Grand Theft Auto IV

[SPTO]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

When MS says exclusive, they mean that no other system can have DLC content for GTAIV

Heh, well I guess that means most OS'ers are going to get it for X360 then.

[bkfount]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

I hated this in the Driver series. If it is in GTA IV I hope it's not as crazy as it was in Driver.

yeah, it was so bad, that if you even used the e-brake to stop at a red light, the cops would get pissed off.

[Blzer]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

Heh, well I guess that means most OS'ers are going to get it for X360 then.

Not if ther DLC costs as much as the game itself.

[bkfount]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

Heh, well I guess that means most OS'ers are going to get it for X360 then.

If you had both consoles, then the 360 version is the one to get. However, it's not a deal breaker for me. At best, I'll pick up another 360 this Christmas, or early next year and rent the game to try the DLC out. I'll get it for the ps3 for the time being.

[Darkleaf]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

If you had both consoles, then the 360 version is the one to get. However, it's not a deal breaker for me. At best, I'll pick up another 360 this Christmas, or early next year and rent the game to try the DLC out. I'll get it for the ps3 for the time being.

I think Im gonna do the same by the time I even finish with the original it will probably be Christmas or even next year before I will need something more.
This game looks amazing.

[ThaGenecyst]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

[Flawless]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

New Previews

Kikizo

IGN

Gamespot

TeamXbox

...

[ODogg]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

can someone please post highlights, the sites are blocked here at work

[ThaGenecyst]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4




This is pretty much a perfect Replica of the Williamsburg Bridge

[Flawless]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

can someone please post highlights, the sites are blocked here at work

The Kikizo preview is one big highlight.

Kikizo

And the bottom line is good news. In the rawest control terms, Grand Theft Auto IV offers a weightier, more physical gameplay experience than any of its predecessors, whether on foot or driving. And at the same time, the impression we started to get of the sheer freedom in a city this dynamic (but not oversized), together with far superior characters and voice acting than ever before has us convinced this is a game even more compelling than San Andreas.

A good example of this is the retry system. Once a mission has been initiated, when you run out of heath and emerge from hospital (or if you're busted and emerge from the police station - except without your weapons), you can simply press up on the D-pad to pull out your cellphone and find that you have a text. Press A to read the text, and you'll have the option to immediately retry the mission. You can, of course, ignore it and travel to the mission at your own pace, or even take on other missions instead. It's one of many ways Rockstar has put thought into making everything about GTA IV more user friendly, wrapped in presentation that suits both the series' established values and its new, modern-day setting.

Hold A to block, or if you press it and get the timing right, you will dodge an incoming attack. Press B to jab, or tap it to do strings of punches. Press Y for a much heavier swinging punch and Y to kick. When you're fighting hand-to-hand like this, you get the same eight markers inside the reticule on the person you're targeting, indicating their remaining health (the same as when you're shooting them). In addition, the marker will be either green or red, indicating the person's level of hostility - red means they're fighting back, green means they want to run away. You can put together combos too. Pressing Y twice - the second time just as the first blow lands - is going to do some good damage.

Only one island (Broker) is unlocked to begin with, in the same way that only Los Santos was available at the start of San Andreas, but since freedom is the killer app and the incentive to play, it's a privilege that must be earned . Until areas outside Broker are opened up, the bridges are blocked with police blockades. The second area will open up "sooner than it has been before", we're told, and "certainly going up to Boham is very soon." It would be a push to say that you'll feel significantly freer than you did in San Andreas, which rewrote all the rules on freedom . I would say the freedom feels more refined than before.

There's a good sense of the dimensions of your vehicle, and accidentally crashing seems a lot less common. It feels instinctive to predict how various types of vehicle are going to behave when you attempt certain things, and this allows you to calculate risk on the road. Driving feels more rewarding as a result. If you need to make a particularly fast getaway, or if you want to get from one island to the next as fast as possible, the thrill of successfully avoiding heavy traffic at high speed, or negotiating a busy cross section using the handbrake, makes you feel like a star.

When necessary, headlights can also be put on full beam or dipped (but can't be turned off).

