shadesofdeath320: walking places. I enjoy hiking, but if you had to spend hours doing nothing but walking to a destination in a video game, you probably wouldn't play it for too long.
Try walking to one side of Liberty City in GTA4 to the other side. It takes a looooooooong time.
I tried this with Just Cause 2. I reached the mountains and just gave up.
But yeah, RL distances in games would be extremely annoying. I walk everywhere in real life, because I enjoy it. In a game like GTA, fastest anything for travel wins. ;)