Healthy Living Books Video Games
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Video Games : Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360) .
Rating: 
- Buy this on 360!
As a owner of both the 360 and ps3 i always have a dilema about which console to buy 3rd party games on.
Well there is no dilema here! The 360 will be getting exclusive additional content that the ps3 will not get!
So if you own both consoles - definately buy it on 360!
The game is very good - its incredibly realistic and the gunplay and driving has improvde. Lack of activities is disapointing though as well as the lack of rampages and a jetpack which i for one especially miss!
The 5 stars is a little generous but the game just scrapes it in my opinion with its fantastic storyline and superb presentation.
Rating: - Great Game
I bought this game along with my 360 for Christmas. As soon as I started playing I have enjoyed every minute of it.
To compare this to other GTA's, the graphics are a huge improvement from the cartoon like graphics of previous GTA's, there are loads of fun things to do such as play darts and bowling. You cannot do these activities online though, would have been great if you could. :(
Many people complain about the driving, personally I think it's great because it's more realistic, especially in raining weather where you slide all over the place if you take sharp corners fast. The game still doesn't have a steering wheel view when you drive but you get a bonnet view.
Other great features of this game include the taxi which you can call if you need a lift, the new cover system makes the game more tactical, being able to manually aim your gun out of your car when your the driver and other many things I've yet to find in the game.
The multiplayer in GTA4 is great, you get a choice of gamemodes like deathmatch, race, freeroam, cops n crooks and many morewhere you can play up to 20 players online.
This is the first game I've got for the 360 and first I've played in HD, but I think the game is a great leap fro San Andreas mainly because of online multiplayer.
Graphics = 10/10
Gameplay = 10/10
Multiplayer = 9/10
Rating: - Russian Gangster's In America!
No game has ever made me take a weeks holiday from work on release week but this one. No game has ever had me queuing outside a store at midnight on release day (let alone the fact I'd been kickboxing training that day and was pretty tired and sore) but this one. To put it simply Grand Theft Auto IV when taken as a stand alone game is one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played.
You play Russian immigrant Nico Belic, a low level criminal looking to live the American Dream and also plotting revenge for a 'incident' in his past (I'll not go into this as it would spoil part of the story for you). He's pretty messed up but a good guy at heart who I became more attached too the longer I played the game. He's pretty intense and vilolent but also funny at times, sort of like Tony Montana in Scarface. The story is compelling and filled with twist's and turn's as Nico searches for wealth and the truth to a deep burning incident in his military past. The story is complemented well by the surrounding characters (who I'll talk about more later), who each seem to have their own live's going on regardless of yourself.
There is a massive amount of content in this game. The story mode will take you 25+ hours, but once that's complete you realise thats only 65% of the game. The other 35% is accomplished by all sorts of things such as street races (very enjoyable with a fast car), assassination missions, stunt jumps, shooting pigeons, and committing the crime that is the name of the game - Grand Theft Auto - stealing expensive cars on order. Plenty here to keep you going.
The controls are excellent and easy to use. The new cover system and use of the trigger button for your fire arm makes gun fights much easier to play (more on this later). In car the controls work fine with a new refined driving system, while on foot the controls are pretty much the same as past games.
The graphics are the best yet for any GTA game. The people on the streets designed are to a high level, the cities are even more impressive, light reflects of car windows and metallic finishes, not to mention the excellent weather effects.
The sound is excellent, with the game having a soundtrack and full set of radio stations filled with many well know artists, and some comedic sketches. Listen out for Ricky Gervais in there.
The Xbox live section of the game is pretty good, even just driving around in the foyer (free roam of the map) is alot of fun as you can enter areas like the airport without being chased by the police. The only problem I had with it is the ability to lock onto targets. Its my opinion in multiplayer it should only be 'free aim' as when you can lock onto a target it becomes a test of whos weapon is more powerful, not who is more skilled.
Unlike the past GTA games this story is more rags to better rags than it is rags to unbelievable riches. Theres no owning your own record company or Garage etc on this one, so it feels a bit more realistic in terms of what you achieve by the end of the game. Dont get me wrong its still a enjoyable trip to some powerful criminal positions but its certainly not to the extent the others went to. The game is laced with dark humor which may not be to some people tastes but I think most people who purchase these games already know what to expect. Some of the cut scenes are comedy gold.
