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Well, having put a good few hours into it in the last few nights, here are some impressions.
The Euphoria physics engine changes the feel of the game a lot more than I had expected. Characters move around the environments reacting to every little nudge and change in gradient, and, as a result every movement has a little more personality in it. Animations aren't scripted anymore, so when you crash your car, fly through the windscreen and plait yourself around a lamp-post it genuinely looks painful. The levels of interaction between random pedestrians are also ramped up, unlike previous GTAs where you get the distinct impression that the world is centered around you, you feel more like an cog in the system than before.
Consequentially, the city feels FAR more alive. The ability to take taxis to your destination seems like a small addition, but it's quickly become one of my favourite things about the game. You sit in the back, ask the driver if he'd mind changing the radio station and just gaze out of the window watching life go by.
All of this adds up to a rather convincing simulation of a city, and this is where a kink in the game design appears. As everyone has so much more individuality and personality than previous games, you actually feel slightly guilty about mowing them down, or beating them up. I find myself swerving to avoid pedestrians in car chases; I genuinely feel bad for some of the targets of my missions. This could be because compared to the past 3D games, it feels like the violence has been stepped up a notch. Hit someone with your car, and you may get a visceral streak of blood over your windscreen, hit them with a baseball bat and wince as you hear the disturbingly realistic sounding connection of wood and skull. Hold up a shopkeeper and you see him shaking, and his eyes darting back and forth in panic. It's a very convincing trick that Rockstar are playing, and definitely a step up from the more cartoonish previous games. For a game that centres around committing crimes, you feel a kind of virtual social conscience that was almost completely absent from previous games.
The aesthetics of the game seem to shy away from the more obvious videogame trappings that you see in the previous games too. You don't see floating, spinning powerups in the street anymore, health kits actually look like first aid kits, and are located where you'd expect to find them. The HUD has been slimmed down too, to the point where I'd hesitate to recommend playing this on a Standard Def TV. You get a map, and a health bar around it, and apart from displaying your wanted level, selected weapon and ammo left, that's it. All other information is displayed on your mobile.
The graphics, while not immediately apparent as an enormous step-up from San Andreas quickly come into their own. The lighting model, and environmental effects serve to mask any defects in the graphics (which I think are to be expected when you're pushing around a world this detailed), walking the streets in the rain at night with the neon lights of the shops reflected in the wet streets creates a sense of ambience equal to something like Taxi Driver.
I'm not even off the first island yet and I can't wait to see what Times Square looks like, or the view from the top of a skyscraper. |
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