I’ve been playing GTA4 on and off for about a week now. It’s pretty well done. There are some curious framerate issues, and the game is definitely in the uncanny valley. The shooting controls are much improved; which is to say almost playable. But I’ve come across a fair bit of things that caught my interest while playing.
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While playing yesterday I was on a date with Michelle. I took her to a small bar. There was a fade out and suddenly I was drunk. REALLY drunk. Michelle was fine. The game does a great job of this. Walking was near impossible, let alone driving. The camera moves around on it’s own. Niko stumbles around comically. As time goes on, these things get easier and easier as your buzz wears off. There are visual filters applied making things tougher to see too.
Yet Michelle didn’t care at all. She didn’t see to make anything of it. To get home, I called a cab. The driver picked us up and then started a very vulgar conversation discussing how many girls he finds in the city. Michelle didn’t react or blink an eye during this time. At the end of this date (where I got so drunk I couldn’t walk)… she was happy with me.
- Other dates have been similar. What’s Michelle’s reaction if you hit a pedestrian with your car? Not much. Doesn’t seem to effect her mood the few times I accidentally did it.
- The police are interesting. Carjacking someone in front of them will get you in trouble. Doing it 20 feet away doesn’t. Crashing into their cars will get you in trouble, bumping them with some minor damage won’t. I went to a nightclub that had a bouncer to make sure you didn’t walk in carrying a weapon. He didn’t mind when I stole someone’s car right in front of him.
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The people often react really well. After taking one guy’s car, another car stopped and the guy got out and started coming after me. While playing one mission a fellow pedestrian (I was on foot) saw me chasing someone with a gun so he pulled his and tried to stop me.
The one that really surprised me was when I took a car from a guy and ended up chasing him. This wasn’t intentional, I took the car and started driving towards my destination. This happened to be the direction the former driver was running in. As I drove down the street, he was running on the sidewalk, pushing between people, jumping through a construction site. He got more and more panicked because I was “after” him.
- While driving one character around for a mission, he was smoking weed in my car. The windows were cracked (because of him) so as I drove around thin white clouds of smoke would seep out of the windows and float in the air… all looking quite realistic in the way they acted.
They put a ton of attention to detail in this game. I wish they had improved the shooting controls more. The uncanny valley and (relatively) low polygon counts of the people could be improved. But they made a great little city.
