GTA4

[betan]

I prefer first person, over the hood driving (for any vehicle), since it looks better with the shakey cam feel and it's much easier to control for me.
However sometimes you need to see what's behind you or better angle of the environment like when jumping and unfortunately there are zillions of camera positions, making it difficult to switch between fpv and tpv.

Best animation, physics and destructible stuff ever!!!! Really blows everthing away IMHO.

What's best about physics? Destructible stuff is limited to objects and pillars.
Animation looks great often but not always. Niko is very smooth, but as a result not very responsive, and environment interactions aren't smart. AI characters look OK, but doesn't have some of the smooth transitions of Niko like from walk-to-run.
If you walk into someone, the resulting hit animation can be considered realistic but delayed. And in general body response animations are all like in slowmo, which is bad since anything else has been done without Euphoria engine before, so I'm a little disappointed there.

 

[Arwin]

I think the driving is pretty good actually. It felt right to me, for the first time. I couldn't deal with San Andreas' driving model at all. With this game, the driving is actually quite enjoyable. Maybe it helps that the roads generally seem a little wider also, but the cars are pretty easy to control and predictable in their behaviour in terms of physics.

I agree that the body response animations can be slow sometimes, making Niko for instance make a 'shove someone out of the way' gesture after he's passed someone already. But I haven't paid enough attention to these (and other) things yet to give a final conclusion.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I think the driving is pretty good actually. It felt right to me, for the first time.

Shame the cars dont have ABS, but if you bother to pump brake manually that can be averted. Aside from cars having wierd grip, most of the time to little grip, the driving physics are solid and consistent. While the different parametres\variables have wrong values to be realistic in comparisons to real life counterpart cars, the actual physics model is rather realistic (aside from collisions, the SUVs in GTA4 seem to weigh 5tonns rather than 2, atleast you push away normal cars very easily.)

 

[Scott_Arm]

The driving varies greatly depending on the car. Using the left trigger to slow down is a big help, rather than hitting the brakes. I have this Porsche kind of car, and it handles amazingly well and seems to stop on a dime.

 

[betan]

Shame the cars dont have ABS, but if you bother to pump brake manually that can be averted. Aside from cars having wierd grip, most of the time to little grip, the driving physics are solid and consistent. While the different parametres\variables have wrong values to be realistic in comparisons to real life counterpart cars, the actual physics model is rather realistic (aside from collisions, the SUVs in GTA4 seem to weigh 5tonns rather than 2, atleast you push away normal cars very easily.)

I'm not a driving expert, hell can't even say I like cars.
However in GTA4, when I'm drifting with hand brake, to turn a sharp corner or something, I have to use regular brakes to stabilize. That doesn't sound realistic to me at all, at least not the amount of the effect.

Of course I don't care much about realism. As far as driving goes, this game is as good as any other. In first person view, I can now safely speed on the opposite lane and easily get rid of the 4 star wanted level, if the traffic still flows that is.

 

[friendo]

My only small gripe with the driving model is I wish i could turn off the traction control so I could actually power out of a drift, other then that I love the new driving model.

 

[patsu]

Using the left trigger to slow down is a big help

This is what I do too.

 

[Arwin]

That's what it says you should do in the manual (brake/reverse), which I actually bothered to read somewhat. The other 'brake' is the handbrake, and that's a rather heavy and unwieldy weapon in many cars.

 

[silhouette]

Drive from the pseudo inside cam (it puts the cam just outside the windshield). it is a lot easier to drive the car. Also, the R-stick is more like your head and L-stick is for steering the car. So, use R-stick only to check left/right to see if any car is approaching. Other than that do not even touch R-stick. My brother tends to use both as if in a FPS, and he did not have a smooth ride until he gave up R-stick.

 

[itch]

To me the L2 brake seems too soft and the hand brake too hard. Or maybe the hand brake is ok for a hand brake but I have to use it too much since L2 doesn't slow down fast enough.

Another thing I noticed is there doesn't seem to be as much stuff to find. There are hardly any weapons lying around (maybe to be more relistic?) and no hidden packages (

Spoiler

maybe the pigeons replace the packages?

). I always enjoyed exploring in GTA but a little more reward would be nice.