The cars themselves are physically more convincing in general. Damage results in the hood becoming loose, and if you then drive at high speed, the g-force (or whatever - I'm no physicist) pushes it right up and it's likely to detach altogether. But if you slow down it gently lowers. You can test this out (and we did) and it's all procedural - not pre-animated. When further damage is done, the car is likely to have smoke bellowing from it, and the physical properties of the smoke behave just as realistically at varying speeds, even if it means it rushes back into the camera. The same goes for the smoke coming out of the window when someone is smoking in the car! If you crash , the driver and any passengers will jolt forwards due to their momentum. A particularly nasty crash might bend the wheels out of shape, which will constantly skew the direction you drive in. Car deaths are also spectacular. At one point we were in a bulky Securicor-style vehicle and after a pile-up the vehicle ended up on its side. Pressing Y to exit, Niko climbed out of the 'top' of the van where the passenger door was and jumped to safety. About ten seconds later, the impact of the exploding van sent Niko to the ground leaving our ears ringing - similar to the ringing sound effect in Half-Life 2.

(The oversized, stylised font of the previous games' HUD is a distant, clunky memory in GTA IV.) When you have somewhere to go for a mission or to meet someone, the direction will be marked on the radar (a small LJ icon for Little Jacob, for example - and an up arrow if the destination is above you). At any time, you have the option of pausing the game and using the full-size map to choose a destination on the GPS , which is then reflected on the radar . This marks the route out in blue, so there's no getting lost. In the higher-end cars, the GPS even tells you where to go in spoken words.

You launch into cover by pressing the right bumper and stay there until you press it again. When you're in cover, if you tap the right bumper and hit the left stick, Niko will dive from cover to cover in the direction you push, and if you double tap the right bumper, he'll automatically dive to the nearest bit of cover. If you're some distance away from cover, you can run into it, tap the right bumper, and Niko will dive or slide into that position. In cover, you can either blind fire with the right trigger (which offers loose, inaccurate aiming and scattershot gunfire), or you can lock on with the left trigger and shoot normally, which exposes you to danger but gives you accurate aiming.

When you're locked on, you can cycle through targets within sight, and you can use the right stick to accurately angle up for headshots or down towards feet or elbows (or whatever part of them is exposed if they too are hiding behind cover). Easing the reticule into the position you want is a refinement that woks very nicely, and itbenefits from the higher definition graphics because you can see what's going on and target precisely, avoiding the over-simplified auto-targeting people have complained about in the past.

Even when you're about to be arrested, you have flexible control over Niko. If you're stopped in the car, you're in trouble. If they catch up with you when you're on foot, however, they'll come within range, Niko will stop and put his hands behind his head, and as he slowly drops to his knees he can still escape out of it and run. This works up until the point when his knees are about to hit the ground. Escaping the hands of the law like this will increase your wanted level by one star.

There are eighteen radio stations in total, and although Rockstar has asked us not to list them all, (even though we wrote every single one down and noted its genre as part of our ongoing obsessive service to the GTA community), we can probably get away with saying our favourite is The Vibe, which is RNB and soul.

Without naming any names , we can safely say that the other genres on offer include funk, reggae, jazz, dance, modern Jamaican, pop, hardcore, hip hop and a specific Eastern European station.

Lots more in the preview, including detailed impressions of the 4 missions they got to play.

[Flawless]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

IGN

For the first time, Rockstar gave us hands-on access to both the PS3 and 360 versions of GTA IV. The good news is that no matter which system you prefer, you're going to have a great-looking game to play. There are only some minor visual differences noticeable between the two preview versions. The 360 build is brighter and has slightly more vibrant color while the PS3 build has less aliasing issues. Both display a solid, consistent framerate even during scenes with heavy pedestrian traffic and wild explosions. While graphics whores will find subtle differences to nitpick, the average Joe is going to be happy with either version.

