Grand Theft Auto IV draws closer and closer and the really exciting screenshots and vidoes are spreading through the net.
The eagerly awaited fourth installment of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hits Australian stores on 29th April, 2008 with many of the country’s leading game retailers such as EB Games urging fans and customers to preorder their copy due to strictly limited stock availability.
More than a few weeks ago we gave you a hands-off preview outlining some key gameplay features and
details for the forthcoming mobster smash, Grand Theft Auto IV. While that particular item disclosed as much information as I was privy to in my presentation, it left out one of the most significant element of this new GTA outing – hands-on.
Specifically, that was a controlled demo, however, late last week Rockstar North gave the all thumbs up to their Australian office to start letting us get down and dirty with series newcomer Niko in the robust world of modern-day Liberty City. So for a few hours yesterday, that’s exactly what I did; I ran Niko through a handful of early missions - I laid waste to goons, stole drugs, outran the cops, threw Molotov cocktails, blew up helicopters, impressed a lady, took cover, fought an old man, stole a boat, escaped the feds, drove a taxi, escorted a pot-head and ate a hot-dog. And yet, after all that, just like the last
time I saw the game, I still know I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Grand Theft Auto IV is going
to offer.
Grand Theft Auto 4 missed all the action this year. Initially geared to go up against Halo 3 and the other 2007 hyperbole-wrapped triple A titles, Rockstar Games decided they’d skip out ‘07 altogether in favour of a 2008 release for their next gangster sandbox opus.
Today, however, they have released new screenshots in the build up to the game’s eventual release.
Trailers:
Grand Theft Auto 4 “Box Art Creation” Trailer - gta4boxart_720p.wmv
Grand Theft Auto 4 “Looking for That Special Someone” Trailer - GTA4ThatSpecialSomeoneTrailer720p.wmv
Grand Theft Auto 4 “Things will be Different” Trailer - gta4thingswillbedifferent720.wmv
Screenies:
Gamespot updates us on the latest GTA IV news.
The last time we got a look at Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar showed us a rather modest taste of what to expect from its highly awaited crime epic, one that gave us only a basic idea of the kind of urban playground the developer was creating. More recently, Rockstar took all that theoretical stuff we’ve been hearing about with regard to the game’s new mechanics, and put it into impressive action with a new demonstration of the Xbox 360 version that started answering our questions about how the designers will change the gameplay in the fourth iteration of their seminal open-world action series. Can they tinker with the formula that sold 900 billion games across the cosmos without damaging its core appeal? Our answer right now? Yeah, they probably can.
After all, it was Rockstar who invented the open-world action model that has since influenced franchises from The Godfather to Crackdown to Jak & Daxter. Grand Theft Auto essentially defined that giddy sense of criminal freedom, by which you could wreak utter havoc on the hapless citizenry (and the citizenry’s cars) with relative impunity and explosive aplomb. So it’s ironic that it’s Rockstar who is now restraining that freedom with GTA IV, which will place more immediate and noticeable limits on–and stricter consequences for–the sort of illicit behavior you can get away with as you go about your dirty business around Liberty City. The goal of this constrained design isn’t to ruin your happy crime sprees, but rather to immerse you deeper into the world of Liberty City by making some of those explicitly gamelike elements of the GTA titles a little more realistic. We observed some of those limits and consequences in action during our demonstration.
;)