The new cover system for gun fights takes this part of the game to a level not achieved on previous games, allowing you to be able to systematically take out large groups of people one at a time without having to take much damage (if your good enough). Also you can now target a person while they drive and take them out, leaving them to slump forward onto the wheel and accelarate uncontrollably forward.
There is many fantastic levels, such as a bank job thats straight out of the film 'Heat', that offer a pretty decent challenge even to experienced gamers. The overall story can be completed in roughly 25-40 hours if you really hammer it and dont spend much time exploring, although for me this takes away a large part of the GTA games as I love investigating the city and looking for new things.
You now have a mobile phone which can be used to play music on, activate missions or call friends/girlfriends to activate activities.
The city itself is perhaps the most impressive part of the game. Its basically modelled on New York and New Jersey area, with more real life landmarks than I care to mention. The detail level is immense, everywhere you go it feels like a real living breathing city with people going about their daily lives oblivious to you. You'll often see people talking on their mobiles, smoking, withdrawing money from ATM's, even some people preaching on street corners which just adds to the ambiance of the game. The sheer amount of cars and people on screen at once at some points is awesome (try south of Time Square for a good example).
The map is actually smaller than in San Andreas, but there is little to no areas with nothing in (deserts, countryside etc) and it takes longer to walk across this map than it did in SA due to the detail level of the cities. Less is definitely more in this case.
The driving has been made alot more realistic than in previous games, it really feels like your driving a car with real steering as opposed to the arcade handling of past games. This may feel a bit weird at first but it doesn't take long to adjust to. Another feature is the new controls for driving using the trigger buttons which makes driving much better, with the pressure sensitivity of these buttons acting like a normal car accelerator.
A massively improved feature on GTA:IV is the ability to get taxis, pick exactly where you want to go and skip the trip. This enables you to cover hugh sections of the map in very little time which is quite useful the further you get into the game. Be warned though if you have a over reliance on taxis you wont learn the map.
Theres plenty of other characters such as Nicos taxi driving cousin Roman, steroid filled Brucie, and Rastafarian gun runner Jacob (with a heavy Jamaican accent) among others. The first time I met Jacob I thought his accent was heavy, when I met his friend 'Badman' I suddenly though 'Jacobs accent isnt that bad actually' as badman sound like hes straight out of a Jamacian ghetto and I really struggled to understand him, thankfully there is a subtitles option.
A fairly new feature is the ability to go out with your friends (in San Andreas it was only your girlfriends and there wasnt much choice of activities) and do fairly normal things such as go to a club, go bowling, play pool, or even go on a helicopter ride. Each character has their own favourite pass times which when participated in gains you a percentage of how much they like you. Once you hit usually over 70% often the characters make some sort of special ability available such as free cab rides or cheaper guns. It can get annoying the amount of calls you get sometimes asking you to go out with a character, specially when your travelling to a mission location but all in all I think this is a nice feature, and the rewards make it worth it. You've got to love it when you get them drunk and they are falling over everywhere!
You can now go visit comedy clubs and watch different short performances from Ricky Gervais and Katt Williams, with a one by each comedian new for GTA. This is perhaps one of my favorite new features. You are able to watch TV and access the in game internet now, with many TV shows (I recommend the mens room with Bas Rutten) and fake webpages for your enjoyment. Some of the internet is interactive and you also receive news and extra jobs by email.
May people were dissapointed that many of the extra features in San Andreas are missing from this GTA game. There is no planes this time round although the airspace may have been a bit small for the fighter jets from SA, theres no gym, no need to eat just because you havent for awhile, no tattoo shops, no barbers etc. You can still buy new cloths, but at the end of the day you dont buy GTA games to personalise your character, if thats what you want then buy the Sims or something.
Certain missions have choices to be made which impact the rest of the game which also adds to the game life as once you've finished the story the attraction is still there to go back through the game and make different choices. Add this to the achievements and xbox live and you have a fairly decent gamelife span.
Overall this game is my favorite yet in the GTA series and I recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed the past games or likes gangster movies.
Review also posted on dooyoo.co.uk, ciao.com, and ciao.co.uk.