In between exploring the missions of GTA IV (FYI, the game autosaves after each mission.), we took in a few of the sights and sounds of Liberty City. Now, we could've tried to obey the rules as we took in the towering buildings, snazzy cars and intricate details, but most of our tour involved driving on the sidewalk and kicking people in the head. However, not everyone was ready to take Niko's crap. Not everyone is heartless in Liberty City. For instance, we ran our car into the back of some dude's ride, and this guy gets out like he wants to start something. We'll be damned if someone's going to disrespect Niko, so we climb out and start punching the guy in the face. Suddenly, a passerby runs into the fray and starts beating on us. Outnumbered and out-skilled, we took off in another direction with the pissed off pair in hot pursuit. We ran for awhile, and when it was clear we couldn't lose'em, we fought, lost and ended up outside the hospital with a little less money.

GTA IV uses the six-star wanted system once again, where the level of police pursuit increases as your wanted level rises. The change, however, is that cops now work on a line-of-sight pursuit. Our mini-map on the HUD showed a flashing red and blue radius of police interest in finding us. So long as we were in that radius, our wanted rating could only go up. The trouble with getting out of that small radius of pursuit was that any time an officer attained line of sight on us, the radius readjusted. This created a frantic race scenario as we weaved through city streets hoping to shake the cop cars behind us, while also trying to avoid incoming police cars that were being given eyes on our location by the cops already trailing us. And things only got tougher when the police brought in their whirlybird.

With cops in hot pursuit and the spotlight of a chopper locked onto our car, we made a wrong turn, drove over a cliff and crashed onto a beach. As we ran from our burning car, we narrowly avoided being squashed by a squad car that -- in true CHiPs fashion -- followed us over the cliff. We did our best to stave off an arrest, firing a few rocket-propelled grenades to take down one of the choppers overhead. The curling smoke trail is a gorgeous thing. The little scuffle soon turned into a standoff on the beach as we laid down suppressing machinegun fire on a group of cops attempting to approach from the beach. We were saved by a miracle -- a second police car drove over the cliff and crashed into the group of pursuing officers.

Our first chance to put our hands on GTA IV proved more satisfying than we'd expected. And there are many aspects we still haven't explored. At the start of the game, Liberty City is on lockdown due to a recent terrorist threat. All bridges are closed except for those who have documentation proving their citizenship. Niko doesn't have such documents. But you can still cross the bridges anyway -- you just earn an automatic 5-star wanted level. We call that Threat Level Orange. We also verified that there are vigilante missions in the game. Just hop in a cop car and access the computer to find wanted criminals. We know it exists; we just didn't have the opportunity to try it out.

As with any Grand Theft Auto title, there's a very large city to explore with a seemingly endless amount of distractions. What we experienced was only a taste of what gamers can expect on April 29, when GTA IV hits store shelves. It's only two months away, but it's going to be a long wait.

[SageInfinite]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

This game will own my life.

[Adam Dayton]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

First order of buisness when getting the game- turn trailing off. It is annoying how everyone has an aura esque glow around them that hopefully can be turned off like in previous gtas (the trailing thing).

[ThaGenecyst]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

that line of site radius feature reminds me of the original Driver for Playstation

[ThaGenecyst]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

GTA 4 will take roughly 100 hours to finish

If you take your time, mind, and answer the phone.

GTA 4 will take roughly 100 hours to finish, Rockstar has told VideoGamer.com.

During our visit to Rockstar's London HQ for a hands-on with 2008's biggest game, we asked a spokesperson how long it would take to finish the series' next-gen debut. The answer: about 100 hours, if you take your time.

"If you're not in a rush and you answer the phone when it rings it'll take about 100 hours to complete", we were told. "It's harder to distinguish between main and side missions - there are loads of both. But there are more main missions than side missions. It's not as clear cut as it used to be because of the phone."

In GTA 4 main character Niko's phone is used to call computer-controlled characters, arrange drinking sessions, sort out dates with women and call in jobs. It'll also be the portal through which players will access GTA 4's multiplayer, on which there is currently little info.

Check out our mammoth GTA 4 hands-on preview for more juicy GTA 4 details. If that's not enough, you can ogle over 10 brand new screens here, and brush up on your GTA 4 knowledge with our Top 10: Brand new GTA 4 gameplay details. Phew.

http://www.videogamer.com/news/28-02-2008-7645.html