A lot of players are filling up GTA IV servers but very few appear to know what the hell they're doing, something this guide will attempt to rectify. Using these tactics and understanding how to play well with others will find you making more money in ranked matches, as well as racking up kills and dominating the game with your uncanny abilities.
This guide is focused on general strategies that can be used on most of the available game types. I'll be posting a game-mode specific guide in the coming days, followed by a helpful hosting guide that should make multiplayer games more enjoyable for all involved.
With game reviewers still mopping up their collective ejaculate, you'd think GTA IV was the greatest game of all time. The amount of hyperbole showered on Rockstar's game was unparalleled, with nearly every critic unleashing a string of adjectives that cast GTA IV as the second coming of video gaming Christ. Once the initial euphoria of the graphics wears off, you soon realize that GTA IV doesn't evolve its inherent gameplay beyond that which has come before, and in a lot of respects, significantly less.
With a Metacritic score of 99%, one might think it impossible to find any faults with a game that has been equated with everything from Citizen Kane to The Godfather. Wrong.
Commence flame-war! 8Bit Joystick has posted a feature titled 12 Reasons Why Grand Theft Auto IV is Better on Xbox 360 than PS3, something sure to get loyal PS3 owners all worked up.
Some of the reasons include a higher native resolution, more available RAM, faster disc access and multiplayer that actually works.
Glenn Beck continues to ride the GTA IV media train in his never-ending, yet futile quest for ratings, evidenced by this latest clip of him calling game bloggers losers. And yes, he continues to attack GTA IV, which makes the case that self-righteous, misinformed windbags on television are losers.
If nothing else, Grand Theft Auto IV is a great media gateway for organizations to get free television time to spout their respective outrage towards the contents of the game. We've already had Mothers Against Drunk Driving issue a statement and some immigrant organization is bent out of shape, but I've come up with a list of 10 groups that have been suspiciously silent.
1. DMV
The Department of Motor Vehicles should condemn GTA IV for its horrible portrayal of licensed drivers. Apparently, the Liberty City branch of the DMV will give a license to anyone, evidenced by the total lack of Student Driver vehicles on city streets. In Liberty City, if you can afford the fee, you get a license. Simple as that.
Glen Beck, commentator for Headline News, has launched off on Grand Theft Auto IV in the usual way, attacking the game's apparent lack of morality, citing it as a murder trainer, etc., beat up whores, blah-blah-blah.
You just know Glen Beck is secretly loving the hell out of the game. Come clean!
Spammers are quickly shifting gears, ditching previous promises of a free Xbox, PS3, iPod, iPhone as a marketing lure in exchange for GTA IV.
Spam-blocking firm ClearMyMail reported that more than half of the junk mail being blocked by its service this week is Grand Theft Auto IV related.
The vast majority offer the opportunity to 'win' a PlayStation 3 complete with the game on opening the email, and others invite the victim to pornographic websites which link to viruses.
Dan Field, managing director of ClearMyMail, said: "We are seeing unprecedented levels of spam in relation to the game.
"More than half of the spam our service is blocking is related to Grand Theft Auto, most of which contain viruses and spyware.
"Spammers are like conmen: they are the ultimate opportunists and like nothing more than to prey on the susceptible.
"My advice to anybody who receives these emails is to refrain from opening it, and to wait until they can legitimately purchase the game, even if disappointed by the record sales of this morning."
Adam Kuban of Serious Eats has put together a visual guide that showcases real-life restaurants in New York that were the likely inspiration for several locations in Grand Theft Auto 4.
Last Friday, IGN posted their "exclusive" review of Grand Theft Auto 4, this year's critic-proof game. The posting of the review highlighted a bizarre practice in game media of adhering to publisher-imposed embargoes, wherein a publisher tells you a review cannot go up until a specific day. One of the many troubling aspects of this practice is that every first-tier site or magazine had access to GTA IV early so as to get their reviews prepared prior to GTA's launch. However, IGN was given special permission to run their review two days before everyone else.
You'd think that once IGN posted their review that every other wesbite would soon follow suit, no longer shackled by the demands of Take 2, GTA's publisher. That didn't happen. Sites still played the Embargo Game and stuck to their allocated dates for fear of reprisal.
I will have an article ready to go this week that explores this matter in more detail. As someone who has been working in this industry for 15 years as a writer, I've seen a lot of nonsense that I'll be sharing. In the meantime, Ben Fritz of Variety is tackling the issue of IGN and GTA 4. Worth a read.
Perhaps I was wrong about one thing. Even though IGN ran its review yesterday, nobody else seems to have one up. Not even IGN's biggest competitors GameSpot and 1UP. Apparently they're all waiting on an embargo that Kotaku says is tomorrow (Sunday) morning. That truly blows my mind. In my world, if I had a story or review ready to go and was waiting on an embargo, the minute somebody else ran the same review or story, I would run mine. If a publisher or studio or whatever gave me a later embargo, tough sh*t.
