After spending 40+ hours with Grand Theft Auto IV, I thought I experienced enough of it to really share my views on this monolith sized game. Like many folks out there, I adore the game. More so than the previous installments where I found much of the praise to be misplaced — they were good games, but for good the sum of their parts and not the finer details. Did GTAIV change all that? Mostly.

Welcome Back To Liberty City

Liberty City changed a lot since I last visited it. It’s remarkable what a console generation leap forward can offer a game. An example? The ridiculous amount of detail into the world Rockstar managed to cram into Liberty City. While physical details are nice, what makes GTAIV “breathe” is the Euphoria engine. Thanks to this magical engine, nearly everything in the world reacts and behaves as you would expect. From cars and trash cans to people and traffic light poles, it can all be interacted with. It’s actually more shocking to find things that you can’t break or move. (I’m looking at you, trees.)

Holistically, Liberty City is a gorgeous place to live in. Weaving in between skyscrapers with a helicopter in the wee hours of the night never ceased to impress me. The murkiness of a rainy day was convincingly portrayed with glistening rain slicked roads and umbrella wielding denizens. And if that wasn’t convincing enough, wait for the literal rumble of thunder — I love the ever changing moods of Liberty City.

As a technical nut and one who values visual fidelity, I was both disappointed and impressed by Rockstar’s work. Impressed with the sheer scale, the minimal pop-in and the very tolerable load times however, frame rate, depth of field and the resolution of some of the assets was just off — not terrible, but off. Of course as I spent more time with it, the framerate became less and less of an issue — especially since I wasn’t playing anything else. (I suggest everyone play GTAIV for a significant amount of time and then go play COD4. It’s quite a difference.) When properly used, depth of field can yield fantastic results. Rockstar’s implementation was initially very jarring since the real world is not that blurry. The same goes for some of the world’s asset textures. Curse the technical limitations.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 11:00 am and is filed under PS3 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.