lotsofdvds

So I'm stuck.

I keep trying two different missions over and over and absolutely cannot get to the end of either one.

The first is the one where you have to chase the subway train. Who the fuck thought of this? It sucks when even your character is bemoaning the fact that you're chasing a goddamned train. I guess I just need to memorize the path to get to the end of this one.

The other is that Playboy X mission at the construction site. Is there some sort of trick to this? I've attempted this thing 100 times now. I throw grenades everywhere Rambo style or duck and cover and pick off every dude one by one, and 100 more guys STILL pop up out of nowhere (usually behind me) and mow me down in 5 seconds.

Do I need to find body armor somewhere? Will that help?

cerial442

I had trouble with that one as well. Pay attention to your radar and look at the tracks overhead. If you think of it as a normal chase mission it isn't that bad until the end. You run into a dead end and will need to take a right and go up a hill. Then you've made it and the rest of the mission is easy.

redbill

lotsofdvs: for Playboy's mission. First pick off as many as you can from the roof - not just the lookouts. Once you've got as many as you can see, go in, and go slow. move from cover to cover slowly. use the machine gun, occasional grenades, and if you have to go around a blind corner (or up the ramp) use the AK, as it fires quicker than the machine gun. the key is to go slow, keep under cover, and pick them off from far away w/o getting to close.

Brent L

1) Just go buy some armor for $500 at one of the gun stores.

2) When you start the mission, stay far back and use the sniper to take out as many as possible. If this is the one where you go to the top of the building across the street at the very start, do that, then once it says for you to go over there go ahead and start over, but still stay back a bit once you get up to the fence and pop as many as you can.

3) Once you do that, use cover to take out the next 3 or 4 guys.

4) Then, once you take care of those guys, just press forward up to the second level. Once there, it's pretty straightforward. Just be cautions, use cover when you see it, and you'll get it in no time. Use the machine gun and the sort on single bad guys, and use gernades on groups of more than 2 or 3.

The Bus

The subway train is kind of a pain in the ass. Make sure you're in a good car (not an old American clunker) so you can keep up. I got it maybe on my 3rd or 4th try after I realized I had to turn at a certain spot to not fall into the alley. There's another mission like this coming up a bit later where it becomes even harder.

The Playboy X mission at the construction site is a pain in the ass but only because it takes so long to actually get into it. I got it, too on my 3rd or 4th try. I kept trying to go up into the construction towers to snipe everyone but eventually I would fall down. I didn't know how to climb down and eventually tried a new approach.

You still need to snipe, but stay on the edges of the map. You can kill everyone on the ground floor without taking a hit. At this point you should still have full health and body armor and it shouldn't be hard. The only real firefight takes place once you go up to the 2nd level. Take cover, throw some grenades, then use your Uzi to take the guys down. The 3rd and 4th union guys you can take out just by sniping and you don't even need to get near them. One of them is in the back side of the 2nd level (towards the water, on the right facing the site). The other scrambles on the left side of the construction site towards a helicopter. You get 4-5 chances to snipe and kill him.

lordwow

The street follows the train at all but one point. You just have to know where that turn is and know what the detour is.

Pharoh

How did you get through this eventually? I was having the exact same issue. I still am. I can't get enough speed and waste too much time getting altitude making lose my target. Any suggestions?

RockStrongo

^ I had the same issue, but there really isnt a trick to it. You just have to follow the helicopter close and then eventually LJ shoots them down. In my experience, you dont have to follow the other copter's route exactly, but close.

It took me 5-8 tries I guess.

fumanstan

It took me a few. The first time i failed because I was too slow, but I didn't have any problem keeping up after. I lifted off as soon as I could, and right away started angling towards the other copter. I managed to crash into a building and a bridge by trying to actually follow right behind, but the last time I just hovered high and over all the buildings rather then trying to wind my way through them.

DavePack

Exactly. For the majority of the mission, the tracks are pretty much in view and above the main roads you'll be using. Brake into the corners easy, gently accelerate out of them, and catch back up to the train in no time. The tricky part is near the end, when I think the train veers off to the right, and there's a park or something or other to the right. Just drive to the next intersection and hang a right to head back toward where the tracks should be.

The first time I failed this, I hooked a left too early, and I ended up under an overpass. By the time I u-turned, the train was too far gone and it failed. The second time, I went up to the next road, and it wasn't too long after that that the mission ended.

