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The Official Grand Theft Auto IV thread: The World Is Yours
- Thread starter U5230
- Start date
stimpledorf
Member
Yoboman said:
Nice chant
..just 12 hours away !
D
Deleted member 30609
Unconfirmed Member
3 hours, lolstimpledorf said:Nice chant
Fallout-NL
Member
Goldrusher said:
69,95 in stores though.
MMaRsu said:
Hah! Vindicated!
speedpop said:
Lucky!
I just started a new job today and can't afford to take any time off yet. It's a 7am start too, so if I go to the midnight launch (in 2.5 hours) there is no way I will get enough sleep to do training tomorrow...
Just going to have to do a total internet blockout and buy it on Friday after work.
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
besada said:
Aw, Hi5!
I was worried I might have to use the TMBG cover of the song becuase of the quality but I just said "Fuck it."
Danielsan said:You and me both...
They send the order today so I won't be playing it till atleast 23 hours from now.
Ooh well atleast I'll get 500 live points for pre-ordering plus I got 10 extra discount points at dimensionplus.
I also ordered at dimplus, but haven't received a shipment notification yet
slight difference between a technology they've only been manufacturing for a couple years now, and a technology they've been manufacturing for, ohh...... 11 years (in the 360's case).Surfheart said:
It's like worrying you won't be able to get a new blockbuster movie on DVD the day of release. I'm sure there will be individual (smaller) stores that might sell out... but if you find one, go to just one other store in the same area you won't have any trouble finding a copy.
edit - and if you're stuck at work like I will be, just hit up a website that let's you do local store pickup (best buy, circuit city, etc) and grab a copy that way.
Opus Angelorum
Member
Just a heads up for anyone thinking they can pick this up at the main Game store in Belfast, the Xbox 360 allocation has sold out.
IronicallyTwisted
Banned
Yoboman said:I should've just gone the extra money and bought it at launch. I know this is gonna suck waiting for delivery
Still, $50 AUD beats $120 AUD
Buy it from EB and return it 7 days later, homie.
Patrick Bateman
Member
Ebgames/Gamestop Germany seem to be allowed to sell it from now on.
Play-Asia just updated release date for PS3 version, shipping Friday, May 2nd. longest week + weekend EVER.
I know it's been said before, but I just gotta say it: After reading the reviews, watching the videos, listening to the soundtrack (Seryoga FTW!) and checking the boards, its hard to put into context what a significant watershed moment this is for gaming. This is a mark on the gaming timeline. This is a line in the sand. This is the true start of next-gen and the gauntlet has been thrown down, hard, brother. If you're not down with GTA IV, not only do I feel sorry for you, you're doing it (videogaming) wrong. Seriously.
I know it's been said before, but I just gotta say it: After reading the reviews, watching the videos, listening to the soundtrack (Seryoga FTW!) and checking the boards, its hard to put into context what a significant watershed moment this is for gaming. This is a mark on the gaming timeline. This is a line in the sand. This is the true start of next-gen and the gauntlet has been thrown down, hard, brother. If you're not down with GTA IV, not only do I feel sorry for you, you're doing it (videogaming) wrong. Seriously.
stimpledorf
Member
Opus Angelorum said:
Aw tell me that ain't true, was planning on getting it for the 360 tonight in GAME in Derry but haven't preordered.
I know the manager there was saying that they only have a few allocated to give out at midnight and the rest held back for preorder so hope that's still the case.
Cheers for the heads up though.
Opus Angelorum
Member
I think you'll be ok with the Derry store.
I would suggest a fair percentage of those who pre-ordered at the Belfast store did it with the knowledge of the midnight launch.
Good luck!
I would suggest a fair percentage of those who pre-ordered at the Belfast store did it with the knowledge of the midnight launch.
Good luck!
whatdidyousay
Member
NY Times gave it a glowing review:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I was rolling through the neon deluge of a place very like Times Square the other night in my Landstalker sport utility vehicle, listening to David Bowies Fascination on the radio. The glittery urban landscape was almost enough to make me forget about the warehouse of cocaine dealers I was headed uptown to rip off.
