Corey DeGrandchamp > Review

Overall Rating:
This rating is automatically derived from taking the average of all ratings below.

Gameplay Rating:
The gameplay in GTA IV has been overhauled over the past GTA’s, there’s some new elements to the game, such as the “cover system” and multiplayer, without going into too much detail, I’ll just say the cover system works AMAZINGLY, and the multiplayer is fun for a good laugh, there’s some issues with it right now, but those should be addressed in a patch or something fairly soon. The new Euphoria physics engine is stunning as well, doing the same thing in game twice will surely produce different results, each human model in the game reacts differently to a stab, bullet, or being hit by a car, which looks stupendous, especailly in the game’s “bullet-time” mode.

Story Rating:
The story in this game is quite intriguing, you start off without too much of a backstory as to why you’ve came to Liberty City, but that’s what makes the story what it is… it develops deeper and deeper as you go, and by the end of the game, it gets downright… emotional. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that the only downfall of the story is the fact that characters come in and out of the game quicker than you can murder hookers for your money back.

Graphics Rating:
Simply stunning, if you’re playing this game on anything besides a 1080p TV, you’re really missing out. The immense level of detail on the cars alone is to be marveled at for such a vast game. City lights, buildings, roads, debris, and everything have an astonishing level of clarity for a game that focuses on people and cars. I’ll say it again and again, if you’re a gamer that plays more than casually, you NEED to invest in an HDTV, games like this don’t reveal their full graphical potential until it’s on the big HD screen. I can tell you first hand that I played through this game on an HDTV, and tried to play it (at a friends house) on a SDTV, and I just couldn’t do it… once you go HD, you’ll never go back.

Sound Rating:
I like a lot of different music personally, and GTA usually tailors to that aspect of me very very well, in previous GTA’s, I could get into a car and just leave the radio alone. In GTA IV, I constantly find myself getting into a vehicle, and immediatly switching to Liberty Rock Radio, or the Electro Choc, and those are the only two I fully enjoyed, th new “chatterbox” style station gets old… fast. In a game that takes 30+ hours to complete, hearing the same jokes from that station just get really old. On the other hand, “Weasel News” in the game’s radio stations reports on recent activity in the city, and it’s always cool to hear about the crimes you just commited on the radio!

Replay Factor: Rating:
I won’t spoil the game for anybody, but I’ll just say that there are a LOT of decisions to be made in the game, which will reflect the story later, especially the end-game… The story missions are just fun to replay as well, I’ve found myself finishing a mission on the first try and saying “man, that was awesome, I wish I could do that again…” so a replay of the game wouldn’t be hard to imagine, especially with all th decions you could make differently the second time around.

Rating:

Well I want to start off by saying this is my first review of anything, I thought it would be good to do it on something I just recently discovered! So here it goes!

So I’ve never actually thought twitter could be useful, until today.

Having Twitter integrate so seamlessly into my blog works wonderfully! (See right hand column for what I’m talking about!)

I’ve also integrated Twitter into my Facebook account, via the application TwitterSync. I chose this application, because the standard “official” Twitter syncing application keeps updating your status as “is twittering:” followed by your real status update, which gets QUITE annoying, to ones self, and their friends.

I’ve tried using the MySpace application by the same name (different author) but it’s intentions are different, it takes your current MySpace status, and syncs it to Twitter, which isn’t my preference, I would rather go to Twitter, type in ONE status update, and have all my social networking sites update with the same status, until somebody codes a MySpace application that does what the Facebook one does, I think I’ll be leaving my MySpace status as blank for a while, it is to much of a pain to update it separately.

Overall, I really love the idea of Twitter, and it can be turned into quite a powerful tool, especially for bloggers like myself!

If anybody is curious, the Twitter updates I have on the right hand side of my blog, is direct code from Twitter, it is NOT a plugin or widget for Wordpress (what my blog is powered by) which makes it even more exciting!