The latest — and eagerly anticipated — previews have finally landed! As we’ve been saying for a few days now, Kikizo, IGN, CVG, GameSpy, 1UP, Team XBox and Gamespot (amongst others) were all treated to yet another exclusive look at Grand Theft Auto IV.
Here’s a delightfully quaint little summary of the new stuff:
- Each site got to play GTA IV for two full hours. Kikizo were the first to do so. Four missions were played.
- The build that the sites got to play is exactly three weeks old as of today.
- Once you die and end up in hospital, you receive a text on your phone offering you to retry the mission.
- Kikizo have compiled a list of all the X360 controls. See them here.
- Only one island (Broker/Dukes) is unlocked to begin with. The other areas are blocked with police blockades. The second area (Bohan) will open up “sooner than it has in previous GTAs.”
- You can drop grenades and molotov cocktails out of the car window at high speed. Headlights can be put on full beam or dipped, but cannot be turned off.
- You can pause and select a destination on the full-size map, which is then reflected on the radar. This marks the route out in blue.
- You cannot store items/objects inside vehicles.
- Cars are not customisable, but you can still save them at safe houses.
- There are eighteen radio stations in total. One is called The Vibe, which is RNB and soul. The other genres on offer include funk, reggae, jazz, dance, modern Jamaican, pop, hardcore, hip hop and a specific Eastern European station.
- Dropped weapons and other items have a yellow halo around them, and the mission markers are now yellow arrows floating in the air, pointing at the ground, as opposed to the cylinders we are used to in previous GTAs.
- A hands-on multiplayer preview will (probably) arrive next month.
Aside from the extensive written content, the previews also came with a generous number of new in-game screenshots, many of which fall into the “ass-kickery of epic proportions” category. (We’ve highlighted some our favourites below.)
As always, you can jump into the discussion over on our forums. Don’t forget to digg this story; we don’t want anyone out of the loop!
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