Soon I would get bored, though, and carjack a luxury sedan. Id meet my Rasta buddy Little Jacob, then check out a late show by Ricky Gervais at a comedy club around the corner. Afterward Id head north to confront the dealers, at least if I could elude the cops. I heard their sirens before I saw them and peeled out, tires squealing.
It was just another night on the streets of Liberty City, the exhilarating, lusciously dystopian rendition of New York City in 2008 that propels Grand Theft Auto IV, the ambitious new video game to be released on Tuesday for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 systems.
Published by Rockstar Games, Grand Theft Auto IV is a violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun. It calls to mind a rollicking R-rated version of Mad magazine featuring Dave Chappelle and Quentin Tarantino, and sets a new standard for what is possible in interactive arts. It is by far the best game of the series, which made its debut in 1997 and has since sold more than 70 million copies. Grand Theft Auto IV will retail for $60.
Niko Bellic is the player-controlled protagonist this time, and he is one of the most fully realized characters video games have yet produced. A veteran of the Balkan wars and a former human trafficker in the Adriatic, he arrives in Liberty Citys rendition of Brighton Beach at the start of the game to move in with his affable if naïve cousin Roman. Niko expects to find fortune and, just maybe, track down someone who betrayed him long ago. Over the course of the story line he discovers that revenge is not always what one expects.
Besides the nuanced Niko the game is populated by a winsome procession of grifters, hustlers, drug peddlers and other gloriously unrepentant lowlifes, each a caricature less politically correct than the last.
Hardly a demographic escapes skewering. In addition to various Italian and Irish crime families, there are venal Russian gangsters, black crack slingers, argyle-sporting Jamaican potheads, Puerto Rican hoodlums, a corrupt police commissioner, a steroid-addled Brooklyn knucklehead named Brucie Kibbutz and a former Eastern European soldier who has become a twee Upper West Side metrosexual.
Breathing life into Niko and the other characters is a pungent script by Dan Houser and Rupert Humphries that reveals a mastery of street patois to rival Elmore Leonards. The point of the main plot is to guide Niko through the citys criminal underworld. Gang leaders and thugs set missions for him to complete, and his success moves the story along toward a conclusion that seems as dark as its beginning. But the real star of the game is the city itself. It looks like New York. It sounds like New York. It feels like New York. Liberty City has been so meticulously created it almost even smells like New York. From Brooklyn (called Broker), through Queens (Dukes), the Bronx (Bohan), Manhattan (Algonquin) and an urban slice of New Jersey (Alderney), the games streets and alleys ooze a stylized yet unmistakable authenticity. (Staten Island is left out however.)
The game does not try to represent anything close to every street in the city, but the overall proportions, textures, geography, sights and sounds are spot-on. The major landmarks are present, often rendered in surprising detail, from the Cyclone at Coney Island to the Domino Sugar factory and Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn and on up through the detritus of the 1964-65 Worlds Fair in Queens. Central Park, the Empire State Building, various museums, the Statue of Liberty and Times Square are all present and accounted for. There is no Yankee Stadium, but there is a professional baseball team known, with the deliciousness typical of the games winks and nods, as the Swingers.
At least as impressive as the citys virtual topography is the range of the games audio and music production, delivered through an entire dials worth of radio stations available in almost any of the dozens of different cars, trucks and motorcycles a player can steal. From the jazz channel (billed as music from when America was cool) through the salsa, alt-rock, jazz, metal and multiple reggae and hip-hop stations, Lazlow Jones, Ivan Pavlovich and the rest of Rockstars audio team demonstrate a musical erudition beyond anything heard before in a video game. The biggest problem with the games extensive subway system is that theres no music underground. (Too bad there are no iPods to nab.)
The games roster of radio hosts runs from Karl Lagerfeld to Iggy Pop and DJ Green Lantern. It is not faint praise to point out that at times, simply driving around the city listening to the radio seguing from Moanin by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers to the Isley Brothers Footsteps in the Dark to The Crack House by Fat Joe featuring Lil Wayne can be as enjoyable as anything the game has to offer.
