One of my roomates picked up Grand Theft Auto 4 for the Playstation 3 (which I’ll write about later). I played and loved GTA 3, the graphics are definitely nice and there’s no shortage of debauchery. Rockstar put a lot of thought in to the game, for example, my roommate right now is driving around in a stolen cop car that he’s unintentionally destroyed. The car has 3 lights left on the top and the siren is all screwed up, changing pitch much more sporadically than it normally does.
Rockstar also made the city look awesome. It feels to me that there is a very slight haze all over the view, which adds a cool element. So far the plot line has been pretty good, I haven’t been following it as much since I only really seem to enjoy flying around the city in one of the motorcycles, pissing off the cops and doing crazy stuns on the airplane runway.
One problem I do have with the game is the level of violence. I don’t know if it’s that I’m getting older and am starting to stomach it less but one of the very first fights the roommate got in to involved stabbing a guy with a knife till he dropped to the ground. It was quite a shocking thing to see and maybe it was just the realism but I didn’t find it appealing. There’s also the fact that as you run through pedestrians in your car you pick up their blood, almost like paint splash on the side of the car. The realism of the guns is even more disturbing. You can mow down a crowd with an Uzi and blood will go flying.
The only saving grace, if you can call it that, is that besides missions, if you mow down an entire crowd with a gun and they fall to the ground, they’ll usually get back up. You can keep working them and they’ll stay down but maybe this is Rockstar’s way of saying that it’s just a game and no one dies (which was proved wrong 10 minutes in to the game.)
I will still continue to enjoy flying through the city at top speeds trying to stay on my motorcycle while attemping to avoid smashing in to cars.
