Ronan’s Blog

Finally got around to breaking the seal on GTA IV last night and sat
down to play it for a good few hours.

First Impression: I don’t like it !

Firstly the new controls were terrible, I’d only ever played it on the PS2 &
PSP before and never on the XBox 360, so that could be different, but
switching the options to Classic controls soon fixed that.

Some of the new effects are great, and I love the new way of avoiding
the cops, but one function that I used to use almost every minute on the
PS2, was pressing L2 & R2 at the same time to fix the in-car view to be
straight ahead, pressing the right analog stick to do this not is a
pain!

The cell phone is good, and I like the way it has built in “trip-skip”
as introduced in Vice City Stories on the PSP.

I just found all the game to be far too dark, almost impossible to see
anything at all, its too polished, they are trying to make it look more
real, but its loosing the feel of a game, with the lack of bright
colours and obvious targets and certain simplicity.

I found myself yearning (first time I’ve ever used that word i think) for
the bright lights of Vice City with its smaller buildings and more
obvious roads, turns and directions.

Also, any time that the on-screen instructions appears, I simply could
not see which button the instruction was indicating that I should press,
it seems that you really must have a large HD TV in order to watch it -
My standard 28″ widescreen TV is obviously just not good enough.

Disappointed.

(Will I have to pay €1200+ on a new TV to be impressed - I wonder)