Grand Theft Auto IV is such a simultaneously adoring and insightful take on modern America that it almost had to come from somewhere else. The games main production studio is in Edinburgh, and Rockstars leaders, the brothers Dan and Sam Houser, are British expatriates who moved to New York to indulge their fascination with urban American culture. Their success places them firmly among the distinguished cast of Britons from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards through Tina Brown who have flourished by identifying key elements of American culture, repackaging them for mass consumption and selling them back at a markup.
It all adds up to a new level of depth for an interactive entertainment experience. Ive spent almost 60 hours practically sequestered in a (real world) Manhattan hotel room in recent weeks playing through Grand Theft Auto IVs main story line and the game still says I have found only 64 percent of its content. I wont ever reach 100 percent, not least because I wont hunt down all 200 of the target pigeons (known as flying rats here) that the designers have hidden around the city.
But like millions of other players I will happily spend untold hours cruising Liberty Citys bridges and byways, hitting the clubs, grooving to the radio and running from the cops. Even when the real New York City is right outside.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I was rolling through the neon deluge of a place very like Times Square the other night in my Landstalker sport utility vehicle, listening to David Bowies Fascination on the radio. The glittery urban landscape was almost enough to make me forget about the warehouse of cocaine dealers I was headed uptown to rip off.
Soon I would get bored, though, and carjack a luxury sedan. Id meet my Rasta buddy Little Jacob, then check out a late show by Ricky Gervais at a comedy club around the corner. Afterward Id head north to confront the dealers, at least if I could elude the cops. I heard their sirens before I saw them and peeled out, tires squealing.
It was just another night on the streets of Liberty City, the exhilarating, lusciously dystopian rendition of New York City in 2008 that propels Grand Theft Auto IV, the ambitious new video game to be released on Tuesday for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 systems.
Published by Rockstar Games, Grand Theft Auto IV is a violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun. It calls to mind a rollicking R-rated version of Mad magazine featuring Dave Chappelle and Quentin Tarantino, and sets a new standard for what is possible in interactive arts. It is by far the best game of the series, which made its debut in 1997 and has since sold more than 70 million copies. Grand Theft Auto IV will retail for $60.
Niko Bellic is the player-controlled protagonist this time, and he is one of the most fully realized characters video games have yet produced. A veteran of the Balkan wars and a former human trafficker in the Adriatic, he arrives in Liberty Citys rendition of Brighton Beach at the start of the game to move in with his affable if naïve cousin Roman. Niko expects to find fortune and, just maybe, track down someone who betrayed him long ago. Over the course of the story line he discovers that revenge is not always what one expects.
Besides the nuanced Niko the game is populated by a winsome procession of grifters, hustlers, drug peddlers and other gloriously unrepentant lowlifes, each a caricature less politically correct than the last.
Hardly a demographic escapes skewering. In addition to various Italian and Irish crime families, there are venal Russian gangsters, black crack slingers, argyle-sporting Jamaican potheads, Puerto Rican hoodlums, a corrupt police commissioner, a steroid-addled Brooklyn knucklehead named Brucie Kibbutz and a former Eastern European soldier who has become a twee Upper West Side metrosexual.
Breathing life into Niko and the other characters is a pungent script by Dan Houser and Rupert Humphries that reveals a mastery of street patois to rival Elmore Leonards. The point of the main plot is to guide Niko through the citys criminal underworld. Gang leaders and thugs set missions for him to complete, and his success moves the story along toward a conclusion that seems as dark as its beginning. But the real star of the game is the city itself. It looks like New York. It sounds like New York. It feels like New York. Liberty City has been so meticulously created it almost even smells like New York. From Brooklyn (called Broker), through Queens (Dukes), the Bronx (Bohan), Manhattan (Algonquin) and an urban slice of New Jersey (Alderney), the games streets and alleys ooze a stylized yet unmistakable authenticity. (Staten Island is left out however.)
