26)Grand Theft Auto-4 Reviews Part-1 (Ps3/Xbox360)

"Rockstar, you guys have done it again! Key word: AGAIN"

GTAIV Ps3 is definitely one of the most hyped titles….ever. Even if you don't play games, you've most likely heard of it somewhere, probably from kids who play it at school, coworkers, CNN, radio, or even on a delinquent kid's permanent record. Let's agree, it's everywhere! However, the main question: Does this game live up to all the hype it's getting?
GTAIV takes place in… yup… you've guessed it. Liberty City. After seeing that exact same city in FOUR of Rockstar's games already, it makes you wonder why Rockstar hasn't thought to innovate instead of boring the same audience with a next gen rehash of the same game at the same location. Fact is- they haven't. They've promised us many things about this new gen, but besides the upgraded graphics and animations, I just fail to see what new things GTAIV brings to the table as opposed to the last generation of gaming.

Graphics (7/10)

I definitely give Liberty City some credit here – the city is relatively large. Buildings are huge, highways are rather complex, and there is a lot more detail here. Despite how massively flawed it is, the city is huge, and you'll just marvel at how big it is. I'd say that Liberty City has doubled in
size in comparison to the last GTA3. But however, this ‘marveling' will be short lived, especially when glaring flaws soon hit you right in the middle of gameplay:ps3

Frames per second – For those who get queasy from some games that run at a choppy frame rate, well, this'll make a really great vomit inducer. The framerate is inconsistent with frequent drops throughout that the inconsistency has become consistent itself. Some games have problems with the frame rate being awful when a lot of action is on screen. Well, the frame rate will drop anytime, even if you're running through the park. Of course, I'll have to take into account the big city and the pedestrians being a factor, but seriously, the last thing I need is a bunch of framerate drops with cops and crooks on my tail.

Visual quality – Apart from Skyscrapers and overlapping highways, the visual quality doesn't even pass up to be decent. Looking afar ahead of you, everything is incredibly blurry. Seriously, I'm not exaggerating or even kidding, it is incredibly blurry, and this may just ruin the whole atmosphere for some people. And for those queasy people that I mentioned, this'll be another great reason to have a bucket next to you when you play. When driving, looking into the blurry and jaggy distance will almost guarantee a headache. You'll probably say one word when looking at this: Ew. Up close, things do look better, however jaggy they may be.

Pop in – This is definitely a problem here. It really does get bad. People, cars, buildings, trash cans, mailboxes, lampposts, and signs all pop in at times. Usually, it's far away, but often times, it's fairly close and you'll sometimes bump into things you don't see, causing the police to go into alert. This gets a lot worse when you're driving fast. There was a mission where I was chasing someone on a motorcycle at blazing fast speed, the road became completely blank, and 3 seconds later, textures and objects just popped up. The thing is, Rockstar tried to go for realism in GTAIV,PS3 however, they must realize that pop ins like this do lose that sense of realism and immersion.

The physics engine has improved a whole lot here. Shooting people while they're running will make them trip and fall. It's quite funny to shoot someone on foot just to see this happen. However, it seems as these pedestrians are really, really weak while at it. I mean, just walking against someone would literally make them fall to the ground. However, you're really weak as well. You might want to seriously avoid even slow moving traffic. Even a car that runs at you in 2 mph will knock you to the ground making Niko squeal in pain.

Gameplay (6/10)

If you've played any of the past series, the gameplay hasn't changed here much. It's still the same old GTA PS3with the same classic style of missions – drive here, shoot someone, shoot a bunch of people, try to get away from someone, deliver something, etc, rinse, repeat. Yay, fun, right? It's doing the same exact thing the past versions have done except with different cutscenes in between. It's definitely an easy way out in order to play the safe game. There are, however, things about this gameplay that has changed:

Shooting – The controls have been a lot more revamped and resemble more of a linear third person shooter now, much like Kill.Switch, Uncharted, and Gears of War. However, this isn't done too well, considering this shooting system just doesn't work in a type of open world and non-linear game such as this. You press L2 halfway to go into free aim, you press L2 all the way to go into lock on. People here move quite fast, so most of the time, you'll just end up going back to the lock on system. Anyway, while aiming, it brings you into an over the shoulder view mode, but I can definitely say that there was not much thought into this. The over the shoulder mode just doesn't work in this type of game - In this free, open world, you need to view more of your surroundings, yet, it focuses up on what's in front of you, something that would only work in a linear game. The only time it works is during the linear missions, but it's still an annoyance every where else.

Buy this game=KENG Ps3 Games Shop Online