Let me start by saying this. The ESRB rating system, while not perfect, should still carry weight. This game is NOT AT ALL for kids. It's subject matter, language, and visual sequences are very adult. It is not even safe to play while kids are present, anywhere within eye or earshot. Please pay attention to the ratings, and enforce them for your kids. This game was intended for adults to play.
I'm guessing by now, most of you that had planned on purchasing and playing GTA4 have already done so, and have formed your own solid opinions about the game. These are mine..
When you first start the game, it leads you through the opening cinematic, which is done on the in game rendering and engine. This isn't a bad engine or anything, for the most part, it looks great for just being around in the city and what-not. But I think for the cinematic aspect of the game, it looks only marginally better than the one in GTA Vice City. This is a minor gripe, and I'm sure doing it the way they did was done to decrease load times, as well as make the best use of the limited space on the DVD for the huge sprawling, living world.
Which brings me to my next point. I used to always complain about GTA that you would never see the police chasing someone else, it seemed as if you were the only person in the whole city they were ever after. But yesterday, as I was running across the street to jack some car or something, I heard an officer yell, "Stop, or I'll shoot." Instinctively, I thought he was yelling at me so I prepared to start sprinting. Then, this random person goes sprinting across the screen in front of me, and a second later this fat cop is chasing after him. I'm intrigued, the world is actually alive? It must be scripted. So I follow. The guy rounds a corner, just as a police car comes flying up the street, and plows right into him. His limp body goes flying past me, just as I try to run out of the way and the cop car plows into me as well.
Speaking of not being able to get out of the way in time, I'm so frustrated with the movement and camera that within my first hour of playing I was almost regretting the purchase. Niko stays in this, leisurely slow walk pace all the time, unless you press the run button, which makes him run at a good pace, or tap for sprint. It not that this is a horrible system, I just don't like it. The game pad is built with a joystick in it. If i just barely press the joystick forward, I should just barely move forward, if I press it all the way, it should be moving faster. Even if without the run button it was just walking, this guy walks funeral procession slow all the time. Which makes it really hard to dodge bullets, try to push the cover button, fire, and move the camera, cause its usually in the exact position you don't want it to be in. This also plagues the driving mechanism of the game, because the camera won't stay in any kind of place that makes sense for driving. If i make a left turn, I'm stuck looking at the left of the car for about 100 yards, before the camera catches up in its slow auto return to center. So, now a car chase, which happens frequently, becomes a 'Can your car survive running into everything to the other side of the city, and keep that other guy on your radar' race. This was NEVER a problem in GTA3 or Vice City. I didn't really like San Andreas much, so I'm unsure about that one.
On the bright side, the driving is more realistic in this one that any other iteration of the series to date. A sports car drives like a sports car, a delivery van drives like a delivery van. The difference is more than just in acceleration speed. This is great, but also makes the game quite a bit harder, as a 3-4 star wanted level becomes very hard to escape if you didn't plan your crime ahead enough to have a good car ready to escape in. This isn't a problem though, just gives a more intense feel to the game. If evading the law is harder, you try to avoid being wanted more. I enjoy that, as the game comes across as trying to be more like the telling of an actual story, instead of a mass murder fest, like the others eventually descended into when the boredom and monotony of the story settled in.
The story in GTA4, so far, is done wonderfully. You feel for the main character, although he is still very ruthless, and you very much hate the people you should hate. Interesting thing in this one is the choice on morality the game sometimes gives you. Sometimes you have the option to kill someone, or let them live. Either of the two choices could, and should have ramifications on the story and the world later, just as they would in real life, and that is potentially exciting, and also very intimidating. I'm keeping save files handy.
I'm not sure if its a problem with my XBOX, or the game, but it seems like I'm having framerate issues, like the game is running at a lower framerate than it should be. Gordon suggested this might be due to the part that my computer was running things at such astronomical FPS, and I had grown accustomed to it. But it doesn't appear that was with other games on the 360. This is minor, as its never been so slow it was unplayable, but its a minor annoyance. Other people have complained about the texture draw, like the Mass Effect problem, but the only time I could replicate that issue was driving an extremely fast car down a long straight stretch of road, and coming over a hill or some other structure where the GPU hadn't been drawing anything previously. But, with a world this open with no loading in between places, some render slowdown has to be expected.
Overall, for the first few days, the game is good. If the story remains as good, or hopefully gets better, I could even play it to its conclusion. The dialogue and motion capture, as well as physics, seem to be very good thus far. Weather effects aren't visually amazing, but affect the world from pedestrians pulling out umbrellas, to causing your car to spin easily when you are reckless. All in all its a good game, I think the mad rush to giving it 10's and such may be a bit overboard though. If you're a Grand Theft Auto junkie, you probably already own the game. If its not your style, or you're new to the genre, you might wanna rent it first.
-j
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