First, I know you know about Crysis. The game is big, beautiful, and fun. But l've considered all of this and examined all of what Crysis is, and GTAIV outweighs Crysis in a lot of subtler fashions.
- Liberty City is massive. Not quite as big as San Andreas, but that's understandable given just how complex it is. LC is fully rendered at all times. NPCs and vehicles are rendered at all times as well. This is witnessed when standing on a skyscraper, zooming in on a fat guy eating a hotdog from a mile away with a sniper rifle. You can barely make it out, but he's there. You can see traffic get held up because a guy got run over in the street, or a cop chasing a burgler and arresting him after he trips in an alleyway. This leads me to my next point.
- The NPC AI is shockingly advanced. They answer phones and hold believable conversations, or stop and have conversations that genuinely pertain to the situation, i.e. a guy telling a young girl how good she looks, or an old lady commenting on the bad weather and being told by a "thug" to STFU, before he mugs her. You see taxi drivers tossing their coffee cups out of their windows. You see people open their umbrellas when the thunder starts to roll in. Cops witness a crime like hit and run, murder, etc., and a chase breaks out, leading all the way up to the perp being arrested and taken to jail, or ending in a violent shootout with the entire LCPD. NPCs laugh, cry, eat, sleep, rest, excercise, go to work, go home, break the law, uphold the law, and live life like a Sim with procedurally generated animations (more on that later).
- The script is absolutely huge and branches like a willow. Every mission has alternate series of dialogue to be witnessed only through a reattempt. Police will report your vehicle and crime to eerie detail over the radio. "Suspect is travelling on [something] boulevard in a White sedan.." "We have a grand theft auto on [something] street..Suspect is travelling in a black motorcycle on [something] street.." A lot of the NPC comments are also very relevant, including comments on your attire, what you might be carrying, or your behavior in general. It's also very, very rare for them to repeat themselves.
- The euphoria engine is absolutely incredible. Not only are the physics so convincing and so refreshing, the animations never get dull because they're never repeated. The basics of the engine were explained to me in great detail and I think it's the best thing since HAVOK. Shooting a guy in the kneecap never felt so satisfying. And the motion captured animation used in the cutscenes is terrific as well; the best I've seen since Half-Life 2. As impish as some NPC features are, they are brought to life with shocking animosity. The game is almost bug-free on consoles (compared to its predecessors, that is). It runs terrifically. After the initial loading screen, which lasts about 1 minute, you are able to access the internet, enter interiors, travel as far as you want, use the phone, play online; whatever you do, you don't have to sit through a loading screen. Absolutely incredible.
- Considering all of the bullets listed above, it's no small compliment to say that the game really looks good even on a small scale. Explosions are strong, water effects are convincing, and the lighting is very radiant. Reflections are solid. The game doesn't just leave its competition in the dust in terms of harnessing horsepower, but is competent when trying to keep up with even the most detailed, small-scale AAA titles like Gears of War and Uncharted. This game made my brand new 360 burst into flames. I'm not joking. They really pushed the hardware with this one. 100 million, 1000+ individuals, and nearly 4 years is a lot of money, teamwork, and time, and it was not spent in vain.
So while Crysis seems like the true technical marvel to behold, I think it's these layers which it lacks that really sets GTAIV apart. No, it's not my favorite game, or even in my top 5 of last year*. But I think it's truly a masterpiece in software engineering, and one of the greatest achievements in the history of game design. *For you brown-nosers, those would be: Fallout 3, Dead Space, World of Goo, MegaMan 9, and Persona 4.
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