[360] [PS3] [PC] Grand Theft Auto IV

[icycalm]

http://insomnia.ac/news/grand-theft-auto-iv/

[Jedah]

All major gaming press is in orgasm right now about it. The average of review scores is even higher than Ocarina of Time's. I watched gametrailers video review and left with more questions than before. Icy, are you planning to play it anytime soon? Anyone played it so far?

[icycalm]

Yeah, I will definitely play it sometime next month. Until then, the only things I've watched are the trailers I posted. I am not reading anything until I've reviewed the game myself.

[Molloy]

I'm looking forward to it a lot. I'm going to have to wait till the PC port though because I can't afford a 360/PS3 yet. The GameTrailers/Gamespot reviews didn't really go into much detail. I want to know how the multiplayer works in more detail!

[Jedah]

Played the single player to a friend's house on PS3. It's an astonishing game. Really there's nothing equal in current gen. It really backs up all that hype about the HD machines (while on PS3 at least is not running in HD res). While keeping the humor and free roaming fun of previous titles, it sweeps them with unbelievable graphics & sound. It's a lively city with a zillion opportunities. Man I walk past running too close to some guy and he dropped his coffee. In the game. It's that kind of detail that really stunned me. All vehicles are recognizable real life vehicles in visual, audio and handling. The only thing this game lacks is a reality licence. Ok, and a more stable camera and targeting system.

[icycalm]

While keeping the humor and free roaming fun of previous titles, it sweeps them with unbelievable graphics & sound.

From screens and videos that I have seen, I can't see how anyone could say this is better-looking than Gears (and that was a first-gen 360 game). The character models especially look terrible...

All vehicles are recognizable real life vehicles

You mean they licensed real cars this time?


In other news, IGN seems well on its way to writing a book about this game. There are three reviews up: US, UK and AU ones, and the total page count is about 15. I bet if you add all the news items and previews you'd get way over the 50-page mark.

[Jedah]

From screens and videos that I have seen, I can't see how anyone could say this is better-looking than Gears (and that was a first-gen 360 game). The character models especially look terrible...

I'm not saying this game is the absolute graphics powerhouse of this generation. I'm stating that when played in a HDTV (videos don't do the graphics justice believe me) it's a damn good looking game and really outshines the previous GTA efforts, considering always the time of their release.

I didn't expect to be impressed by its graphics, but the videos really look far worse. The same goes for the audio department, where the cars' engines sound like a racing game and the ambient sounds of the city are captured fantastically.

You mean they licensed real cars this time?

No, but the fictional ones look, sound and behave just like their real world influences. Sentinel looks, sounds and controls like a BMW M3 for example. The Blista is like a 1989 Honda CRX VTEC. Each car I tried was instantly recognizable, compared to the generic template of the old GTAs. To make it more clear, if previous GTAs had 60% influence on real world vehicles then GTA IV is close to 90%. I hope for an easy moddable PC version next year to make the game really shine.

In other news, IGN has seems well on its way to writing a book about this game. There are three reviews up: US, UK and AU ones, and the total pagecount is about 15. I bet if you add all the news items and previews you'd get way over the 50-page mark.

Never visited them for at least two years. This game really bring in the money...

[taidan]

I think the lighting system and physics engine are sharp, but the character models and textures are rather poor. The outdoor environments are much more impressive than those seen in previous games, but I think that is due to the lighting and such.

I also find it jarring to see a decent script for the story right next to some increasingly juvenile humor.

[Molloy]

Comparing the game to Gears of War seems a bit silly. GTA has a big streaming world, large scale buildings etc. Of course the textures aren't going to be as good.

They say the characters are meant to be somewhat cartooney rather than totally realistic in style. Maybe that accounts for it. I can't really see the problem from videos but I'd have to see the real game in motion.

One thing that really impresses me is the animation. It looks absolutely fabulous. Models still seem to clip through walls and scenery though. It's a wonder it's taken developers so long to actually fix this problem. I thought I remembered reading about tech that prevented that about 5 years ago in Edge.

[icycalm]

Comparing the game to Gears of War seems a bit silly. GTA has a big streaming world, large scale buildings etc. Of course the textures aren't going to be as good.

I don't see why. Jak and Daxter on the PS2 had a streaming world and yet it looked as good as anything else on that console. Technically-speaking, it looked way better than any GTA.

Moreover, like I said, Gears of War was a first-gen title. Surely, these new consoles can do a lot better than that. It is entirely possible that a big streaming world could have looked as good as Gears if the necessary time and money had gone into its design. And if the developers of the highest-grossing franchise in the history of videogames is not going to invest in that time and money, who will?

