GTA4 Initial impressions
Posted on May 1, 2008 - Filed Under Gaming, Review
Okay, first off, expect more of these Initial and quick impressions. I’m having a hard time right now writing a full review for Crisis Core. I want it to be depth, but not full of spoilers. Keeping a balance there is giving me issues…any way. On to GTA4.
The first thing you notice when you put in GTA 4 on the ps3 is, about 10 minutes is going to be spent starring at a bar move from left to right. Yay installations! Sure it will pay off in the long run with shaving a few seconds off every piece of loading and making it as seamless as possible. However, when you just bought a game and have class in 30 minutes, spending half of it on install is annoying.
Once you’re in the actual game and pass the opening cinematic you get your first taste of liberity city. It’s not going to drop your jaw just looking around. Don’t get me wrong, the game look’s solid, but better looking games have come out like Assassin’s Creed which is also a Sandbox style game. Simply, not quite as vast. When you get in your first car, odds are if you’ve played the other games you are going to be like me and push X to start moving. Guess what, not going to work. Oh the joy of changed, R2 and L2 are now your gas and break. R1 is handbrake. They also seemed to have improved their physics to be a little more realistic on the driving end. Hit the handbrake going full speed to make a turn, no longer will that turn be made 9 time out of 10. Now you’ll do 6 full spins and end up half a block down the street. Try to do your normal brake, the car seems like it doesn’t just lock rotation of the wheels, but also locks up horizontal movement as well. You’ll watch your car go straight as you’ve got the analog stick moved all the way in the direction you wanted to go.
As you can tell, driving annoys me. What’s worse then driving, walking is default movement. Not you walk if you push the analog about half way, you walk now no matter what. Hold X run, tap X to spring. Why change what works? I get you want realism, but gamers hate slow movement.
Alas, it’s a GTA game so you keep playing because come on we all want to get to the part where we can visit the entire city and go to all the stores(mainly ammonation). Once you get your first handgun, you come to the next perplexing control change. Grab your gun, push L2 to target, if you have the auto target on it will lock on to someone in that general direction. Again, as a fan of the previous games I push O to begin shooting. Alas no bullets come flying, but now who I’m aiming at starts firing or fighting me because i just pulled a gun on them. So in panic I push O more, still no bullets come out. Then I finally remember it’s R1 to fire now, mumble a stupid R*, and fire out a few.
All of that makes this game sound kinda bad doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t, it’s just a bad design. As you play the control quirks go away, you get better at driving the cars, you start to remember r1 instead of O and so forth. Then your just left with a big city with a lot to do. Some pretty fun and interesting mission, and i’m still fairly early in the game so i can only assume it gets better. A general high quality of the things around you. Then of course, all the things that make gta fun in the first place. Senseless, mindless, violence. Though I wish i could keep the ‘classic’ controls and physics, change is apart of life and i’ll just have to adept to GTA’s changes.
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