I've been on vacation, and late last night I finally had a chance to play GTA IV again. Now I'm reading all the comments posted here, and it's so much fun reading about everyone's experiences.

For me it was a complete surprise to see David Wong post about his ordeals, last thing I remembered was you saying that you weren't inclined to buy the game at all. Reading about the destroying glass fetish which I have as well, the eye torture, and all the mission failures was great, it somehow feels like a shared experience, even though it isn't really (the singleplayer story, that is).

The only thing I really have a problem (as in: screeming to the TV in a fit of rage) with, is getting run over by random speeding cars, even when I'm still (kinda) on the sidewalk. Jacob ran me over once after buying weapons off of him, and my date got involved in a particularly sad hit & run.

But the worst one was at the very end of a hard mission, with only a tiny bit of health-in-the-red left. Not wanting to riks dying on the way to the final drop-ff point, I called for an ambulance to fix me up, only to be driven over by it (Roman's cabs have a tendency to do this as well). I swear I'm not in the middle of the road when this happened, and when I had to redo the mission was one of the few times I lost the joy in playing this game.

I'm not that far though, still only at 50%, so I have lots of hours left. That's a nice prospect...

Has anyone else:

Gotten into a car with a talking GPS, and at one point instead of the little chime sound, the voice says "Bing-dong"? Because I totally swear I heard that once.

Always had a crazy person outside their apartment in Bohan? I chased him off one day but he was back the next time I saved there. It's an excellent touch.

So like many people we've noticed the text on the cell phone is impossible to read at times... but we do NOT have the option to make the font larger (as some guides suggest).  Is that option just on the first phone?  What are we missing here?

The following spoilers pertain to how pissed I am at the Pegorino's Pride mission:

The mission starts with you driving to the meet where you're given a sniper rifle to watch over things. I get in position, and manage to take out all but one of the guys when things go bad. Turns out that last guy was behind a big fuckass pole, so I have no angle on this motherfucker as he pops Pegorino. Mission failed.

Second try, and I gotta drive all the way back to the fucking meet because there are four guys including me, so a cab isn't an option. This time, I manage to kill all those fucking fucks including the asshole I missed last time who is now gracious enough to stand partly exposed to the left of the pole, and Pegorino's fucking invisible life bar runs out when I'm like thirty feet away from rescuing him after I'm done sniping. Thirty feet from being able to trigger the next cutscene. Mission failed.

Third try, and I finally get to fucking Pegorino in time. Oh hey, I also have to do a car chase after that part. Wish I had known this mission was this fucking long beforehand; I'd have bought body armor. My speck of life disappears at the end of the chase as I'm quickly gunned down in my driver seat. Mission motherfucking failed.

Next time I'm buying some fucking body armor. And sure, failures two and three were my fault, but the first one? Man, fuck that fucking shit. Fuck that shit in its ass.

I have the second phone, and it's an option. Go to the options menu on the phone, and you have to scroll down past the other options--it should be there. I just checked. Unless my copy is different from yours.

Same here on the phone options.

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Has anyone else gone into the bowling alley and stood in other people's lanes yet?

Regular TV output. But Remington also said he remembers having the option on the first phone.

I searched on Google for this topic, and the rest of the internet is confused by it too. I didn't manage to find any explanation at all for it, and the problem seems pretty widespread. Half seem to have the option, and half don't.

Is it a platform difference?

Not that either. MWB has the 360 version, as do Remington and myself. It's kind of puzzling.

Have any of you who are experiencing the phone text size issue, gone to an internet cafe and tried downloading a new theme or two and switching to see if the options change? 

I've got the PS3 version, but have always had the big font option from the start.

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So I'm at the point where I have to choose Revenge or $, and it seems as though all of my cash has been taken from me, to force my choice.  I don't even have enough money to buy body armour, and there are no jobs or races to do to make any money.  This is really making me mad, because I don't have a recent save file to go back to.