by Monster on Thu Aug 31, 2006 1:38 pm
Ok, here goes...
First of all, I love the GTA series. This is the first GTA "clone" that has not only been done right, but is actually better than GTA in many (most?) ways.
First of all, the graphics are much better. Duh. But it's not just that the graphics are better, it's that the effects and design are also much better. I like the bulkier design of the models. The effects for things like explosions are top notch. Every time a car blows up it's a treat. Especially when the chassis falls out of the sky and crushes the car it lands on or a tire hits you and knocks you over.
Which leads me to the physics. The physics in this game alone make it quite enjoyable. For instance, hitting someone in the game's version of an El Camino and having them fly over and land in the back, bouncing around as you keep driving is hilarious. One time I was running from an explosion that caught me and threw me through the windshield of a car. That's the first time I've seen that happen in a game.
There's even a game within the game called "Insurance Fraud", where you can hit a button to make your character go limp. While limp, you are invincible, so you can let cars hit you going 60. You can even just run around going limp. It looks funny as hell. Another cool thing is that all the objects in the game have physics, even the pickups like weapons or change that people drop.
The cars look amazing. They got a lot of love. The interiors are complete and very detailed and the paint jobs look great. My favorite thing to do is jack a car then go get it customized. I don't play that many racing games, but I'm sure that there isn't a game out there with as many paint options. Not only are there tons of colors to choose from, there are also many types of paint. Matte, opaque, glossy, pearlescent, candy, metallic, metal, and for the first time (that I know of), iridescent. Iridescent paint is the paint that changes colors depending on the viewing angle. They have probably around 30 choices of iridescent paint alone. Of course, you can also customize car looks using different parts, which is no different from GTA San Andreas, but the amount of color options really kicks any other game's ass.
The garage system is fantastic. While the garage doesn't automatically repair your cars like in GTA, it is vastly superior in every other way. From what I understand, you get to store 64 cars per garage. Instead of them being all packed in, you choose them from a list. Whenever you customize a car or park one in your garage it's saved to the list. And the best part of all is that if you take your car out for a spin and ditch it or wreck it, it will still appear in your garage! If you destroyed it, you just have to pay $500 to have it repaired before taking it out again. In GTA: SA there was no point in customizing cars. You could save them, but if you ever took them out and they didn't get returned to your garage, they were gone forever. And you would NEVER be able to return it. It was guaranteed to get lost or destroyed, especially on a mission.
The controls for the game are great. You actually have to manually aim (instead of auto-targetting like in GTA: SA... they had to add this due to the poor controls and aiming on the console versions of GTA). Which makes perfect sense since a major part of this game is the multiplayer, which I unfortunately haven't tried yet. Hopefully I'll get to that today or tomorrow. I've just been having too much fun playing single player.
Another great and important part of this game is the fact you can create your own character. This is a first for the genre. You can also, of course, buy clothes and jewelry from various shops (which you can also rob for cash). My character is a very close facsimile of Mr. T. I've even covered him in gold. Unfortunately, the max jewelry in the game is 4 rings, 3 chains, and six earrings. That's cool though, it looks close enough. Once I get online I think I'll be using him there too... it will be too fun telling kids to "stay in school" after killing them.