TomMannino.com

I stimulated the economy by buying a 360 and GTA 4, and have been playing it pretty hard, in the name and interest of internet science and game design. I’ve not beat the story yet, but I’ve got comments so far on both the system and the game. Spoilers abound, so read at your own risk. Also they are very random and out of order so bear with me.

• Xbox setup was dirt simple, which was nice.
• It took me a bit to realize that your game saves are tied to your profiles, so I lost about an hour or two of play at one point and was nervous that my harddrive was fucked up or something. Turns out it was just on the other profile. I got all that sorted out.
• I don’t have a TV so I bought a VGA adapter and that works wonder. The monitor I’ve been using is old and so there’s no ‘true black,’ which I think might be affecting my opinion of the graphics.
• Using the VGA adapter means you can set your resolution to different things. The default was 640×480, but I set it to 1280×1024. I’m going to play it on a proper 1080p screen today after work to see what it looks like on that.
• That being said, I’ve been a bit disappointed with the appearance of some of the characters, mainly the females. They are too far into the uncanny valley to be attractive, let alone not creepy. Some of the pedestrians freak me out, their skin is shiny and they look like plastic freaks.
• The non-people graphics are amazing, and dare I say breathtaking. There’s moments where you’re driving across bridges when you hit a sunrise or sunset that just take your breath away and say things like ‘my god this is a fucking game…’ I’m the first to bust out my walking cane and say WHEN I WAS A KID I PLAYED GAMES WHERE THE MAIN CHARACTER WAS AN ‘@’ on a screen… So keep that in mind… all these ‘bad graphics’ complaints really aren’t a big deal, just pointing things out.
• As far as game content goes, the voice acting has been amazing so far. The few times I felt like the voice acting was ‘fake’ or stiff, it turns out it was because the characters were lying to you, and being fake and stiff. Really amazing. The Rasta dudes are such awesome color.
• Driving has been exhilarating, all the different types of cars really have different personalities. Cycles are fun as hell. I’ve refrained from going on killing sprees or anything until I beat the game as well, playing (mostly) as straight and narrow as possible.
• Two missions so far have been amazing butt-clinchers and have made for some ‘you will remember this gaming moment for all of eternity’ kind of things. One being where you kill a lawyer and then have to get away, another being a bank robbery. The bank robbery was something out of a heist movie, like Snatch or just some crime-happy movie. The way the dialog and narrative is delivered, all while cops are pouring in and you’re wasting people left and right, in addition to the comments your character makes, all are so amazing. Not to mention all the oh-shit moments you make while driving around.
• So far the difficulty is ‘just right..’ All the missions have been able to be completed in no more then three attempts, and even then it’s been honestly more fun the second and consecutive times because you know what to expect. I make no claims to be super awesome gamer so they did a good job with the difficulty scaling. I will say though that I didn’t realize you could buy body armor from the weapon dealers until recently, so some of those two- or three-attempt missions might have been one, had I known that. They are getting harder, and I’m not halfway through the game yet, so we’ll see. One point of frustration from previous GTA games I’ve played, (mainly Vice City,) was that the difficulty curve was very steep, and I got to a mission I just plain couldn’t pass. I’m dreading running into that hurdle now but we’ll see.
• The story is amazing and gripping and totally why I can’t put the game down. I am so amazed by how the game unfolds and how much tweaking it does depending on how you do things. Like one mission you have to steal a car from someone because they owe your boss money. So you go find the guy and his car, he’s cleaning it up. He’s like ‘no way dude don’t take my car.’ You can sucker punch him or just hop in and drive off. Depending on which one you do, when you call your boss to tell him you did the job, you either say ‘I didn’t even have to hurt him,’ or ‘he’ll be bruised but fine.’ It’s simple and subtle but those exceptions like that make the game that much more immersive.
• The game allows you to make a few live-or-die choices, and your choices will possibly have repercussions later on in the game. A few have been pretty hard to make, one of which is choosing which of two ‘friends’ you kill. I’ve yet to see super repercussions yet so stay tuned.
• I’ve been playing through pretty hard, not really doing any side things like dates with friends and stuff. I’m reminded that you get cool stuff for being friendly with people but I really want to digest the whole story before I spend lots of time with that. I regret not going out with Michelle more before she did what she did, but perhaps I can do more of that next time.
• The AI is a bit stupid. There’s been a few instances now where dudes have been hiding behind walls and shooting at me through the wall pointlessly. I see muzzle flashes and just creep around the corner and shoot them in the arm or knee or whatever. The car AI is pretty awesome though, some of the chasing you have to do makes me lol with how tricky those bastards are.
• I tried out a private game with Urb and then some public games with some chocolate-milkers, and got a good dose of homophobia. I started picking on this one kid and just going out of my way to find him to fuck with him and hopefully incite a riot but when my buddies and I finally saddled up and killed him, we got knocked out of the game somehow. I’ve been very impressed with live. Very cool.