So, I played GTAIV yesterday with a DualShock 3 PS3 controller. The DualShock 3 is a nice revision of the PS3 controller. The Rumble motors add weight to the controller, making it feel more like a controller than a toy. The added rumble works just fine and feels like what a next gen controller should.
My initial reaction to the game was skepticism. I’ve played GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas. Each of those games has a differing atmosphere, but essentially they are all the same game. Well, GTAIV is no exception. You start off as a Russian immigrant, Niko Bellic, visiting his cousin, but with a purpose you don’t find out until you play through a bit. Niko is really the same character you play in the previous GTA games, but this time he’s Russian. Kinda like in San Andreas, where you play as a black guy. Same character, but they change a fundamental feature and it makes you think you are playing someone else.
GTAIV starts out with you driving people around the city and eventually you get up to killing other people while you drive around the city. The controls are pretty basic with some interesting twists that I kind of like. You can beat up someone with three differing attacks from kicks to a couple of different punches. Adding dodging and counterattacks was nice as well. The aiming system frustrated me for a while until I figured it out. If you depress L2 on the controller, Niko will automagically target the nearest walking human being. From there, you can use the Right Stick to change targets (almost) smoothly. Sometimes, though, you want to shoot someone out of their car, well the auto-lock doesn’t do that. It took me several hours to figure out that if you depress the fire trigger, R2, a little, the target reticule comes up and you don’t immediately fire off into oblivion. This added to my fun a little bit.
Of course, shooting people out of their cars and beating/stabbing people on the street is bound to get you in trouble. This is where the redesigned Wanted system comes in handy. Before, to get away from the police, to lower your Wanted Rating, you pretty much just drove around as fast as you could in order to get away from the police. Now, there is an area the cops search for you in around where you committed your crime. The lower your Wanted rating, the smaller the search area. If you manage to get outside the search area and stay out of sight of the police, your rating goes away and you are free to beat up more hookers for money until the cops again catch you improperly using said hooker. Speaking of which, hookers are harder to find in GTAIV than they were ever before. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places.
The controls. GTAIV gives you the opportunity to take advantage of the SIXAXIS controls of the PS3 controller. The DualShock 3, btw, still has good motion control, but I haven’t sufficiently tested it as I will explain in a second. In Niko’s cell phone, there is a SIXAXIS tutorial that takes you through controlling a motorcycle, boat, and a helicopter with the motion controls. The first two aren’t bad, but they are still too… wobbly for me. The times I want a hard turn, the bike/boat only turns a bit, when I want a little correction, it damn near turns completely around. Maybe it’s just me. Then, the motion control of the helicopter. Impossible. Well, not entirely, but holy crap does it suck. Controlling the helicopter with the SIXAXIS is like flying the bird with oven mitts on your hands and a rabid monkey in your lap. Let’s suffice to say, very unstable and hard to control. That being said, the rest of the non-motion controls are pretty sufficient. Driving is the same as always, but this time with a bit more feel of realism in that some cars are harder to control at high speeds and hitting other cars can lead to disastrous results. Results that can be very fun.
Overall, I have to say that I like GTAIV. There are enough subtle, small differences that the game is recognizable from its predecessors. The addition of a GPS system that will tell you how to get to where you want to go is a very much helpful one. The cell phone and the ability to call numbers like 911 outside your phonebook is also a nice touch. I just wish you could get into a car while on the phone. You can drive and get out of a car while talking on the phone, but you can’t get into a car. Mildly annoying, but not unreasonable as most of the time, you are stealing your mode of transit.
I certainly don’t think GTAIV is the perfect game as all the review sites seem to think it is, but it is a darn good one. A game I am happy to own as it gives me an almost overwhelming world to play in with an almost overwhelming number of missions to choose from at any one time. If you have a PS3 or an Xbox 360, give it a try. I’d be interested in knowing what you first-time GTA players think versus those who have played GTA since the top-down beginning.
