Community:GTA IV Gripes/Combat

This is the official Grand Theft Wiki GTA IV Gripes list.

For now, this page is open to everybody. If there is any abuse of this page it will be locked, and all submissions will have to go through the Discussion page.

The "Gripes" on this page are intended to warn new players of things they may not like about the game.

The "Rebuts" on this page are intended to explain to new players why some gripes may not be a "gripe" for all players.

Please do not repeat other people's gripes. Also, no silly/stupid/idiotic/explicit/racist gripes or rebuttals.

How To Gripe

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How To Rebut Gripes

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• Start your rebuttal with :{{Rebut}}, then follow with your rebuttal.
• Rebuttals should address reasons it is not a valid gripe, and should not accuse the gripe of being "silly" or "stupid."

Whatever happened to the rumor that Niko would limp, not aim so well after being shot at? Aside from your armor/health gauge, nothing shows you are injured, except the bloody clothes, but that's just cosmetics.

If Niko got shot in the leg and he would limp to cover it would give the enemy plenty of time to kill him. It would get annoying after sometime as you could not get to cover quickly and you would be killed. It would also be annoying that if your health was low and you couldn't shoot well, you'd also be killed easily.

Adding to the realism that the player should use more caution when engaged in a fire fight. Okay, so maybe not everytime Niko is shot, but how about when low on health he should limp and not aim too well?

Just think for a minute, you're about to pass the mission but you're low on health. With that feature, you could not kill the last couple of guys you needed to.

Wish there was the ability to prone and shoot.

Try barely holding the fire button, that will put you in free aim mode.

Right, I know about the "Free aim mode," in fact, I don't even use auto-aim at all. Just saying that I wish you could lie down and shoot, say as in SOCOM.

Niko isn't exactly a Navy SEAL. Plus, lying down and shooting is really for when your taking cover when there are no good boxes or cars to cover behind.

When tossing a hand grenade into a gang, some of them still survive the blast, despite being thrown directly at their feet.

Call them lucky. A grenade isn't always an instant kill in a real life. Some survive to live on, or die a slow, painful death.

Not these enemies, they just get right back up and shoot at you like nothing happened. No slumped over, walking away in pain, nothing. They just slide back into cover as if no grenade went off. Also, an annoying glitch with some is the enemy can be seen "standing up" in mid-air after a blast and land back on their feet.

Try cooking a grenade before throwing it. If done properly, it should give hostiles no time to react when it lands and detonates.

GTA IV's cover system is the crappiest I have ever seen. It doesn't properly work half the time, or Niko takes cover in the wrong area. Gears of War's cover system is better, and GTA IV's system is supposedly taken from that. What happened?

It isn't crappy, you just don't know how to use it. When I play GTA4, the cover system always works fine, and the game automatically selects the nearest cover, not the smartest, due to the game isn't as smart as you think it should be. Its only 2008, and not all systems used in video games are perfect.

You cant fight the cops like in other GTA games.

Actually, you can fight cops. Just take out your gun and shoot them. You also fight them in missions, like the Bank Heist.

That's one of the worst ideas you posted on. If you take out a gun and shoot at the cop, you'll get 2 wanted star levels and more cops will swarm in and kill you. And if you attempt to fight a cop, he will easily arrest you and don't even bother holster a weapon. Cops will always shoot back anyways.

All cops attacked you in previous GTA IV games. And if you don't suck, then you are able to survive the cops with no problem. So yes, you can fight the cops.

And you can press A/X button if you are about to kneel down on the floor, gives you 2 star rating. Pretty realistic.

But since the cops don't have night sticks, if you try to punch them, the will just shoot you.

Cops in real life carry guns, and if somebody came and tried to kill you then you would fight back.

So your saying that if someone punched you, you would shoot them?

If you had anger problems, or abusive power, then yes.

Combat is unrealistic and hard to attack people. You'll have to use weapons to kill them instead (not meleé ones).

Hand-to-hand combat was meant to injure the victim, without killing him. It's useful for missions.

It doesn't matter what the intent was. The point is, the combat system is horrendously awkward and often, unrealistic.

Still, it's hard to target people you are attacking and it's completely unrealistic while GTA SA had realistic hand-to-hand combat moves.

