people on. The races need to be patched so that those who have finished can log their scores and leave without having to wait on everyone else.


Online play had been a thorn in my side as a single player gamer for a long time. I lived in an area without access to broadband, so online just wasnt an option. Games came out like Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain and featured objectives that could only be accomplished online. Weapons that could only be unlocked by doing online objectives.

For me, not being able to get every weapon unlock and 100% the game without broadband access felt like a total ripoff. The SOCOM US NAVY SEALS games were horrid in the offline play, and you could tell that those games were made 90% for the online aspect. I have the access to online now, and can fully experience GTA IV in all its facets. But for those who dont have broadband access, which happens in more places than people think Grand Theft Auto IV is an ENORMOUS letdown.

GTA was always about still having a game to play and get lost in even after the credits roll. With the implementation of online play, the side activities to keep things going are cut way down.

The ideal thing R* should have done, and people would have waited for, would have been to incorporate all the past side activities into their game to keep it fresh after the story is over, and included a SECOND DISK titled GTA IV online and have that holding the online modes. In this way, the offline player is just as satisfied as the online player.

In this instance, I agree with the old saying, "There's no pleasing some people." Because as you said, Stinger, had GTA IV not had a well developed online, the complaints would be feverish! However, I never considered the possibility that the game play was designed specifically fo online and that's why the single player seems lacking to a lot of fans. Maybe ROckstar HAD TO change the physics of the single player as they did in order to have a seriously good online game.

It is defintely food for thought.