Be Excellent To Each Other

And it looks fantastic.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... o-business

you graphics whore.

It does look very nice indeed. Hopefully it'll be a bit less po-faced than IV.

That's obviously the PC version. Here's a 360 screenshot:

To me, that actually looks better!

I bet you like this even better:

Looks awesome. I've also been looking forward to Retro City Rampage (pictured above) for too long now. Will it ever fucking come out?

I'm hoping it's a bit less buggy and the cars handle a bit better.

Nah, they're out the wrapper for a start. Disgraceful!

I don't even need "not po-faced" (though that would be preferable), I'd settle simply for "fun".

Joking aside, those are PC screenshots, aren't they?

http://www.gtav.net/info/



Doesn't seem likely we'd have new consoles by then.

Doubt it. Probably a "last hurrah" for the current consoles. Hope it's considerably less choppy, grey and generally un-fun as IV.

Even if the new consoles are available by the time it arrives, would they release it on them anyway? GTA is a massive selling brand. Install bases would be far too small for them to "waste" their game on.

Maybe they'll launch a "high res" version on the new crop of consoles afterwards?

GTAIV:Leicester

Ive no doubt I'll buy it when it's twenty quid but probably won't play it. So there we go, move along now..

Looks awesome from those screenshots, but I must admit I just couldn't get into GTA IV. It was just too "dry"; very impressive and all that, but to me at least, not a great deal of fun?

Ridge Racer is loads better. Oh yes.

I enjoyed GTA4.

It was the first one I'd played though, apart from 5 minute blasts on earlier versions.

GTA IV wasn't perfect, and had some annoying flaw, but to me was the closest anyone's got to making a living, breathing city.

No one had really got to grips with the hardware at this point, especially for open-world games. It looks like its place in history will go down as a bit of a stinker, but undeservedly so, imo.

I enjoyed it too. I thought it was excellent, in fact. But it was definitely missing some of the fun from previous games. It lost a little bit of its humour, took itself a little too seriously. Didn't ruin it for me, but after San Andreas and Vice City, it almost felt like a step backwards in some aspects.

The "Heat" inspired bank job mission was fucking brill.

I loved bits of it. The missions were mostly great, the city was great. But I hated the story, I hated Nico, I hated everyone else, I hated the "take me bowling, Nico!" shit. I hated that Nico couldn't decide if he was a loveable rogue or a stone cold killer. I disliked the driving.

You really should play Sleeping Dogs. It's not so ambitious in scope as GTA, but I really do think it's taken the excellent work that series did and built something special out of it.

I have high hopes for GTA V.

When is Retro City Rampage out? I thought it was part of the summer season fingymajik.

It's stuck in some sort of limbo. We'll probably see it before the end of the year I imagine. News is slow on it.

GTAIV was a fine game, arguably its ambition exceeded its ability, but I can't think of any other game this generation of that size that I've played through twice (once on 360 and then again on PC).

As for those screenshots, I suspect they're not in-game even on the PC, more like a 'spectator mode' render.

They really do need to get the performance sorted out on the consoles for GTAV though, GTAIV was a horrendous shonky mess at times, to the extent that it seriously impacted on the game itself.

TBH I think it'd be a better fit for a next-gen launch title, unless they've done some serious engine optimisations.

(It's the kind of game I'd rather play on a console, truth be told.)

When is Just Cause 3 out?

Why do you want to know?

I think he enjoyed the second one and is looking forward to a sequel.

Spoilsport

Sprang 2013.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/leaked-g ... ch-rumour/

Imagine a GTA that wasn't the same old story replayed, over and over again, that could actually be interesting!

I'd like to imagine a GTA where my actions in the game aren't totally incongruous to the game's cutscenes.

Oooh! Update: Antagonist! Protagonist! Antagonist! Protagonist! Antagonist! Protagonist!

I'm still not sure if/how this will work.

GTAIV was basically beyond what the 360/PS3 were capable of, it was a good game in spite of it clearly pushing the hardware past its limits. I know BEEXers aren't exactly tech-obsessed, but when your framerate is crashing down to about 10FPS and controller response is measured in days during an intense gun battle, that starts to impact the game for everyone.

