GTA4: The Follow Up

Picked up my copy the day it came out, though naturally (as is appropriate) I went for the ultimate in geekiness and grabbed one on the stroke of midnight from an Asda over 20 miles away. Still, it was definitely worth it. Three days in and there is much to report, the textures and graphics are very smooth (I have the 360 version), though as ever draw distance is annoyingly poor.

The character feels complete and the new physics engine is absolutely superb. When you kill someone now for example, they aren’t just a static body lying on the ground, they flop about if you kick them. Similarly, people won’t always bleed now, and when they do its subjective to what caused it. Beat someone to death and there will be no blood at all, shoot them and there will be a fair amount, run over them, and you will have the red stuff splattered across your car.

It’s the details of the game that really give it the wow factor this time round, which is different – because the wow factor previously was always the size. Thats not to say that this game is small, its really not that much smaller than san andreas, but its far far more refined. You can’t walk through your own car door any more, and when you get on a motorbike, you put on a helmet. The lip animations during cutscenes are far better (as are the hands!) and the water effects are stunning.

The most fun I’ve had so far in the game is getting drunk (thats right) as the screen goes out of focus, and as your character stumbles around the street hurting himself, your camera vibrates and shakes violently making it very tricky indeed to control (like being drunk!). Don’t try driving though, the police pull you over for drink driving.

My only gripe so far is that the handling of the cars is.. well.. in a word.. terrible. I know people will argue that ‘this is more realistic’.. but there’s a fine line. I want graphics and physical elements of the game to be realistic, but I want the interactivity and the game play to just be good fun. The best part of the old GTA games was that the cars were awsomely easy to drive, and while some were old bangers, the nice ones were an absolute dream. So far with GTA4 every car handles the same, just with different levels of acceleration. None of them can break, and even spinning the car completely around with the handbreak and accelarating full throttle facing the opposite direction still causes you to take a good 100meters to slow down, and eventually stop.

Gameplay is superb, with niko having full access to email and online dating (so his mum can send him email rather than direct mail) the depth of the game is really something else.