The game does not try to represent anything close to every street in the city, but the overall proportions, textures, geography, sights and sounds are spot-on. The major landmarks are present, often rendered in surprising detail, from the Cyclone at Coney Island to the Domino Sugar factory and Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn and on up through the detritus of the 1964-65 Worlds Fair in Queens. Central Park, the Empire State Building, various museums, the Statue of Liberty and Times Square are all present and accounted for. There is no Yankee Stadium, but there is a professional baseball team known, with the deliciousness typical of the games winks and nods, as the Swingers.
At least as impressive as the citys virtual topography is the range of the games audio and music production, delivered through an entire dials worth of radio stations available in almost any of the dozens of different cars, trucks and motorcycles a player can steal. From the jazz channel (billed as music from when America was cool) through the salsa, alt-rock, jazz, metal and multiple reggae and hip-hop stations, Lazlow Jones, Ivan Pavlovich and the rest of Rockstars audio team demonstrate a musical erudition beyond anything heard before in a video game. The biggest problem with the games extensive subway system is that theres no music underground. (Too bad there are no iPods to nab.)
The games roster of radio hosts runs from Karl Lagerfeld to Iggy Pop and DJ Green Lantern. It is not faint praise to point out that at times, simply driving around the city listening to the radio seguing from Moanin by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers to the Isley Brothers Footsteps in the Dark to The Crack House by Fat Joe featuring Lil Wayne can be as enjoyable as anything the game has to offer.
Grand Theft Auto IV is such a simultaneously adoring and insightful take on modern America that it almost had to come from somewhere else. The games main production studio is in Edinburgh, and Rockstars leaders, the brothers Dan and Sam Houser, are British expatriates who moved to New York to indulge their fascination with urban American culture. Their success places them firmly among the distinguished cast of Britons from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards through Tina Brown who have flourished by identifying key elements of American culture, repackaging them for mass consumption and selling them back at a markup.
It all adds up to a new level of depth for an interactive entertainment experience. Ive spent almost 60 hours practically sequestered in a (real world) Manhattan hotel room in recent weeks playing through Grand Theft Auto IVs main story line and the game still says I have found only 64 percent of its content. I wont ever reach 100 percent, not least because I wont hunt down all 200 of the target pigeons (known as flying rats here) that the designers have hidden around the city.
But like millions of other players I will happily spend untold hours cruising Liberty Citys bridges and byways, hitting the clubs, grooving to the radio and running from the cops. Even when the real New York City is right outside.
dskillzhtown
keep your strippers out of my American football
DarkAngelYuna said:
Mine still hasn't shipped. Why in the hell did I order from Amazon.com?
Though the option to cancel the order has disappeared. Maybe it has already shipped. Atleast I hope so.
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
*tear*
That was fucking beautiful.
Welcome to the future, ladies and gents.
Darunia said:
Come on down and bring your Liberty City map!
Darunia said:
Yeah, I have thought about that alot as well. I'm not American, and I have never been to New York, but it seems to me that for the people who live there, or even people who have been there, this is a very special game. I can imagine how awesome it is to be able to drive through the street you live in, for example.
Goldrusher
Member
Tons of Bart Smit stores are selling it in Belgium. But some are not.
Brugge, Gent and Genk are definitely selling it.
64,96
Call your local store now, reserve a copy, and go get it.
(oh, and it's only 2pm, April 28)
Brugge, Gent and Genk are definitely selling it.
64,96
Call your local store now, reserve a copy, and go get it.
(oh, and it's only 2pm, April 28)
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
Tr4nce said:
I'm most surprised that they replicated the PS1 MoMA museum, but named it after the best comic book store in the UK.
That's seriously the coolest thing anyone has ever done in a video game.
Ever.
whatdidyousay
Member
Darunia said:
I'm not a big GTA person but I'm excited to play IV just because of the setting. If I see anything looking remotely close to my neighborhood, I'll just freak the hell out.