 

[Scott_Arm]

To me the L2 brake seems too soft and the hand brake too hard. Or maybe the hand brake is ok for a hand brake but I have to use it too much since L2 doesn't slow down fast enough.

Another thing I noticed is there doesn't seem to be as much stuff to find. There are hardly any weapons lying around (maybe to be more relistic?) and no hidden packages (

Spoiler

maybe the pigeons replace the packages?

). I always enjoyed exploring in GTA but a little more reward would be nice.

Think of the L2 break as more like a real car. You've gotta start slowing down further back. With some of the sports cars, especially the Porsche looking one, L2 will stop your car very quickly. Really depends what you're driving. If it's some boxy sedan from the early 90s, it's going to stop like crap no matter what.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Anyone up for trying to beat the rockstar times on the 4 player co-op modes? I want that achievement. I got 6:40 on the one where you blow up the boat, but that was just pure luck landing an awesome random team. I think you need less than 6 minutes on that map to get it.

 

[Blade47167]

I gave it a 9. I'm really digging the story but there are certain things that are really starting to bug me 12 hours in the game. The music sucks bad... and seeing as I'm playing on PS3 I can't do much about it at the moment. At first the driving was starting to get to me but I've almost got it down to the point were I no longer wreck so that isn't so bad anymore. Then the damn blurry thing... this is really starting to bother my eyes and everything just seems to dark. My tv had looked great with every game I've played before this one but half the time I can't see a single thing (dark) even during the day or during the day everything is blurry... Still tho underneath is a great game so I'm pushing thru it.

Oh ya almost forgot the game doesn't work when I have my internet connection enabled... Won't even load the game. Grinding halt at the picture intro... WTF ROCKSTARRR...

 

[Scott_Arm]

I gave it a 9. I'm really digging the story but there are certain things that are really starting to bug me 12 hours in the game. The music sucks bad... and seeing as I'm playing on PS3 I can't do much about it at the moment. At first the driving was starting to get to me but I've almost got it down to the point were I no longer wreck so that isn't so bad anymore. Then the damn blurry thing... this is really starting to bother my eyes and everything just seems to dark. My tv had looked great with every game I've played before this one but half the time I can't see a single thing (dark) even during the day or during the day everything is blurry... Still tho underneath is a great game so I'm pushing thru it.

Oh ya almost forgot the game doesn't work when I have my internet connection enabled... Won't even load the game. Grinding halt at the picture intro... WTF ROCKSTARRR...

Can't you just shut the radio off? What about the PS3 prevents you from doing anything about the music? I think the music is ok. There's a wide variety of stuff. I'm not blown away by the music, but it's better than most games. It's got Fela Kuti and some other stuff that people normally wouldn't be exposed to, so that's pretty cool.

Adjust contrast/brightness/gamma in-game to fix the darkness?

 

[Cheezdoodles]

To me the L2 brake seems too soft and the hand brake too hard. Or maybe the hand brake is ok for a hand brake but I have to use it too much since L2 doesn't slow down fast enough.

Thats because there is no ABS in GTA4.

Remember that L2 is a analog trigger, meaning if you press it completely you brake at 100% force. Thus, at high speeds, if the tires dont have the necessary amount of grip, your tires skid, resulting in loss in the brakeforce that actually hits the ground.

What Scott is trying to say, that if you brake more gently, you can brake faster. By more gently, the most effective way to brake would be exactly below the treshold for loosing grip.

If GTA4 cars had ABS (anti-lock system) (standart on any car these days), the cars wouldn't brake 100% when you push the trigger completely (or anything thats enough to loose grip).
The antilock system would by monitoring each wheels rotation, continously change and apply different levels of brakeforce by hydralic values to ensure maximum grip (thus stopping power) at all times. A modern ABS system can change brakeforce on each wheel up to 20 times per second.
(Because you "allways" have tiregrip, ABS also allows you do to steer the car while braking hard, unlike with non-abs brakes, as you would simply skid along the road)

You can emulate ABS braking manually, by "brakepumping" which essentially boils down to tapping the brake button fully down\up as fast as possible. Ofcourse this is far less effective than real ABS, but its far more effective then just holding down the brakebutton at max.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

e. Then the damn blurry thing... this is really starting to bother my eyes and everything just seems to dark..

