Unfortunately, they all are a fair bit on the super-touchy side. Each car type has its own feel and unique driving characteristics. There are a ton of different cars to steal and drive, from cop cars to muscle cars, delivery trucks to soccer-mom mini vans, even fire engines, ambulances, taxis, and boats. And when I say chosen, I mean the car most likely to be nearby when I need one. But driving is still loose and tricky, regardless of the car chosen. I’m a big fan of NOT moving the screen around as I’m playing a game, so I stuck to the analog and digital schemes, more often choosing the non-analog controls simply because they worked best for me. Players spend a ton of time driving in this game – not surprisingly given the title, right? The iPad version of the game lets players choose either an analog or digital steering scheme as well as an accelerometer based steering control scheme, which can be available even while steering with the virtual analog stick, for example. The virtual analog stick for movement appeared when I placed my thumb on the left hand side of the iPad screen, no matter where I set it. Virtual onscreen buttons are available to have the main character jump, sprint, shoot, and get into cars. If that’s not enough, players can touch and drag on the screen to move the camera around. There’s a rudimentary AI camera control that tries to orient things in an intuitive way. Rockstar has done an admirable job giving players different control options here, and I was able to find one that didn’t completely suck.įirst up, there’s the walking around and camera control. Just a quick look at a service like OnLive shows there’s a lot of room for improvement when moving from the console to a mobile device, even when it’s a larger device like the iPad. I don’t envy developers who need to adapt their control systems to touchscreens. His hands look like cotton balls rather than bandaged hands, to be honest. In the first scene, the character who escapes the prison van along with me has bandaged hands and cannot drive. Even still, I found myself chuckling a little at the puppet-like movements of my own and other supporting characters’ heads, torsos and hands. These days, we expect stuff on the level of Infinity Blade, perhaps to our collective detriment. Colors are drab, polygons are low, and the character animations, while praised by several reviewers upon the original game’s release, are severely limited in their variability and scope. Unfortunately, as with any authentic port, the things that were rough in the original are still present. Playing it on the iPad made it super easy to plug in some headphones and chair dance my way around Liberty City. These songs play whenever cars are entered and driving happens, along with some hilariously satirical commercials and DJ voice over work, e.g., “all the songs you were tired of 20 years ago: Flashback FM” captures the reality of the dumbing down of radio ten years ago, as do the frequent references to corporate ownership of the stations being played in the car. The music is top notch, both the composed-for-the-game original music as well as the licensed tracks included. The soundtrack garnered praise when GTA III was first released, and continues to be held up as a model to emulate. The character body models, however, are another story of puppetry, but we’ll get to that in a moment. For me, this small fact helped sell me on the story a lot more than if I had been taken out of the moment with just plain puppet-like mouth movements. The lips of the characters move in ways we expect them to move. Compared to a more recent game like Oblivion, or even Skyrim, for that matter, this ten year old game shines. It paid off in spades, as the cut scenes between every mission are compelling and interesting enough on their own to keep me progressing through the sometimes repetitive or frustrating missions.Īnother great thing about this game? The lip synch seems amazingly close to flawless. While current generation gamers are used to high-end talent gracing their top tier gaming experiences, this was a bold move ten years ago. There’s a host of professional actors, some of them big names like Robert Loggia, Kyle Maclachlan, and Michael Madsen. Let’s start with the good stuff.įirst, the game’s voice talent is still amazing, even by present day standards. A note for note port of this nature is both positive and negative, however. There’s a certain nostalgia factor at play here that I’m sure the developers are just fine with. The opening music, the story of a robbery gone bad, the escape from the prison van – all is identical to the original game. Rockstar has spared nothing in this translation to the small screen – there wasn’t a single hitch in the game’s motion or control or fluidity of animation. I was able to review this version on an iPad 2, a high-end device that really allows the game to shine.
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