GTA IV for Xbox360 Review
[starreview]
I’ve had my 360 on a shelf since I got my Wii. I don’t have a whole lot of time to play anymore with a 2 year old, and I like the interactive aspect of the Wii.
Then GTA IV came out!
I’ve been a fan of the GTA series since it was a 2d, top-down game. I’ve owned GTA, GTA II, GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, the first game I got for my PSP was Liberty City Stories and now I dusted off my 360 for GTA IV… and here’s my review.
Graphics
The graphics for this game are just awesome. Very crisp visual, very engaging environments. The textures and LOD is just a great combination to keep the game smooth while allowing for a lot of eye candy.
The zonal damage on the cars is sweet. If you slam the side of your car into a wall or pole, you’ll have a huge dent (or more) where you hit… on the other hand if you lightly brush up against a similar object or a mailbox, telephone booth, etc… you’ll just have some scratches.
The in game character models are good, but re-used quite a bit, there are a lot of twins walking around Liberty City. The cut scene models are OK and the animation is pretty good, but I appreciate they concentrated more on the gameplay than smooth animation in the cut scenes.
Sound
The sound in the game is also very good.
The environmental sounds are very good, the use of doppler effect is awesome. Even the sound in the car, if you’re listening to music in the car and then get out and leave the door open you’ll still hear the music but much fainter. Nice touch. 
Gameplay
Just like the other GTA games, this game is just plain fun. I haven’t tried any of the multi-player stuff yet (I’ll update this when I do), but single player is great.
Just like everyone else that plays these games I like to play the missions for a while, the enter in cheat codes for full weapons and go on a rampage.
There are a lot of nice touches in this respect.
For example, you can injure parts of pedestrians bodies. If you shoot a leg, the person will go down, if you shoot the chest it’ll take a few shots to bring them down, if you do a head-shot they’ll be down and out.
Try this:
Jack someones car, wait until then come back and try to open the door then drive away. Instead of leaving them standing there they’ll still be holding onto the door and you can drag them around for a while. ]:)
Be careful though, this can happen to you as well!
Easter Eggs
I won’t really go into these in detail, but the game is packed with these. From commercials on TV, to billboards and posters and radio commercials to the beating heart inside the Statue of Happiness. They’ve been listed on hundreds of websites, so go ask Mr. Google about it.
Overall Opinion
This game is a blast, there are a lot of bells and whistles that aren’t in the other versions and the overall game just feels more immersive.
When I first started playing the game I got several lockups, but it hasn’t done that in a while. I don’t know if it had to do with something on the disk, something in the game itself or if my 360 just had to get the dust out of its gears.
I would recommend going out and buying this game, yes I said BUYING.. you know who you are. 
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