It felt like someone completely pulled the rug out from under me. I was enjoying Grand Theft Auto 4 very much, but all of a sudden my progress grinded to a halt. I had taken the mission called “Last Interview” and had to wait for a phone call before starting on the mission. But the call never came. I wait a week and a half of in-game time, not an insignificant time in real life, and nothing. What made it worse was that all the other story missions were complete and I wasn’t getting any phone calls to do any more jobs from any of Liberty City’s criminal underground.

With a little research I found people who had reported the bug on all versions of the game going back to when it was first released. No resolution had bee found. It seems that if you do missions in a strange order (the order I happened to do them in) this glitch happens and you cannot continue the game. You are literally stuck. I had overwritten my only save before I started the mission by trying to make time pass quicker (saving causes six hours to pass) so I could not go back. Almost ten hours of work gone.

Most other games I might have said Screw it, returned it, or put it aside and attempted to beat another game before restarting from the beginning But I wanted to proceed with the game! I liked the story and characters! The game plays much better than those made with the GTA 3 engine, everything from the combat to the vehicle controls. (Actually, with the GTA series that pretty much IS everything)

So I started over. I zoomed passed the parts I’ve already did as fast as I could and did the missions in the order I found online. No problems. In fact, when I got the “Last Interview” mission I received that phone call almost instantly.

RAGE!