Interactive crime movie and mindless mayhem! GTA4 Reviews

Interactive crime movie and mindless mayhem! GTA4

Grand theft auto four is an open world action game and has become one of the highest selling games. You can obtain this title for $30- $59 depending on where you shop. The game is developed by Rockstar North and is publishedby rockstar games. Grand theft auto four is basically a cinematic action game and is a wonderful game... although it does have a few noticeable faults.

• Pros: Excellent graphics and sound, a fairly decent auto aim feature and a good selection of music.
• Cons: Somewhat overly complicated controls(explained later.), freezes more then it should and cars handle poorly.

NOTE: GTA4 is a game rated M for mature. This means that you should not buy this game for your kid under 18 year old. I am for real parents, this is not a game for the little one!

Presentation: A lot of the game plays out like a Hollywood blockbuster film and has the voice talent to back up this particular comparison. The scenes flow nicely and progress the story at a decent pace. It feels like you are playing in a Hollywood crime movie. Overall the presentation was executed as well as can be expected for a game of this particular size.(9 of 9 tails)

Graphics: This game has excellent graphics and all kinds of little details you can easily miss while playing through the game. It really feels like and looks like a big city. Although the character models are not the greatest I have ever seen before, they still look nice and far with the overall graphical style. Some of the animations are pretty interesting and funny to watch. One example is if you're driving really really fast and crashed into something , sometimes you'll go through the windshield like a rag doll. Overall the graphics are excellent minus a few technical glitches here and there.(8 of 9 tails.)

Sound: I tested this game on a onkyo 9100 THX certified 7.1 channel system. The game sounds very nice and has many different sound effects that you would find in any large city. The sound effects come off as above average and pleasantly help to feel the mood of the game. If my memory serves me correctly there are close to 200 different music tracks in game. The game has just about every taste in music. Overall the audio is above average and varied in the music department. (9 of 9 tails.)

Controls: I did not particularly like the way rockstar did the controls in this rendition of grand theft auto. The fighting system is pretty good I must say and not too difficult to use. My main complaint is the fact that cars handle sluggishly like you're driving a large 18 wheeler. In my opinion they should not have made it where the pressure sensitive triggers determin whether or not you manually aim or automatically depending on how much pressure you put. Although you can turn off auto-aim to get around this, it leaves you without said feature. My friend who has no physical limitations also found this to be somewhat annoying. Although the controls are somewhat decent, it is still flawed in my opinion. (6 of 9 tails.)

Replayability: Even after you complete the story mode there are still other things for you to complete and keep yourself occupied with for many hours. There is a multiplayer feature that allows you to kill each other online and gain ranks, clothing and other rewards.The multiplayer is actually quite a bit of fun and more enjoyable than one might think. Overall there is plenty of stuff to do.(8 of 9 tails.)

Accessibility: First I will start with the bad points of the game. This game is very unfriendly to one-handed players who do not have a modified controller designed for use with one hand, mainly because of the button layouts. This game is also slightly unfriendly to players who use switch interfaces because in order to use precision aim you have to hold down the trigger half of the way. Otherwise you can only auto aim at various different enemies. The way it is now I have to pause the game and turn auto aim off and on depending on the mission . Most of the time this is okay but many times you need to use precision aiming to be effective. These appear to be the only issues that I could find that would negatively impact the disabled gamer.

The game does have some good things about it though for some disabled players! The auto aim feature usually works like a charm and allows you to take out multiple enemies without taking too much damage. I just wish you could switch this feature from auto aim to manual on-the-fly like in metal gear solid 4. The second feature is that a majority of the game is subtitled which is helpful for any of the deaf gamers out there. (7 of 9 tails.)

Closing comments: This is an excellent action game and as a boatload of fun. This is not the most friendly game to the disabled players that love video games. This game does have a couple things that are good for disabled players but could easily be improved on if they would take the time to listen to a few suggestions from the community of disabled gamers. Even though I cannot manually aim because of limitations of using halfway pressed triggers and the non-ability of being able to map the buttons.... I still managed to enjoy this game and have fun with it! I really think everybody should at least rent it to see if they can deal with the limited controls they may be forced to use. The two problemsI mentioned before could easily be alleviated by the developers.(8 of 9 tails.)

• One-Handed Friendly: 40 Bad configurations.
• Alt Control Schemes: 40 No controller customization, has 1 other configuration.
• Close Captioned: .90 Just about everything is close captioned when turned on..
• Colorblind: 90 markers can still be understood 90% of the time.
• Tracking Needs: 50 Never felt overwhelming.