Exclusive review from OA Mina:
Long story short.
GTAIV has the COD4 effect. Looks the same on both consoles until you start looking for nit-picky things.
Firstly the game looks pretty ace for a GTA game, but it's not the best looking game on either console. I can prolly name many games that *look* as good or better, but that doesn't mean this game looks bad in any way. It would help you if you judge this game from previous GTA games in terms of visuals, because the effect is much better that away instead of comparing it to say, Gears or Drake. At times GTA4 looks stunning, and at times it looks a bit average. It really depends on the condition of where you're at and the lighting/texturing of the scene you're in.
But to make up for some of the graphics, the sense of scale is very nice and invites you to dick around in the large open playground they set for you. One of the things you notice is how populated the world is, with lots of movement and *life* to it. Definitely much better than previous GTA's as well as previous GTA clones. Traffic looks, feels and reacts like traffic should. This A.I. traffic looks like it they're actually driving for a reason and not just cruising in and out of the scene just because -- so yes, it's quite convincing. Driving around in a vehicle is much like previous GTA, and perhaps it's just been awhile since I played a GTA, but I thought the controls were more responsive this time around (also coulda been the vehicles I driven around). In a way, it reminded me a lot of Crazy Taxi 1, just with actual damage. Driving around causing trouble has always been the best of GTA for me and this does things MUCH better. Plus it seems you get into a lot of trouble much faster than before. =)
What really sets the game are the animations and physics. There are moments of stiffness and poorly blended animations here and there, but for the most part everyone and everything moves fluidly. Things tend to react how they should, some things don't. It *appears* you can crash into almost any object and it will cause a reaction, and sometimes you can smash into something at Warp 5 and nothing happens 'cept your car gets totaled. I guess fully destructible environments ain't happening this time huh? That's ok, it's not a big deal and you'll get over it.
The controls are subjective on this one. Both console controls seem to be pretty tight and responsive. It's all gonna depend on how you like your analogs spaced and if you want rumble outta the box.
I couldn't tell you which version loaded faster or not as the game was already being played when I showed up for the lunch party. smile.gif I also didn't ask if there was any mandatory installs or if the PS3 version was running of the HDD. Sorry.
So which version is *superior*?
Well as I said before, it's the COD4 effect. At first glance they look the same with their small differences. 360 looks sharper, higher-res in some areas. Coming up to some objects will reveal that, also things at a distance look a bit more defined too. They both suffer from framerate issues, tho it looks like the 360 is handling it better when it comes to more populated areas (people, traffic, etc). The pop-up/fade in isn't too distracting, I do admit that is DOES show in both versions, but it doesn't look to be more or less on either console.
Lighting seems about the same, honestly I was looking at texturing more than lighting to notice it too much. =p But there were some parts on the PS3 version where things look like it was pre-baked with lights/shadows... it had that faked Heavenly Sword look to it where you know they did some *tricks* to make something appear at least statically, because they couldn't get it dynamically and it loses it's richness. As for the "softness" and "warmth" of the PS3 rendering that was talked about earlier, it makes things appear smooth but it's like putting turtle wax on a low res texture. It has that soft upscaled look to it that most of you console-ers should be used to by now, and looks like some filtering was used to clean it up a bit, if not *hide* it. I don't know if it's being upscaled, but it just has that look to it.
So unless you're as nitpicky as I am and don't care about the differences, each version is good to good depending on your choice of control pads and whether or not you want the extra DLC on the 360.
