Random brain farts on tech, games and gunpla: Grand Theft Auto 4 reveiw

Overall-9/10

YES! I finally finish this game...

Gameplay-9/10
Win
-most interactive open world
-liberty city is bigger than the country i living in
-interactive soap opera at its best
-hilarious dialogues and cutscene
-Many things to do the in the city
-high replay value
-lots of licensed songs available on radio station
Fail
-minimum quad core CPU to run smoothly
-becomes playable and relatively bug free only after several patches
-limited plot choices
-poor AI
-fustruating helicoptor controls

Visuals-9/10
Win
-extreme amount of attention paid to details
-insane draw distance
-full day/night cycle with weather
Fail
-requires a very fast gpu
-needs more than 1gb vram for max draw distance
-lack of anti aliasing
-visual glitches occasionally

This game is a poor port from console to PC. It couldnt run decently on any cpu or gpu after launch, and it has shit load of bugs to break a main story arc mission repeatedly.
But after 2years, with numerous patches and progress in hardware, its finally time for me to return to liberty city. With everything on high other than water which is highest, 50% draw distance, 75% detail distance and 100% vehicle density, i get an average of 40FPS. Any higher on any settings could cause frequent texture popping and minimum frame rate hitting 30 and below. The game still look drop dead gorgeous on my current setting though. You could see new york city. Oops i mean liberty city in its full glory from slums, highways, sky scrappers, nuclear reactors to statue of liberty herself. Every landmark you see at the background isnt some backdrop but 3d rendered objects where you can visit. The streets littered with denizens of liberty city going about their daily life, ignorant that some psycho maniac from soviet has arrive. The developers seems to have lots of fun designing the city by replacing all the famous brands with their own parody.
The possibilities of playing outside the main mission is tremendous. You could call up your friends or date for various activities like pool or bowling where it features their own mini games. There are more exotic locations like strip pubs too if you so desire. Radio stations while not playing all the great singles will continue to poke fun at american culture,reality shows, politics and sex whenever it has the chance, so driving in this big city is never dull and boring. The game even features a internet with online dating, sex drug scam, exotic cars and email system.
A quick and dirty summary of the main story arc is long soap opera with lots of guns, boobs and drugs. Started out rather slowky and dull with your generic mafia style missions. However, the cutscenes are well done with lots of interesting characters,hilarious dialogue and story behind it. But as you progress, you will get some really outrageous mission like robbing the bank, mid air chopper assassination and kidnapping, just to name a few. In between missions, you can go back to your online lust or whatever you desire if you get bored of the main arc. There are few choices to make in the game, but they come less frequent than a blue moon. Those choices do affect the game in unforseen ways later so you have to replay the game if you are interested in alternate endings. After you get bored of the single player, you could go online and have some mulitplayer ramapage on the poor citizens of liberty city.
Not everything is rosy in liberty city though. Denizens dont react as naturally as you have hope while you are out harrassing them. Combat AI are pretty outdated and stupid, and its frustruating when your friendly AI get in your way and die in the mission, resulting in a reset. The helicopter controls are hideous and its a nightmare whenever it comes to mission with them. There are numerous visual glitches present, maybe due to my 50% draw distance but i doubt many out there could manage better. The game engine produce lots of aliasing and theres no anti aliasing options to smooth them out, instead relying on blur shader which ruins everything.
This is the most ambitious open world sandbox every created featuring a whole damn city bigger than the current one i m living in. Although you cant just enter any building and harrass their occupants, but its the best market has to offer. Until the next GTA arrives, liberty city is going to be my escapade for awhile from my city governed by suppressive authorian dictators. So forget those lengthy taiwan gangster soap opera, create your very own with niko from mother russia!

Pole dancing isnt pretty with all those aliasing dude!