Presentation
The most focused on point previewers of GTA IV are touching on is how the game responds to players’ input. By this I mean that when you are running through the streets, if you run into an un-expecting pedestrian, the pedestrian will be shoved out of the way and look disgruntled as the player continues on their way. This dynamic animation reminds me of Assassins Creed; however not to the same extent. The mobile phone has been integrated to a far greater extent into the user-interface, the main example being described is when you are have just been wasted or busted while on a mission and are outside the spawning point you have the ability to bring up your cell and restart the mission from there.
Story
The story is based around a guy named Niko. Niko is a fresh immigrant to Liberty City and as such starts at the bottom of the food-chain. The story follows him on his way to the top via some of the less conventional social groups (drug dealers, the mob, etc.). This comment seems to follow very closely after comments made about the presentation, and that is that the voice acting is superb. One of the earlier missions is described where the player has to transport and protect a Jamaican drug dealer. The trip is rattled with context fitting, hard to understand (due to the strong Jamaican accent) conversation. Context being that if you’re taking your time the drug dealer might tell you “you’re going to slow!” to which Niko replies: “I’ll get there in my own time.”
Cohesion
The main other focus that previewers have been raving about is how well the game feels like a cohesive experience rather than just a play through of another game. One previewer describes his first experience with a gun and no specific objective. He finds an old man walking down a path and as he firstly shoots him in the hip he sees the old man convincingly grimace and twist at the intense amount of pain he must have been in. After shooting him in the head the previewer states how he felt empathy towards the character and found it hard to deal more pain to the already wounded man.
Most describe the cohesiveness as mix of: Firstly an unscrupulous attention to detail and secondly how well the many great additions from all fields of the game flow together in a synergetic way.