The standart brightness\gamma settings was far to dark on my PS3 aswell, but you can change that in the options.... under display..

 

[Scott_Arm]

Thats because there is no ABS in GTA4.

Remember that L2 is a analog trigger, meaning if you press it completely you brake at 100% force. Thus, at high speeds, if the tires dont have the necessary amount of grip, your tires skid, resulting in loss in the brakeforce that actually hits the ground.

What Scott is trying to say, that if you brake more gently, you can brake faster. By more gently, the most effective way to brake would be exactly below the treshold for loosing grip.

If GTA4 cars had ABS (anti-lock system) (standart on any car these days), the cars wouldn't brake 100% when you push the trigger completely (or anything thats enough to loose grip).
The antilock system would by monitoring each wheels rotation, continously change and apply different levels of brakeforce by hydralic values to ensure maximum grip (thus stopping power) at all times. A modern ABS system can change brakeforce on each wheel up to 20 times per second.
(Because you "allways" have tiregrip, ABS also allows you do to steer the car while braking hard, unlike with non-abs brakes, as you would simply skid along the road)

You can emulate ABS braking manually, by "brakepumping" which essentially boils down to tapping the brake button fully down\up as fast as possible. Ofcourse this is far less effective than real ABS, but its far more effective then just holding down the brakebutton at max.

Yeah. The other thing is, you rarely have to break fully, just enough to correct course or make a tight turn. Once you get used to how quickly the different cars can stop, you can start breaking at the appropriate distance. And like Ostepop says, slamming the break is rarely a good idea. It's analog for a reason.

For all the people that complain about the control, I've seen some incredible driving playing online. I think I do alright myself, but there are some real wizards out there.

 

[dobwal]

I had a real hard time getting used to the driving physics of GTA4, which undoubtly is too floatly and displays too much grip on some of the non sport cars. I didn't really like how the cars controlled and the driving seemed poorly implemented as I played plenty of games when cars seem to handle much better.

Then it dawned on me that Gran Turismo/Forza are rather poor benchmarks for determining how well a Cadillac Escalade is supposed to handled going 90 mph on a city street and trying to take a corner not meant for track racing. While GTA4's driving mechanic doesn't really mirror reality, its alot closer than a normal racing game would have you believe.

I have to change the way I drive dependent on the car Im in. If I am in a sports car in GTA4, im able to drive more calm and with much more patience. The car like the Porsche has such great acceleration and braking I able to turn corners well because I can slow down to optimal corner speeds with the regular brakes taking my time and still pull away in a chase.

With you average everyday passenger cars the chases becomes much more hectic because the acceleration is so slow and braking so long that I try to take the corners very fast or else getting away becomes much more daunting as LCPD is able to keep up with the average cars. I employ the handbrakes when corning in these situation to break the extraordinary grip these cars have while cornings so I can skid through the corners instead making these long turns where I running end up running into buildings, concrete columns, light poles and people on the opposite side of the street.

In all actuality the average cars provide the most entertainment, because I find myself constantly driving down side walks mowing everything down with the LCPD constantly on my heels and taking turns alot to break free. Versus with a high end sports car I head to nearest long straight away and drive away from everybody only to turn when cops appear ahead me coming in my direction.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I tried some free mode multiplayer with a friend last night. Took me a while to figure out how to make a private game. I kept inviting him to party mode and then couldn't figure out how to get the free mode game running with just the two of us. Forget the party mode and just go straight to a custom player match and set reserved slots to MAX. That way only people you invite can join.

Anyway, I'm really impressed with how well it runs with cops, full traffic, full pedestrians. There's so much going on and it's just like playing the game normally. There was the odd lag, but mostly it ran very very smooth. I've seen games fail at supporting 10 players properly without having to deal with and synchronize all of the simulation aspects of GTA.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I had a real hard time getting used to the driving physics of GTA4, which undoubtly is too floatly and displays too much grip on some of the non sport cars. I didn't really like how the cars controlled and the driving seemed poorly implemented as I played plenty of games when cars seem to handle much better.

At first I struggled with the driving model, but now using the closest 3rd person view I can pretty much drive perfectly.