.
Through out the years I have guaranteed my share of GTA purchases.
My first GTA ever was installed on a Pentium I and it was a blast. Everybody who played that game seemed to get hooked on it and we all felt that game was going to change the future of gaming.
It obviously did.
Grand Theft Auto IV changed the genre again.
If you think GTA should have stopped at Tommy Vercetti (
my personal favourite) or in the hoods of San Andreas, this Episode might not be your ideal GTA experience.
You start off the game with an short cutscene introducing you to your new character Nico Bellic, a Bosnian man with a mysterious history to be revealed.
As the actual gaming begins, you'll be required to drive to your cousin's cab HQ. This is where everything begins to become complicated.
Driving has never been so
different in a GTA game. My first experience with the new driving mechanics is somewhat comparable to a mixture of being drunk at the wheel whilst bungee jumping from a crooked building in a universe made of jello.
As you get better and get used to the new GTA, you're driving will automatically improve drastically and allow you to eventually stop bashing into EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME.
If you're used to GTA III or San Andrea's driving,
we all pity you a little bit. In this version of GTA, you'll be using your breaks as much as your gas pedal and will be slowing down before each turn.
GTA's driving is not realistic either, anyone believing anything different is not old enough to drive a real car. A real life
Lada Niva handles high speed curves better than any GTA IV sports car. But nobody's complaining really, if we wanted driving realism we would have purchased TOCA Touring.
To be honest I'm still trying to figure out why the huge change in driving mechanics when the old one worked out just fine.
Graphics are outstanding. I've been playing this game on the following specs:
Alienware M17
Windows Vista 64bit with admin rights
Q9000 Quad @2.00GHz
4GB Ram
Dual ATI HD3870 (2x512MB)
With the above specifications I'm able to play GTA IV at medium settings and still feel extremely satisfied of the quality of what I'm able to see on screen. Everything seems to run quite smoothly asides from small areas in which I seem to encounter a drop in
fps while driving.
Visually, GTA IV is a winner. No doubt about it. You'll probably need a beast PC to get it to run at high settings smoothly.
The story line is surprisingly well developed and adds depth to a game that could very well do without
ANY sort of story line at all. I will not add any spoiler but I can assure you playing the main story missions will not be dissapointing.
The gameplay is not what it used to be in the older GTA games.
It might even bet better!
Shooting at cops or pedestrians still feels a little bit too easy when aiming and ridiculously stupid when shooting without aiming accurately.. but something has definitively changed in something better.
Punching and shooting at anyone will have specific consequences on their bodies. Your adversaries will physically take a punch or get knocked down to the ground in different ways as your bullets hit them in different body parts.
The same goes for you and this will make gunfights a little bit more interesting and challenging.
I profoundly appreciated two aspects of the new gameplay:
The fact that people around you have not been copied and pasted again and again. Every individual seems different from the one next to him. You might encounter extremely fat policemen walking as their thighs violently rub against each other or old farts physically stumbling on an object and falling under a car. Plain awesome.
The other aspect I profoundly enjoyed is that the GTA IV world seems to actually be a living enviroment with actual people just living their lives around you. Truly well developed. You even get a mobile phone with which you can call up other in game characters!
Obviously the game is just as openly explorable as its predecessors and it's all pure fun from the very beginning you start the game. Although it generally feels less much less of an "arcade" experience when compared to earliers versions of GTA. I guess it's up to personal taste at the end.
The main addition to the game is a well developed and integrated physics engine. Crashing into a wall with your car will get you flying through your wind shield at high speed and loosing health as your face grinds on black asphalts and your teeth kiss another car's rear bumper. Some people seem to complain abou this new introduction to the game, but we'll just pretend they don't exist.
As long as you will not be expecting too much of a GTA game when purchasing GTA IV you're not going to be dissapointed.
Unless of course you're one of the unlucky people (and they are many) that finds this game so bugged it's unplayable.
For those who are still unsure about whether or not this game is ever going to be installed on their PC, I can only add that unlike a lot of people seem to believe, GTA I V does not feel like a
"bad console port" but like a genuine PC game.
Two Words on GTA IV: Get it
(for cheap and upgrade your rig 
)