No it didn't. The combat was sloppy, too fast paced, and glitchy in animation. GTA4 delivers a more realistic fighting system. You can't just keep punching someone without them being able to do something back, unless they were unconscious or dead.

During shooting missions, you die very easily by shooters before you even run for cover. Enemies somewhat has great aiming, and Body Armor is highly recommended for hard missions.

Once more, the game is meant to be more realistic. If you'd be facing down ten trained gunmen with nothing more than a few grenades and a pistol, do you think you would live?

Yeah, but even during Vigilante missions, the "criminal on foot" seem to survive a shotgun blast to the face. How's THAT real?

It all depends on health, and if you were better at aiming, you would have killed them.

I'm at point-blank range, they should die with a shotgun to the head, not just from a pistol shot (which works).

The Hand-to-Hand Combat is not as good as in San Andreas.

Stated somewhere else, the hand-to-hand combat has a new purpose: subduing enemies that you aren't meant to kill.

Yes, but that doesn't excuse it for being horrendously awkward and sloppy.

GTASA has blocky and glitchy animations for fighting, with CJ being almost unstoppable in fist combat, detracting from realism.

Stealth kills as in San Andreas are no longer possible.

You can perform a stealth kill during Final Interview and walk out without a wanted level.

But on outside missions, you can't. It's straying away realism because it didn't even have the silenced pistol.

In final interview you cannot perform a stealth kill. Even if you use the knife to kill Goldberg, the receptionist still runs in screaming, and a 3 star wanted level is in place.

That is not true. I was able to kill Tom Goldberg with a knife and not receive any stars.

Still does'nt count as a stealth kill, even with a knife, the recepsionist still runs in screaming and a three star wanted level is still present. Besides, he can still scream even with a knife.

Niko isn't exactly a ninja, and he does whatever it takes to get the job done, including killing a hundred cops if needed.

With the mission that is in discussion, if you stab Goldberg, smash the window and jump outside - you don't get a star. I've done it and I've seen another person do it on Youtube.

Stealth kills, with a knife or a silenced pistol are no longer possible in GTA IV. Slitting one's throat has been taken out, and so has the silenced pistol. It is nearly impossible to kill someone with a knife because they will most likely scream. In addition, the combat system is awkward, forcing you to follow your opponent every time he sways from a hit.

I just the other day, went to the laywer's office and went up behind him and killed him, stabbed the hell out of him, walked out the door and outside to the street, no cops, no alarms, so it is possible at least with the lawyer mission.

Despite the stealth, I did the same thing, but he screams anyway and I got a 3 star wanted level. Like I said, his screams are always audible by the receptionist. Never counts as a stealth kill.

You didn't kill him fast enough then.

It does'nt matter how fast or slow you can kill him. The fact is that his screams can always be heard by the receptionist, so there is no possible way to complete the mission by just killing him and not acheive any stars.

Then you aren't good enough. I redid the mission and I did not get any stars.

Unlikely. I've been experimenting with stealth kills on that mission for an age. I'm past it now, but I spent an hour attacking Goldberg with Niko's fists, a baseball bat, and a knife. Almost took him out without him screaming with the baseball bat, but a squeak got out, and the receptionist ran in.

You can't strangle enemies or snap their necks like in GTA: VCS. This is a crucial stealth kill and this has been taken out to reduce realism. This means you cannot grapple enemies to perform grapple attacks.

I agree. Strangling enemies in VCS was fun, a helluva lotta fun. IV dumbed a lot of the stealth gameplay style down, though. No silenced weapons, no throat-slitting moves with a knife, and melee fighting was... not as good as I had hoped.

There would have to be a pretty stupid person not realizing that someone is behind them about to creep up and snap their neck or slit their throat. And remember gun control in the city? Silenced pistols were removed due to the fact that no one can hear them.

You can't get a silenced pistol, but you can get an RPG-7? That's some very strange gun control. And most people on the street are distracted, it's very easy to sneak up behind someone.

Both of your are totally correct i give you my support, i always see the positive point of the gripes but this gripe hasn't a rebut. It's sucks you been Niko a war soldier can't buy a silenced pistol to kill a person more professionally or even snap their neck not everybody is paying attention of the others people in real life so why the didn't put this feature?.... but I still think that gta iv is the best gta at this point by the way