The problem here is that Rockstar's engines have always sucked balls.

They say the characters are meant to be somewhat cartooney rather than totally realistic in style. Maybe that accounts for it.

Style has nothing to do with it (and if it does then that's shit style). The character models in this game are just way too crude compared to the detail of their environments. Few polygons and crude textures, especially for the faces. And on top of that the game has the annoying tendency to zoom too close to them during cutscenes. Meh. Like I said, I've seen better models in PS2 games.

I can't really see the problem from videos but I'd have to see the real game in motion.

Watch the videos I posted. Most of them are 720p and you can see what I am talking about just fine.

[Jedah]

Crude graphics or not, this is a fantastic game. Really it reignites this teenage flame to try everything and cause as much trouble as possible. This game's great power is the increase of options and possibilities during your roaming. I urge everyone to give it a try. San Andreas bored me with the babysitting of your controlled hoods and boring side activities (gym, eating etc.) but all this stuff is gone now. You only stop for a hotdog in order to replenish health, decreased by gunfire, jaywalking (cars ram you more often), bike accidents and many more. I know I sound excited for a guy not owning the game, but the time I've spent with it, was hilarious and highly addictive.

[icycalm]

Good review:

http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=353

A dozen paragraphs filled with nothing but criticism. Perhaps I won't agree with him when I get around to playing the game, but a good review is a good review.

[Jedah]

Isn't he the laughable guy of the Tekken 6 review?

Update: I've read it. I can't argue with his comments about missions, because I didn't play enough of them (I focused on carnage). This review is half baked though, due to lack of multiplayer commentary.

[icycalm]

Isn't he the laughable guy of the Tekken 6 review?

No. That Tekken 6 review was written by Tim Rogers. This guy is James Edwards (you can see the name of the reviewer at the very top of each review).

Both of them are laughable when they write about games/genres they don't understand, and both of them are very interesting when they write about games/genres they do understand. This time it's the latter case.

(A good rule of thumb for Action Button is this: if the game/genre in question requires no skill then their review will probably by interesting. If the game/genre in question requires skill, then their review will be laughable.)

Edit:

This review is half baked though, due to lack of multiplayer commentary.

Half-baked or not, it's probably the best review of the game yet, in any language, on- or off-line.

[Molloy]

I noticed a fairly hefty dropoff in quality between the missions in Vice City and San Andreas. I presumed it was because there were so many of them that the quality was a bit patchy. We'll have to see. I'm sure there will be another couple of GTA4's for them to rectify the situation.

I was reading a "Making of GTA series" article in Edge and they were explaining the Vice City missions were all designed around the Miami Vice tv series. They just watched every episode a bajillion times and thieved set pieces from the TV series.

[icycalm]

I'm sure there will be another couple of GTAIV's for them to rectify the situation.

I believe there is very little chance of this happening. Not the sequels -- those will of course happen -- the "rectifying" of the situation (if it is indeed in need of rectifying). The best GTAIII for me was by far the original one, not only for the quality of the missions, but also for the plot which was responsible for setting them up. The set up is as important as the missions themselves in a GTA (a point which the ABDN review does not quite address), and if GTAIV fails in this one all-important regard, chances are its "expansion packs" will fail too. At that point, better mission quality will not do much for the game.

[milkycha]

I cannot believe the interest this game is generating. I played almost 20 hours into it and then returned it. Absolutely no evolution for the series whatsoever; missions are still random and disjointed from the narrative, shooting/melee controls still clumsy and unresponsive as ever.

I am by no means a graphics whore but I was still underwhelmed by the appearance of this game. Granted, people will argue that I can't ask for Gears quality when I consider how huge the world is and all that's constantly going on. Fair enough. I get that. Tell me then, with all these graphical concessions made (low resolution, poor character models), why is there so much slowdown? The game starts to chug when you adjust the camera.

To top things off, it's just plain boring. Blame the hype machine if you will, but I expected better. Hell, different would have sufficed.

[Molloy]

Here's a negative article about it from Blog Critics. I usually go there for TV show reviews but I noticed they've recently added a games section. Shows promise if this article's anything to go by.

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/05/05/202838.php

[Jedah]

I played it till early morning again at the friend's house. I liked it even more. I stole my first helicopter, flew down to the small island where the statue of Liberty is. Killed my first pigeon, there are 199 left. I got drunk and the graphics effect + controls is so close to reality you feel like throwing up. Your mobile phone can get annoying when everyone is looking for you while you take a tour around the city. I got called "malaka" by some Greek taxi driver, because I crashed on his taxi. It's a very lively game, surprising in every corner. Missions have the typical nature of previous games, with some exceptions.

