GTA IV hatred

Since my previous complaints about GTA IV, I have occasionally fired it up to have a go on it. As it seemed to be running OK without freezing up or complaining about the disk, I thought I'd try a mission or two.

The first mission involved finding a guy, choosing whether or not to kill his girlfriend and then chasing him on a bike. On the first go, the guy went away on his bike and then I was informed that I'd lost him before I'd barely even started moving. On the second go I parked up in a nice fast car because I know I'm better in cars than bikes, but nope, it despawned the car and replaced it with a bike. Despite me being on a superbike and him being on a chopper, he was stupidly hard to keep up with, even after I shot out his rear tyre. This happens quite a lot, you have to chase a vehicle that performs and handles way beyond the way it would if you were driving it. Anyway, this proved frustrating but eventually I got it done. After some more inane dialogue, I thought I'd try another mission.

It turned out to be exactly the same, but with you chasing a helicopter instead of a bike. And it has the gall to tell you all the time 'You're losing the helicopter'. Of COURSE I'm fucking losing it, the damn thing can fly over buildings and I'm stuck in the middle of a group of moronic taxis blocking the road for some godforsaken reason. After finding the helicopter and being shot as per usual by a load of people, I threw the controller on the floor and turned it off.

The missions kill this game for me. They are repetitive and dull and I've lost any interest I may have had in the plot. They make a big thing of whether you should kill certain people or not in a couple of missions - never mind the fact that you are required to kill literally hundreds of people in the other missions.

In San Andreas, if you wanted a break from the main missions, there was so much to do and places to explore. In this you can play pool, or darts, or...well, that's it. Oh yeah, bowling too. Or you can take part in a race which will either be hugely unfair or ridiculously easy. It's just not fun.

Things that are missing from GTA IV (from the intertubes):

-Customizable Cars
-Hair cuts
-Tattoos
-Planes/Jets
-Jetpacks
-Parachutes
-Tanks
-Fun Weapons (Ex:Flame Thrower, Miniguns, Chainsaws)
-Buyable Real estate
-Tons of Clothing Apparel
-Custom Soundtracks
-Bicycles
-Taxi Missions
-Fire Dep. Missions
-Ambulance Mission
-Spike Strips
-Skydiving
-Loads of Fun Cheats
-Garages
-Night-Vision Goggles
-Finishing Moves (with the knife)
-Pizza Delivery Missions
-Hydraulics
-NOS
-Monster Trucks
-Gambling
-RC Cars
-Slo-Mo Pills
-Police Roadblocks
-Underwater Swimming
-The Moon
-Basketball
-Rampage Minigame
-Rewards for finding hidden packages
-Duel Wielding
-Leveling up

Multiplayer would be fun if Xbox Live didn't largely consist of underage twats hurling homophobic insults at each other. And it's also stupidly glitchy, especially at speed. I would say that it is understandable given what there is to keep in sync, but Crackdown managed it much better over a year ago.

Perhaps the downloadable content will help but I doubt it will be free and my Xbox Live subscription expired ages ago.

Perhaps GTA IV.1 will be the same leap that Vice City was over GTA III.