The latest issue of British gamming magazine Games (TM) featured a 7 pages exclusive preview of Take Two's upcoming hit: GTA: IV.
You can read the full sized scans of the preview in the screens tab, so we'll just point out the most important and exciting features here:
- The new GTA installment deviates a lot from the cartoony violent feel of previous GTA titles and emphasizes on realism. For example, to buy a weapon you now have to call an arms dealer and set up a meeting in an abandoned alleyway to "finish the deal".
- The police now is much more vigilant that you'd prefer to hire a cap instead of the usual GTA carjacking. When riding a taxi, you can watch the city from first person view or press the appropriate and skip to the destination directly.
- When being chased by police, you no longer have access to Pay N' Spray to evade cops. Instead, when you are spotted committing a crime a "search area" is charted around you. If you managed to escape the circular search area undetected, you are free; but if you are spotted (by police or pedestrians), the center of the search area would change to your position. Committing a crime while being chased would expand your search area.
- Combat has been improved a lot. Games magazine compares it to Gears of War combat, which is considered to be the best third person combat to date.
- You can access "GTA: IV World Wide Web" through any of the game's TW@ Cafe cyber cafes. You can also use your (in-game) mobile phone as a calendar, alarm, camera and â€"most importantly- call your associates to start new missions.
- We already know that GTA: IV will feature multiplayer for the first time in the series (not counting fan made multi theft auto mod), but we still have no details about it.
In spite of rumors about its delay, GTA: IV is still scheduled for October 19, 2007 release.