Rival11

Just keep in mind that there are many ways to complete each mission and also ways to make them a lot easier.

The subway train unfortunately isn't one of them (took me 3 times) but a good piece of advice is to not follow it too close just stay close to the red dot while driving but not too close.

For Playboy X's first mission - simple, snipe the first set of guys, run into the construcion site heading towards the right (so you can get all enemys in view) take cover and shoot, run up to the second level and immediately turn left around the stack of beams (you'll run right into an enemy) kill them (I think there's two of them) then run immdeiately to the crates, take cover and pop out and shoot when ready - take your time, nobody will escape in the helicopter that arrives and if you follow what I've just typed, the last union guy will be the last man standing and he will just cowar down.

slop101

For the construction site mission, I used the sniper rifle throughout, not just at the beginning. Of course, to do that, you'll need a lot of ammo for it.

glassdragon

I love the game, only issue I have is christ, the car turning sucks. If I turn regular it barely turns, if I use the handbrake I spin out like 5 times. If the cars handled better I would have absolutely no issue with it. It's a shame too, the driving in the other games was spot on. Dont' know what happened to this one

glassdragon

Could I get an invite too please, xlive username is Drketernal

darkside

It does suck, but you will adjust to it and the driving is better in the sports cars. My biggest issues is with the bikes. I loved driving them in Vice City and San Andreas and don't ride them at all in this game.

I'm up to 86% complete. I finished the 9 races for Brucie. Turns out the CPU drivers can't drive either so the races are a breeze. I used the Infernous and once I got a lead early on I never saw the other cars again. They usually get in a big pileup at the first corner and many times I would lap a few of them.

I still need the video game and maybe another random encounter or two and then it is pretty much stunt jumps and pigeons for 100%.

tonyc3742

I've had to force myself to use the real brake, not the handbrake, and not go at full speed into a turn on most cars. (I'm usually a pedal-alltheway-down driver). Once I did that and got used to it, it's a little easier (the choice of car makes a difference as well.

The follow-the-train mission took me about four tries as well. Just had to learn to anticipate where it was going. Once I did that, and got to where the guy got off the train, it was pretty easy.

The construction mission wasn't too bad, if I went slowly and took them out one by one (and yes, I bought armor before hand). Snowstorm was worse--and I had to switch cars (actually, I got flung out of my car, stuck crawling around under some bridge, and came out in a parking deck or something, and the only car near me was a garbage truck. It's very hard to outrun a dozen police cars in a police car; on the positive side, no one got in my way.)

One thing this game needs is an instant replay or camera function. I've been in lots of situations, especially when driving, that I've wanted to back it up two minutes and watch it again, from the cinematic view.

lordwow

I've found handbreak turning to be more effective at high speeds when you need to take a 90 degree turn. I've perfected it online.

glassdragon

ok, I played a DM and it was fun as hell, only problem is after it was done I saw no option to leave the match, I hit every button and none did anything except X to see the players

astrochimp

Use your cell.

glassdragon

I hit up to try to access the cell and it just sat at the screen showing all the kills and such

lawyer goodwill

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/5796892.html

Show him the money
Grand Theft Auto actor is a star but paycheck isn't

By SETH SCHIESEL
New York Times

All those years when he was struggling to get by as an aspiring actor — tending bar, working in a bagel shop in Manhattan, spraying perfume at Bloomingdale's — he was aiming for Broadway and prime time. As he moved from regional theater to soap operas, middling musicals and Law & Order, he remained just another good-looking guy hoping for an audition.

His face still isn't famous, but Hollick's voice and gait have moved into the pop-culture firmament recently as those of Niko Bellic, the sardonic, textured Balkan criminal at the heart of Grand Theft Auto IV, the acclaimed gangster fantasy that has become the fastest-selling game to date. Produced by Rockstar Games and its corporate parent, Take-Two Interactive Software, the game has generated at least $600 million in sales in the past three weeks.

Yet even as Saturday Night Live has spoofed the Niko character, even as Hollick's voice has been heard in tens of millions of homes in advertisements broadcast during American Idol and the NBA playoffs, even as fans have flocked to his MySpace page, his triumph has been bittersweet.

