the patch is live now

They needed tightened up a bit.

I made it through the story mode without crashing once. Now that I'm going the most wanted missions, I've crashed 3 times (on the 360). This game isn't glitch free by any stretch of the imagination, but when has GTA ever been?

doing*

Your a really good driver!

Palm meet face. Face meet palm.

Exactly. No modern large-scale software project ships bug-free. It's all about reproduction rate, and severity. There are probably thousands of known issues that GTA IV shipped with. But given Rockstar's reputation, and the high profile of GTA IV, it is probably a very high quality release. Strauss should spend ~5 minutes in the QA dept and see how many bugs there really are, if they didn't clear them out after going GM.

I found a glitch: you can walk over the road on the bridge between the first two islands and skip the police barricade. You get 5 stars when you're on the 2nd island, but you can still stroll around there.

what kind of party were you at before that picture was taken?

the...um....BEST DAMN COKE PARTY IN TOWN!!!

usually you read about patches and it comes in like 2 weeks... it's here NOW

Actually, I had loads of those 'session no longer available' messages, until i realized my SAT settings were set to 'strict'. Ever since I changed them to open I haven't had any issues.

In some big matches, the lag is horribvle (cars are flying through the air, as well as the dudes inside them)
For the most part, though, there is no lag.

The connection issues are most certainly your router. I had a few friends that was happening with, and i was like WTF XBOX YOU SONS OF BASTARDBUCKETS!! Then I hit google, they didnt set their xbox as a DMZ OR even open the needed ports...so most likely it is because your friends are fail. No offense to them or you :)

I'm not sure what "SAT" settings are, did you mean NAT settings because mine are open, as are my friends, as well as one in particular who has a DMZ. The same issues occur with CoD4.

Regardless, WTF? Where is there documentation with the 360, or either of these games, or live that says any of that is necessary? It's not like we are using odd setups or anything.

For the record, I have never had the connection issue, it is only certain friends and it half the time they will make it, half the time they won't. It's totally inconsistent. Then another friend who doesn't know the first thing about network configuration will host and everyone joins without a single issue.

Also, why do we not have a single issue playing something like Halo 3, whereas these other games cause issues. If I am supposed to open certain ports, the game should instruct me to do so.

I just spent last night trying to play a group of friends online. There were six of us total trying to play, and it took us 45 minutes to get a game going with just four of us, we could never get the other two in. And it wasn't just them, when they were able to get into a lobby, then it would kick out others who weren't having problems. We had a game with four of us already started, and let my other friend join. He was able to, then about 30 seconds later, it started kicking everyone else out of the game. The message in every instance was that the game session was no longer available. Glitch free my ass.

Again, what the hell is SAT settings? I know of NAT settings, but not SAT settings.

Also I found a glitch in how the multiplayer works. If you have a private match going, then change gametype when the prompt comes up, it becomes a public match. I'm not aware of any way to prevent that, and it's pretty lame.

If this game is considered glitch free, then multiplayer gaming is doomed. If there problem is with my network settings, there needs to be a resource that says what settings there should be.

Glitch free? Are you sure you just havent been playing Burnout this whole time? The all seeing eye controls your thoughts....

What's wrong with the Free Masons?

Brings a good point though...burnout has some damn near flawless execution. Great game

GTA is absolutely amazing. Glitch free? about as free as XBL

Which further asks the question, How the fuck did this game get perfect scores?

Because they can't really see how it will run online with full servers before the game has been released.

Indeed. I love the game, but this is just the hype machine at work. It's still worth alot to me, but it sure isnt a 10.

And not all glitches/issues are online... I'm lookin' at you, camera that keeps dipping down to the rear bumper of my car... you perv!

Annoying FPS's? GTA is third person. And doing a whore in a cab then beating her is pretty boring. It might be entertaining once. What's fun is having a bunch of online friends causing total destruction in an almost living city.

While I agree that Ninja Gaiden is awesome, I think you are being way too dismissive of GTA. It sounds like you've never played it actually.

Actually the people who praise the game never touch hookers.. Its the people who cant wrap their head around the fact that there's in fact much more to the game than that, who focus on that.

This is the first title in the franchise that I feel there is actually more to it than just the social critism through excessive violence. This time there is real depth. There is real morality expressed in the game.

You get what you pay for, I guess.

RROD means your 360 is busted. It cannot be caused by bad software.

I'm not saying GTA IV is bug-free, but you're being let down by MS' awful hardware in this case and the only solution is to get it fixed.

I shit you not.

It's bricked, and being returned as we speak.

The game froze like a mofo before it happened though. I probably got about 2 days of random playing out of it.

Initially, it was the opening cut scene. After skipping that, I was able to play a bit before it just locked up. I couldn't even bring up the dashboard.

It was all downhill from there.

It would freeze DIRECTLY after loading a saved game, and if I managed to avoid that, it would freeze by the time I got outside the apartment.

Sure it's possible that it was going to RROD anyways, but it seems pretty unlikely considering there are other 360 owners who are having the same problem - bricking included.

Effing annoying.