Spoiler

For example in a mission you need to kill a homosexual dude. You enter your local Internet cafe, login to a date site, send him an email, arranging an appointment and introduce him to your shotgun.

[Bradford]

I certainly can't say I'm not enjoying playing the game, but I'm twenty hours or so in and the missions are getting pretty stale. One thing that Action Button touched on, and I'd like to expand on though, is the issue of mission structure. The mere fact that virtually all the missions consist of "go there, kill that guy" is not a problem in and of itself. It's the lack of options in how you go about it. One of the biggest eliminators of any options is fact that once you get close enough to the target that the yellow blip turns red, the target automatically knows that you're nearby (or maybe exactly where you are, I'm not sure). From that point on, you have essentially no options other than to go in the front door guns blazing.

If they had given the target the kind of life that the rest of the city has, I should be able to hang out, listen in on business deals, maybe find out when he is alone at home or when he has a lot of guards around because he's transferring a large amount of money (that I could steal) and make decisions about when and where I take him out. But it's like the developers had their A-team create the city, and the missions were all written by the guys who ride the short bus to work.

For some reason I was recalling Mercenaries from a couple of years ago, and it had a pretty lifeless world in comparison, but the missions were all freeform, and it was much more satisfying to sneak around your target's general area and exercise some decision-making between the beginning and end of a mission. Would it have been so hard to do that in GTAIV?

[icycalm]

η εκδοση του PS3 ειναι απαραδεκτη (1024x600, που τρεχει στο PS3 με ανυπαρκτο AA, η ιδια η εταιρια βγηκε και μιλησε οτι ειναι ενα ματσο ΧΑΛΙΑ, μεχρι και τεχνικη blurring εφαρμοσαν για να κρυψουν την σκαλοπατουρα), παρε Xbox στο οποιο παιζει 1280x720 με 2xΑΑ και οπου η οποια οπως καταλαβαινεις ειναι σαφως ανωτερη!

http://www.thelab.gr/archive/index.php/t-57772.html

He is basically saying that the 360 version is visually far superior, because it is rendered at 1280x720 with 2xAA, whereas the PS3 is rendered at 1024x600 with no AA, and apparently uses some sort of blurring technique to hide its ugliness.

In the same thread they also say that, given a powerful enough PC, the PC version is visually superior to both console versions, due to various reasons including a selectable feature called "Shadow Density":

Shadow Density
Shadow Density controls the number of shadows generated for positional lights in exterior environments. These shadows are exclusive to the PC version and can have a major impact on CPU and GPU performance

[icycalm]

Finally got around to playing this last night. I am enjoying myself so far, more so that I was in Vice City or San Andreas, but I am only a couple of hours in so I haven't had a chance to see the alleged tedium of the missions. As regards setting, plot and atmosphere, though, this is the best since GTAIII -- though still far inferior to it. Only the intro totally blew me away, in terms of cinematic epicness, but they don't really follow up on it.

Love what they've done to the melee combat system: block, counter, disarm, etc. -- it's better than Shenmue's at least!

More comments to come... And by the way, if anyone knows anything about the downloadable mission packs let us know in this thread.

Edit: Note that the Action Button review I linked earlier on has been pulled for some reason, which makes me regret not copy-pasting it in here for safekeeping. I think James Edwards, the author, had a falling out with Tim Rogers, ABDN's owner, so he pulled all his reviews from the site. There's still a review of the game by Tim on the site, I think, but it's definitely not worth reading.

[Bradford]

Icy, are you playing on a PC or a console?

[icycalm]

360, why?

Played another four hours. It's very easy so far, but still enjoyable. The mechanics have been improved in so many ways it'd take careful observation and a long list to get through all of them. And there are some really stunning moments graphics-wise. You just have to get the city at the right time at the right spot and in the right angle. The social commentary stuff is still hilarious. Good game, I'd say. 4/5 if I had to rate it right now. We'll see.

[Khazar]

I had a great time with GTAIV. I loved the dialog and that fact that it made fun of basically everything about American culture, and a few others too. It's like Niko Bellic is the straight man and Liberty City and everyone else in it are the comic foil. Some of the missions felt strange when taking Niko's personality into account, like the assassination missions. He seemed like a pretty level headed guy who was just trying to survive in a dangerous environment, and missions like that threw a wrench in it. They were still entertaining to play though, so I can't fault the designers for padding out more time with them.