Rating: - A great game while it lasts
This game was the reason for getting an Xbox 360 after holding off for months.
The graphics and detail are amazing and you soon realise this is a highly polished game.
The soundtrack is nowhere near as good as that in Vice or San Andreas but that is a small gripe in the scheme of things.
Some bugs remain with the targeting system and controls and the game crashed a couple of times, once forcing me to start again as a mission failed to play out properly.
The storyline is good and engaging however those of you who like to take time out to interact with and explore the city will be a bit disappointed.
The game is great as you work through the story, completing the various missions and sub plots, but once the ride is over you are left with something with very limited replay value.
Does it represent such a milestone in GTA as Vice City? The answer is no. This game doesn't really add anything new to the GTA experience but does deliver a polished and visually stunning performance that will make new Xbox 360 owners jump up and go "Wow!".
Rating:
- a bit of a let down
one of the main reasons i bought the 360 was so i could play this and now i can play it i cant help comparing it unfavourably with the earlier version of grand theft auto. i dont enjoy just driving around, the choice of clothes, tatoos, weight lifting music all the little touches that made it fun are either gone or scaled down or poorly done, to the point of being a waste of time. the music and the radio banter is unexciting, i bought the soundtrack box set for san andreas, and although there is good music here its hardly going to set the world on fire, and the radio banter chat djs etc are not funny in the slightest, its as though the only thing they have really bothered with is the definition of the graphics which are great, and the cut scenes which are seemingly endless and take up much of the game play to the point i will go off and make a cup of tea and take a shower while cut scenes run on and on. i really enjoyed the free roaming aspect before and i find im a little bored after a while. even so this still deserves 3 stars because its still fun to play, but considering i rated san andreas as a contender for the best game ever this is bitterly disapointing on every level, and i hate having to sit thru endless cut scenes. rather than the total immersion that i felt with san andreas, i now find myself giving myself little mid game breaks, and playing something else for a while before im ready to return. with san andreas i spent a week of gameplay just free roaming and having fun on my motor bike while listening to all the fantastic radio stations and not bothering with the story at all, but now im just ploughing thru missions which so far havent really involved me that much.
- Buy this on 360!As a owner of both the 360 and ps3 i always have a dilema about which console to buy 3rd party games on.
Well there is no dilema here! The 360 will be getting exclusive additional content that the ps3 will not get!
So if you own both consoles - definately buy it on 360!
The game is very good - its incredibly realistic and the gunplay and driving has improvde. Lack of activities is disapointing though as well as the lack of rampages and a jetpack which i for one especially miss!
The 5 stars is a little generous but the game just scrapes it in my opinion with its fantastic storyline and superb presentation.
Rating:
- Great GameI bought this game along with my 360 for Christmas. As soon as I started playing I have enjoyed every minute of it.
To compare this to other GTA's, the graphics are a huge improvement from the cartoon like graphics of previous GTA's, there are loads of fun things to do such as play darts and bowling. You cannot do these activities online though, would have been great if you could. :(
Many people complain about the driving, personally I think it's great because it's more realistic, especially in raining weather where you slide all over the place if you take sharp corners fast. The game still doesn't have a steering wheel view when you drive but you get a bonnet view.
Other great features of this game include the taxi which you can call if you need a lift, the new cover system makes the game more tactical, being able to manually aim your gun out of your car when your the driver and other many things I've yet to find in the game.
The multiplayer in GTA4 is great, you get a choice of gamemodes like deathmatch, race, freeroam, cops n crooks and many morewhere you can play up to 20 players online.
This is the first game I've got for the 360 and first I've played in HD, but I think the game is a great leap fro San Andreas mainly because of online multiplayer.
Graphics = 10/10
Gameplay = 10/10
Multiplayer = 9/10
Rating:
- Russian Gangster's In America!No game has ever made me take a weeks holiday from work on release week but this one. No game has ever had me queuing outside a store at midnight on release day (let alone the fact I'd been kickboxing training that day and was pretty tired and sore) but this one. To put it simply Grand Theft Auto IV when taken as a stand alone game is one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played.
