The Overview
(If you know what it’s all about, skip ahead to the next section)
To that small minority who don’t know what the GTA franchise is all about, you’re about to find out. The idea behind GTA was just that Grand Theft Auto, stealing cars, killing people and generally not giving a damn about the law. The third instalment of the game and the first not to use a birds-eye view could be considered the game that made GTA go mainstream. Compared to the games before it GTA III brought a completely new style of game-play which these days is referred to as the “sand-box” style of play. This meant that players were placed in a gargantuan-sized city where they had the power to whatever they wanted, including breaking into cars, jumping off buildings and rampaging to the extent where you could jump in a tank and drive down the streets of a city not so different to New York. Sounds pretty fun eh?
The Game-play
“The fuel that drives the machine”; The game-play of the GTA series definitely suits such an analogy and as such I’m sure your wanting to know more than anything else how IV plays compared to its predecessors.
Driving
The differences in driving style from car to car have been made even more prominent; making players appreciate the handling and acceleration of that sports car over the (lack of) ability of a soccer-mum van.
Players will also have the ability to break the window and fire out (or throw in the case of a grenade) with any of their weapons, this of course would be invaluable when trying to get away from the authorities.
Combat
Think Gears of War. That, Rainbow Six: Vegas or Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. That’s right, you guessed it: covering. I personally have no problem with it, I found the gun fights in San Andreas hard to deal with in terms of how the targeting system worked and this adds another level of sophistication to it. The other major change to the gun fighting combat is the targeting system. Players can auto target an enemy and then switch to a more precise aim to shoot specific parts of the body.
The physical combat has had refinements to it as well. I won’t go into too much detail, but suffice to say that players have the ability to block, punch and kick with varying degrees of power and create combos with certain button presses with correct timing.
In Part II I’ll will look at the story of GTA IV and how well the developers pulled off the look and feel of the game.