That's because Hollick was paid only about $100,000 over roughly 15 months between late 2006 and early this year for all of his voice acting and motion-capture work on the game, with zero royalties or residuals in sight, he said.

Had this been a television program, a film, an album, a radio show or virtually any other sort of traditional recorded performance, Hollick and the other actors in the game would have made millions by now. As it stands, they get nothing beyond the standard Screen Actors Guild day rate they were originally paid.

That is because the contracts between the actors' union and the entertainment industry make little or no provision for electronic media such as video games and the Internet. It is a discrepancy that is expected to dominate negotiations between Hollywood and the guild this summer, with many predicting an actors' strike to parallel the writers' strike last year, which revolved around similar issues.

"Obviously I'm incredibly thankful to Rockstar for the opportunity to be in this game when I was just a nobody, an unknown quantity," Hollick, 35, said last week over dinner in Brooklyn. "But it's tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they're making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don't see any of it. I don't blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it's the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies."

Rockstar declined to comment for this article, but it is an issue that has been hanging over the video-game industry for years. On the one hand, through both creative and technical ambition, game makers are infusing their wares with more realistic characters and stories than ever. On the other hand, the $18 billion U.S. game industry has steadfastly refused to pay royalties to voice and motion-capture body actors along the lines of other entertainment media.

To the actors it is a simple issue of equity: equal pay for equal work, regardless of the medium.

"For instance, our contracts say nothing about the use of voices for promotional purposes over the Internet," Hollick said. "The first GTA IV trailer generated something like 40 million hits online, and that's my voice all over it, and I get nothing. If that were a radio spot, I would have. Same thing for the TV ads. I recorded those lines for the game, but now they're all over television. It's another gray area."

One of the big differences between games and traditional media is that though a film, play or TV show is usually marketed around a few well-known stars, games almost never highlight the people behind the digital characters, and almost no one buys a game based on which actors are in it.

"What drives video games is not Tracy and Hepburn; what drives it is the conception of the creative director," said Ezra J. Doner, a former Hollywood executive who represents entertainment companies as a lawyer at Herrick, Feinstein in Brooklyn. "The actor whose appearance or voice is used is more analogous to a session musician for a band. The session musicians don't get residuals on the sales of the CD. They get paid a session fee."

Hollick said he "asked about residuals when we negotiated, but I was told that was not a possibility."

The game companies that make millions in royalties appear reluctant to share. Among their executives, one real fear is that if they start paying royalties to a handful of actors, they will soon face similar demands from the legions of artists, designers, audio producers, musicians, programmers and other people who work for years to make a top-end game.

For Hollick, Niko has still been the role of a lifetime. A native of the eastern shores of Maryland, Hollick developed a talent for dialects as a theater student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, he said. In the game Niko is a war-scarred Serbian who has worked as a human trafficker before landing in New York (known in the game as Liberty City). Hollick's masterly performance as the voice and body of Niko appears to stem both from Hollick's rich conception of the character as well as from a stellar script.

"Developing Niko, the dry sense of humor, as the story begins, he's this really hard guy with this really difficult background, but what gives it depth is that there is this naivete as well," Hollick said. "He comes to the big city, and he's not on firm ground. He's not sure where he stands. So there is a lot to work with. And as he becomes more confident, the sense of humor comes out. The screenwriters and directors were really hip to that and really did a great job of making the character three-dimensional."

Of course, because this is a video game, in addition to thousands of lines of dialogue, there were the more, shall we say, atmospheric effects.

"So we would have the 50 pages of screaming, 10 pages of being shot, 10 pages of being thrown off a roof, 20 pages of being burnt alive, just screaming," he said. "The ones being burnt alive were the best. And I'd just be like: 'Bring me more hot tea and honey and lemon. Earl Grey.' "

devilshalo

I've only seen this for the stunt jumps.

devilshalo

Disappointed to know that if I run to my safehouse to avoid the cops, they impound my vehicles sitting outside. I lost my Banshee and my Infernus.

Rival11

Personally, I really like the driving expecially considering it's different for practically every vehicle you drive. I'm excellent at the spin outs (180's and 360's) and don't mind the pain in the ass of tight turns.

This is one area everyone seems to hate but for some reason I think it fits well.

kenage

How do you guys get the Infernus? I do not think I have even seen one in the game. I am only about 18% through the game.