You play Russian immigrant Nico Belic, a low level criminal looking to live the American Dream and also plotting revenge for a 'incident' in his past (I'll not go into this as it would spoil part of the story for you). He's pretty messed up but a good guy at heart who I became more attached too the longer I played the game. He's pretty intense and vilolent but also funny at times, sort of like Tony Montana in Scarface. The story is compelling and filled with twist's and turn's as Nico searches for wealth and the truth to a deep burning incident in his military past. The story is complemented well by the surrounding characters (who I'll talk about more later), who each seem to have their own live's going on regardless of yourself.
There is a massive amount of content in this game. The story mode will take you 25+ hours, but once that's complete you realise thats only 65% of the game. The other 35% is accomplished by all sorts of things such as street races (very enjoyable with a fast car), assassination missions, stunt jumps, shooting pigeons, and committing the crime that is the name of the game - Grand Theft Auto - stealing expensive cars on order. Plenty here to keep you going.
The controls are excellent and easy to use. The new cover system and use of the trigger button for your fire arm makes gun fights much easier to play (more on this later). In car the controls work fine with a new refined driving system, while on foot the controls are pretty much the same as past games.
The graphics are the best yet for any GTA game. The people on the streets designed are to a high level, the cities are even more impressive, light reflects of car windows and metallic finishes, not to mention the excellent weather effects.
The sound is excellent, with the game having a soundtrack and full set of radio stations filled with many well know artists, and some comedic sketches. Listen out for Ricky Gervais in there.
The Xbox live section of the game is pretty good, even just driving around in the foyer (free roam of the map) is alot of fun as you can enter areas like the airport without being chased by the police. The only problem I had with it is the ability to lock onto targets. Its my opinion in multiplayer it should only be 'free aim' as when you can lock onto a target it becomes a test of whos weapon is more powerful, not who is more skilled.
Unlike the past GTA games this story is more rags to better rags than it is rags to unbelievable riches. Theres no owning your own record company or Garage etc on this one, so it feels a bit more realistic in terms of what you achieve by the end of the game. Dont get me wrong its still a enjoyable trip to some powerful criminal positions but its certainly not to the extent the others went to. The game is laced with dark humor which may not be to some people tastes but I think most people who purchase these games already know what to expect. Some of the cut scenes are comedy gold.
The new cover system for gun fights takes this part of the game to a level not achieved on previous games, allowing you to be able to systematically take out large groups of people one at a time without having to take much damage (if your good enough). Also you can now target a person while they drive and take them out, leaving them to slump forward onto the wheel and accelarate uncontrollably forward.
There is many fantastic levels, such as a bank job thats straight out of the film 'Heat', that offer a pretty decent challenge even to experienced gamers. The overall story can be completed in roughly 25-40 hours if you really hammer it and dont spend much time exploring, although for me this takes away a large part of the GTA games as I love investigating the city and looking for new things.
You now have a mobile phone which can be used to play music on, activate missions or call friends/girlfriends to activate activities.
The city itself is perhaps the most impressive part of the game. Its basically modelled on New York and New Jersey area, with more real life landmarks than I care to mention. The detail level is immense, everywhere you go it feels like a real living breathing city with people going about their daily lives oblivious to you. You'll often see people talking on their mobiles, smoking, withdrawing money from ATM's, even some people preaching on street corners which just adds to the ambiance of the game. The sheer amount of cars and people on screen at once at some points is awesome (try south of Time Square for a good example).
The map is actually smaller than in San Andreas, but there is little to no areas with nothing in (deserts, countryside etc) and it takes longer to walk across this map than it did in SA due to the detail level of the cities. Less is definitely more in this case.
The driving has been made alot more realistic than in previous games, it really feels like your driving a car with real steering as opposed to the arcade handling of past games. This may feel a bit weird at first but it doesn't take long to adjust to. Another feature is the new controls for driving using the trigger buttons which makes driving much better, with the pressure sensitivity of these buttons acting like a normal car accelerator.
A massively improved feature on GTA:IV is the ability to get taxis, pick exactly where you want to go and skip the trip. This enables you to cover hugh sections of the map in very little time which is quite useful the further you get into the game. Be warned though if you have a over reliance on taxis you wont learn the map.