I'd rather get the 360 version so I can play it on the big telly with 5:1 sound and get cheevos and see what everyone else is up to, but for tech considerations alone it may have to be a PC purchase.

I await more details with interest, but on balance I'd prefer this to have been a next-gen launch title.

Playing IV on the PS3 recently, you realise how far games have come since it was first released. There's the (very) drop in frame rate but there's been far prettier games pushing the hardware beyond what GTA was doing some 4 years ago. GTA IV was not the pinnacle of game making as far as the consoles go and I expect the revisions made to the engine since 2008 Rockstar are using will ensure that the console versions are better looking and smoother than IV was. On the consoles.

I'm not so sure - GTA4 was really ambitious, and while it ran a little better on the 360 than the PS3, you could definatly see the cracks appearing on both. Sure, they'll be advances in coding technique and the like, but it wasn't the graphics that made GTA4 creak, it was the sheer amount of stuff going on.

I, obviously, hope they prove me wrong - but [The Detective One That Has Totally Slipped My Mind] wasn't that much better.

You're probably thinking of that french game. "La Noire"

That's the cunt!

I've never liked the GTA games, I don't think one is going to do anything different to change that.

Never mind.. as you were.

Things looked sharper, but it was still the same case of six cars on-screen at once, with cars being grouped together so if you had a certain type then the other similar ones would always spawn.

Midnight Club: LA offered a lot more traffic on-screen but I suspect that's because the traffic cars were lower quality models and so they could show more of them at once.

Entirely a console limitation.

Maximum traffic density on the PC version. Mega-explosion and chase.

I'm definitely going to wait and see how it fares on the 360 before making my decision (hopefully there'll be a demo), but they really need to sort out the performance and the input lag. It doesn't need 60FPS but it needs to maintain 30FPS with reasonable consistency, and I can't be having those catastrophic drops down to 10-15FPS and having the controls turn to treacle when I least want them to.

Even then though, the number of compromises they made to get it running on the 360 at all are pretty shocking once you've seen the game 'unleashed' as it were on a capable gaming PC.

I've actually bought GTA4 on the 360, the PS3 and the PC.

360 and PC I can understand, but why the PS3 as well? (Especially since it was quite notorious as being the shonkiest version by far.)

I asked Mrs Grim... to pick it up for me, and wasn't specific enough.

Needless to say, I didn't talk to her for a week.

Spookily, I remember that story.

Oh well that's entirely your own fault then.

I asked Mrs AE to get a pizza from Shoprite for me the other week (she'd sent me an email at work asking me if I wanted anything), I looked it up online and sent her a screenshot of the box.

This was for a fucking frozen pizza.

I went out for a pint of milk once and came back drunk with a pineapple.

My parents were getting me box sets of Homicide: Life on the Streets for Christmas once and Mrs B sent them links directly to the relevant Amazon pages and everything. Christmas day rolls round and they've somehow managed to buy US versions of everything and pay much more than they should've done. To this day they and my sister email me links every single fucking time they're going to buy DVDs online "so I can check that they're buying the right thing!" because they're convinced it's really hard to make sure you buy UK compatible discs. Fannies.

Isn't that an episode of How I Met Your Mother?

Ask her about it next time. I was in a lot of trouble.

It's been a year and a half since I last played GTA4 but even when I played it then I thought they were still miles ahead of other sandbox games, although I haven't played Just Cause 2 (the demo put me off), it still took the piss out of saboteur, LA Noire, any Saints Row game, the only game that can challenge it is Red Dead. I've played numerous sandbox games since and even 5 years later none even come close to liberty city. Gameplay mechanics wise, it's not the greatest but few have created a better game world. Although to counter my argument and possibly agree with you, the frame rate drop was ridiculous at times, although I'm sure it was mainly mission based, the last mission of the original GTA4 had a ridiculous of jittery car chase to the beach for a jittery boat chase, followed by fail jump and repeat infinity. Terrible finale bettered by the episodes.

But yeah, I hope there making it for lovely consoles Sony 4 and Microsoft 3 after they release it because I'm not buying a super PC soon and I'd love to see it in super lovely graphics. It's the first time I've felt this way, it seems like a waste if they make this amazing world and don't release it at its potential.