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“A place of big dreams, beautiful women and bold entrepreneurs”

So what can we expect?

Well this commercial features some great footage showing the different weather systems in action, car chases and some impressive views of the city.

Commercial runs at just over a minute in length.

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The 1 minute 18 second game trailer is available in the following formats:

Windows Media
Windows Media HD
PSP
Ipod

Featuring a track entitled Real McCoy by Jamaican reggae artist Mavado the last trailer leaves us with some final indications of the graphical power and speed to be expected in both the XBox360 and PS3 versions of the game.

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The first thing they did? You guessed it, they picked a fight, sadly it was with a group of three thugs and they lost. Although they did get a good idea of what the fighting system was like, Rockstar have made it more complex than the old one button fighting you may be used to in GTA games, now while in fighting mode you can use each face button to perform a variety of different attacks including dodging and counterattacking.

After their shameful loss they started the first mission which serves as a tutorial for fighting. The story of the first mission is that your cousin gets into some trouble with a bunch of loansharks and you have to beat them off your cousin and then chase after the leader loanshark in a car. It is a nice simple mission to get straight into the fighting aspect of the game.

They soon found out about the new line-of-sight wanted system, if you break the law then you get a radius around your position which grows as your wanted level goes up. You can get out of this radius and this is how you get away from the cops. As they found out about the wanted system they also found out a lot more about the cover system, how you can cover behind not only behind walls but pretty much anything on the landscape, for example a parked car.

As for the driving experience, each car has its own pros and cons, each car handles much differently and they have fixed the bad handling around corners in previous GTA games which means you will have to drive with slightly more caution than before but if your car flips over then it won’t explode.

There is a feature which lets you hail a cab to take you anywhere in the game by a press of the button, or you can always stick to hijacking. In addition to this some cab drivers are undercover cops who can bust you, or open fire.

Of course they needed to test what it was like to get your character drunk and try control him. Needless to say he was quite hard to control, but being drunk only lasts a matter of minutes so it didn’t get overly annoying. Nearly anything on the landscape that you walk into will make yourself fall over and they found out the hard way by making him walk into the middle of the street.

Gamespy actually found some bugs in the AI and weapons while they were playing the game, nothing to worry about, just small things that you wouldn’t notice unless you were actually looking for them.

Read the rest of the GTA IV Preview

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As they point out the main challenge Rockstar had with making this game was bringing it all together much better than the previous games, this included improving the usability, structure and pace of the game. As it seems they have achieved this by improving a number of aspects of the game. The improved wanted system and the integral use of your cell phone are only two parts of the game successfully improved.

The Controls
There are separate controls for different aspects of the game, just like in previous GTA games the controls are different when you are in a vehicle than when you are on foot. As you probably expect the controls are very easy to get used to and are very similar to previous GTA games.

Kikizo thoroughly tested all aspects of movement such as walking, running, jumping, sudden stops, sudden turns and running into a moving vehicle. As expected the dynamic animation is very smooth, they had very little to say apart from that Niko can look up in the air much further than in previous games.

I know part of the game I really wanted to know about was the fighting, and Kikizo were very impressed. The first thing they did was pick a fight with someone, while locked on there are the normal controls of punch, kick, block but also the ability to dodge attacks if you press the right button at the right time and the ability to line up combo attacks. There are small markers on the targeted person which tell you if they are running away (green marker) or if they are fighting back (red marker), and it is the same when you are shooting them.

The AI used throughout the game has also been improved. The example they give is if you are in a confined space with a ledge that you don’t want to fall off, so if you start to move Niko will move carefully in that direction.

The Missions
Kikizo got to play 4 missions in total, two from early-game and two from mid-game and they were impressed not only with the content of the missions but the pace as well. The earlier missions were about teaching you the controls and the usual missions you can expect, but the later missions were challenging and more engaging with good shootouts and great dialogue.

Read the rest of the GTA IV :Hands On Preview

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You will also find the latest GTA4 videos, screens, themes and wallpapers. As soon as they are released you will find them here.

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