Sam Leith takes an exclusive test-drive of this year's most hotly tipped video game.
In his review he writes:
"It is, I know, bad taxi etiquette to punch my elbow out and smash the offside window. The taxi-driver thinks so too. We screech to a halt in the middle of the traffic, and he gets out to give me a piece of his mind".
Grand Theft Auto 4 is an important game for Rockstar, not least because it was the first title in the franchise to use the newly created RAGE engine.
There’s never a bad time to relive its magic, and with rumours of a potential Grand Theft Auto IV remaster making the rounds, why wouldn’t you?
Not sure tbh.. I'd say 3 was the most overrated. It's pretty rough to go back to, it was quite rough even trying it just after Vice City. Lack of humour and vehicles that had the weight of polystyrene with top speeds to match.
VC & the stories games (even LCS) were all fun. I remember there being a lot of praise for GTA 3 on TV and in game mags, saying it was a Dreamcast killer of a game or words to that effect, and honestly after playing it on PC I didn't think it was that special and kind of dull, had the odd moment of fun but hardly anything. I heard they cut online multiplayer at the last moment for PC, shame because it could've made all the difference.
Would've loved to have seen what kind of cartoony GTA style game they could've done on Dreamcast as a competitor, I bet something along the lines of Simpsons Hit & Run would've worked well.
@numberz How can the game that defined a generation and was copied by everyone be overrated? Was a asinine comment
For me 4 was better than 5 was more realistic and the physics was on another level! 5 was a major let down in that department!
@blacktar you have your opinion i have mine. I found the game dull, and it is for the most part. It set the foundation for the much superior SA and VC however.
You say GTA III is overrated because it's rough to go back to and rough to play after Vice City. Your entire opinion is in hindsight. Of course it's rough going back to it today. It came out over 20 years ago. That doesn't take away from the fact that it pioneered a lot and was a paradigm shift for a lot of trends in game development today. Vice City in a lot of ways is just a more refined version of III. It was San Andreas that took the big leap forward from a design perspective. If III doesn't release, who knows if the open world genre would be what it is now. How can that be overrated?
Not at all. My most played game of all time. Truly stunning accomplishment in gaming and with PC graphics mods it just took it to levels beyond anything that came before and possibly even after.
People who moan about it generally tend to be people who played it on under powered consoles and couldn’t handle the more realistic car physics. It was the slightly more realistic approach that made it stand out more. Absolutely love it. In fact I always said Vice city was my favourite of all time. But after going back to the remaster I realised 4 was actually the best.
I'm no critic and I consider it the best games in the franchise after recently replaying every entry it's story when paired in conjunction with it's DLC was and still is amazing.
Lol. Fun fact. That dlc cost a certain green colored console 50 million for exclusiveness. Un heard of back then. Just to point out the hypocrisy of the 3rd party exclusive agenda going on.
Anyway how the dlc better then the base game by a mile. Lol imo
That can only mean they scored it an 11/10!
Whoo! 110% average for GTA IV! Lets see halo 3 do that!
10 days to go and we are going to see more and more of these review with the same thing being written over and over again. And with out a doubt a day or two before release you can bet on it that the release date will be broken or some moron with try to play it online.
10 more days my friend.
my 360 rrod 2 days ago and i'm out of warranty.i really wanted gta for xbox,but i'll get it for ps3.i'm not into wasting money,so i won't buy nother xbox until they're better or cheaper.xbox is the most fun i've had with any gaming machine ever.gamertag xxmachetero RIP.my psn and steam tags will remember u always.i still have 7 months left on my live acount and like 500msp's.do they refund?
8 days to go, on the 9th day, I will be playing GTA4 :D