Theres plenty of other characters such as Nicos taxi driving cousin Roman, steroid filled Brucie, and Rastafarian gun runner Jacob (with a heavy Jamaican accent) among others. The first time I met Jacob I thought his accent was heavy, when I met his friend 'Badman' I suddenly though 'Jacobs accent isnt that bad actually' as badman sound like hes straight out of a Jamacian ghetto and I really struggled to understand him, thankfully there is a subtitles option.
A fairly new feature is the ability to go out with your friends (in San Andreas it was only your girlfriends and there wasnt much choice of activities) and do fairly normal things such as go to a club, go bowling, play pool, or even go on a helicopter ride. Each character has their own favourite pass times which when participated in gains you a percentage of how much they like you. Once you hit usually over 70% often the characters make some sort of special ability available such as free cab rides or cheaper guns. It can get annoying the amount of calls you get sometimes asking you to go out with a character, specially when your travelling to a mission location but all in all I think this is a nice feature, and the rewards make it worth it. You've got to love it when you get them drunk and they are falling over everywhere!
You can now go visit comedy clubs and watch different short performances from Ricky Gervais and Katt Williams, with a one by each comedian new for GTA. This is perhaps one of my favorite new features. You are able to watch TV and access the in game internet now, with many TV shows (I recommend the mens room with Bas Rutten) and fake webpages for your enjoyment. Some of the internet is interactive and you also receive news and extra jobs by email.
May people were dissapointed that many of the extra features in San Andreas are missing from this GTA game. There is no planes this time round although the airspace may have been a bit small for the fighter jets from SA, theres no gym, no need to eat just because you havent for awhile, no tattoo shops, no barbers etc. You can still buy new cloths, but at the end of the day you dont buy GTA games to personalise your character, if thats what you want then buy the Sims or something.
Certain missions have choices to be made which impact the rest of the game which also adds to the game life as once you've finished the story the attraction is still there to go back through the game and make different choices. Add this to the achievements and xbox live and you have a fairly decent gamelife span.
Overall this game is my favorite yet in the GTA series and I recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed the past games or likes gangster movies.
Review also posted on dooyoo.co.uk, ciao.com, and ciao.co.uk.
Rating:
- A great game while it lastsThis game was the reason for getting an Xbox 360 after holding off for months.
The graphics and detail are amazing and you soon realise this is a highly polished game.
The soundtrack is nowhere near as good as that in Vice or San Andreas but that is a small gripe in the scheme of things.
Some bugs remain with the targeting system and controls and the game crashed a couple of times, once forcing me to start again as a mission failed to play out properly.
The storyline is good and engaging however those of you who like to take time out to interact with and explore the city will be a bit disappointed.
The game is great as you work through the story, completing the various missions and sub plots, but once the ride is over you are left with something with very limited replay value.
Does it represent such a milestone in GTA as Vice City? The answer is no. This game doesn't really add anything new to the GTA experience but does deliver a polished and visually stunning performance that will make new Xbox 360 owners jump up and go "Wow!".
Rating:
- a bit of a let downone of the main reasons i bought the 360 was so i could play this and now i can play it i cant help comparing it unfavourably with the earlier version of grand theft auto. i dont enjoy just driving around, the choice of clothes, tatoos, weight lifting music all the little touches that made it fun are either gone or scaled down or poorly done, to the point of being a waste of time. the music and the radio banter is unexciting, i bought the soundtrack box set for san andreas, and although there is good music here its hardly going to set the world on fire, and the radio banter chat djs etc are not funny in the slightest, its as though the only thing they have really bothered with is the definition of the graphics which are great, and the cut scenes which are seemingly endless and take up much of the game play to the point i will go off and make a cup of tea and take a shower while cut scenes run on and on. i really enjoyed the free roaming aspect before and i find im a little bored after a while. even so this still deserves 3 stars because its still fun to play, but considering i rated san andreas as a contender for the best game ever this is bitterly disapointing on every level, and i hate having to sit thru endless cut scenes. rather than the total immersion that i felt with san andreas, i now find myself giving myself little mid game breaks, and playing something else for a while before im ready to return. with san andreas i spent a week of gameplay just free roaming and having fun on my motor bike while listening to all the fantastic radio stations and not bothering with the story at all, but now im just ploughing thru missions which so far havent really involved me that much.
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