Previews// Grand Theft Auto IV

[b]{ I’ve already said that tooling around Liberty City in the car of your choice – by choice, I mean ‘of your own thuggery’ – is a pleasure. Well, the entire look and feel of the levels I played were almost enough to have me bothering to discover the underlying technological nerdisms that made it come so very much to life. The way the 360 was made to show different lighting effects as day turned gently into twilight; twilight morphed to darkness and darkness was warmed by the rising sun could have made lesser men than myself err into poetic over-writing.

Suffice to say, there is very little indeed to distract you from immersion into your surroundings. Okay, so everything is drawn with what would appear to be soft, pastel crayons that make the edges of buildings blur into the sky. There is, in fact, a slightly unreal quality (not as in the Engine, nerd!) to the environment, but this is a game not a reality simulator, and I like having my disbelief suspended like a football player with wife issues. }[/b]

Fifthly, Ragdoll Physics and flaming ‘realism’: People either like ragdoll physics or are simply so incredibly lazy that they can’t be bothered to stand up and say, “Enough is enough! Ragdolls are for small children!” Yes, I hate ragdoll physics like I hate a mime who has taken a mild dose of ketamine. As for ‘realism’ – bollocks to realism. If I wanted ‘realism’ I’d go out into the real world and see real things for real. I want games… imagination, creativity, I want realistic-ness. That is to say that I want reality that obviously isn’t because reality is unpleasant.

{ My goodness but GTA IV looks fine. The use of the Euphoria engine (I can’t wait for Star Wars: Force Unleashed now) to ensure that those other hapless characters you meet along the way behave and physically react in a way that is believable – is well... realistical. }

So, there’s the reasons that someone who doesn’t really get GTA went to the hands-on.

So, back to Rockstar, a dark room, an Xbox 360 controller and a copy of GTA IV on a huge HD telly.

Back to me and David, the friendly marketing chap who is politely stifling his guffaws at my cack-handed attempts to navigate an incredibly navigable set of maps.

“What about the PS3 version, David?” I asked, trying to distract him.

“It’s about two weeks behind”, he managed to get out.

So, that’s why this hands-on is Xbox 360-based.

The playable preview of GTA IV that I saw earlier this month impressed me. It impressed me with the ease of its control. It impressed me with its humour. It impressed me with its sandboxy, do-what-you-like freedom. It impressed me with the fact that the mobile phone enabled me not only to receive mission details, but also to retry them quickly.

I got just under two hours to spend with the game. This was my fault, even after my churlish admission to David that “I don’t really get GTA” the Rockstar rep was still keen to give me as much time as needed to see it - I mean play. Putting aside the lack of a PS3 comparator due to it not being ready, I’ve got to say that the freedom offered to me to do what the bloody hell I wanted with the available 360-based missions suggested to me that the wait for the release was not only worthwhile but well placed.