Due to the vagaries of rotating rosters, yesterday was my housemate’s saturday, and, still having our friend’s PS3, he endeavoured to rent a copy of GTA4. Let it simply be said that I didn’t get much sleep last night and it took an extra coffee or two to get going this morning. Thesis writing and videogame auto mobile larceny really don’t mix, I was considering staying at home today to wring the most out of the overnight rental, until I realised that this was in fact a clever ploy to avoid getting out of bed for a few more hours.
The game itself is fairly hard to rate from only about 4 or 5 hours play, particularly when you don’t get the best out of the visual qualities due to your stunningly low quality TV, or having to endure your housemate’s constantly getting lost due to their poor eyesight and hard to read mini-map due to your low quality TV. But i’m just not sure its the giant leap forward suggested by the rave reviews its getting, or that its really that different in character from its predecessors. Its certainly an improvement, and a substantial one at that, over San Andreas, and it seems like the kind of game that requires a substantial exposure to until you start to appreciate it fully. I really have to get around to putting in an entry into Screenplay’s Your Turn competition, where readers submit blog entries, and the best one each month wins a PS3.
