Even if you have been living under a rock, you're undoubtedly aware that today is the day that Grand Theft Auto 4 - the long awaited next generation version of one of the most popular (and controversial) gaming brands ever - is released. This has the potential to be a fairly pivotal event not just for the GTA series, but also for the next generation consoles as a whole - it could be the "killer app" that many people have been waiting for to upgrade, so no doubt Sony and Microsoft are looking out for some increased sales.

While normally we'd encourage people to be discriminating gamers and kick back, read some reviews, and generally restrain themselves from charging head-first into their closest game retailer, this is admittedly a bit of an ask. Further, chances are good that doing this will only make your life difficult as the game flies off the shelves and Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s become rare.

We'll have our thoughts on the game in review form up soon!

picked it up for $65

I'll be buying this tomorrow. lets hope its as good as the reviews make it sound

I'm getting the 360 dubya version for 78 tomorrow, I have it on hold so it is alll miiinnneee!

Also, I'm borrowing my sisters 360. So I get out of having to a buy a 360.. at least for the time being.

got the ps3 version at JB. add me to your psn accounts: phatmike128

One thing I noticed that might be a result of the australian censored version, is the topless chicks in the strip club don't show any nipple, the nipples are covered up with little love hearts and other such things. Is there anyone who's played the uncensored version that could shed some light on this nipple situation?

^ I also noticed this (crosses of black electrical tape across her tits)

One thing I noticed that might be a result of the australian censored version, is the topless chicks in the strip club don't show any nipple, the nipples are covered up with little love hearts and other such things. Is there anyone who's played the uncensored version that could shed some light on this nipple situation?

its the same in the uncensored version.
the only differences i can tell (and i have both versions) is when you sleep with hookers, the uncensored versions shows the hookers mounting you in the car and you can watch the whole thing (even though its pretty uneventful) in the aussie/nz version its from behind the car focusing on the number plate.
other then that they are identical.

no wonder it is going to do 6 million copies this week if you've bought it twice!!!

Just went and got it, looked like old Bigw at carindale had a few left behind the counter for both versions. So 78 bucks you wont find it cheaper anywhere in aus retail.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/stab-attack-at-grand-theft-auto-launch/2008/04/30/1209234894535.html

didnt take lomng lol

last edited by ctd at 09:50:34 30/Apr/08

Anyone else feel that the combat to be incredibly clunky? Half of the punches don't connect, especially when you're trying to hit someone while they're on the ground.

We wont have you speak unkindly towards this game Midda.

^ lol

How f***en cool are the radio stations this time round. The electro station has got well known tunes all through it so far.

One thing bothering me a bit (maybe its the cars I have been in) you cant do sweet as brake turns like in the other games.

Yeah compared to previous versions I'm driving a lot more cautiously this time around. The vehicles handle a bit more realistically and it's a lot easier to lose it around a corner. Also you can seriously f*** up your car, take out pedestrials or worse hit a cop very easily and since it's a lot harder to lose the cops than it was, you tend to try and avoid attracting unwanted attention.

I'm still trying out all the camera views to find the best for driving, I was using the hood view for a while, but since it has less peripheral vision I switched it off after flying around a corner into a cop car that I couldn't see. The depth of field in the hood top view is a bit extreme as well and makes it harder to judge distance and speed.

Overall it seems like more of the same from the previous versions, only more refined and polished. Though the on foot camera can be annoying when navigating around obstacles or inside buildings.

Also I can't understand a f***ing word Spoiler:
little jacob
says, but I think that's the point. Actually in general I find there to be a bit too much background noise sometimes, every time there's a cutscene or you're talking to people on the phone there's always music going in the background and the accents on all the characters don't help you understand them, damn foreigners.

I'm still pretty early into it though, maybe 3-4 hours last night is all I've played up to Spoiler:
the last mission I did was where you choose to let the guy fall off the crane or rescue him.

Anyone else feel that the combat to be incredibly clunky? Half of the punches don't connect, especially when you're trying to hit someone while they're on the ground.

Yeah, I found it a bit clunky at first cos I was just mashing punch and kick and trying to punch and kick my way out of a fight like in previous GTAs. But then I found out about the dodging and the counter-attacks, and now I just do that s*** and its pretty cool :) As your opponent attacks you, you hit A to dodge out of the way, and then B or Y to do a counter-attack which makes Niko beat the living snot out of the guy, much more satisfying.

How does the whole surprise punch work? Where you knock someone down before you enter combat. So that you can just beat and kick them on the floor? :) I do it sometimes by accident but mostly can't figure out what I did. I missed the tip that popped up when it explained it.

Personally, I'd recommend this game to everyone, but IMHO it was way too over hyped.

from memory I think it was just left trigger to target a person (before you have entered combat) and hold B (on 360 controller that is) to give a surprise abortion.

Oh yeah, do you always have a shotgun? Because I don't remember ever picking one up, but I went to use that knife you take during a fight near the start, and I was surprised when I pulled out a shotgun and shot someone in the chest at point blank range.

I tried MP. Loaded up the phone "cannot connect to game provider, please try again later"

What about everyone else?

That'd be PSN having issues

gta iv multiplayer down for ps3 players

got this today and played about 4 hours so far. all i can say, is that it is worthy of the scores it is getting. the best 360 game ive played yet.

- the combat was very clunky at first but when you work out that your not supposed to mash buttons, its awesome.

- the cars handle really akwardly but thats a good thing because you shouldn't be able to do a perfect handbrake around a corner at 100mph. even better is when your going flat knackers down a road and you slam on the handbrakes and just go out of control and smash into stuff. FUN!

- a lot of little things which are just great. actualy using your gun/knife to threaten people as you pull them out of a car. or in 1 instance i actualy stabbed the guy twice and then dragged him out and he flopped on the ground bleeding. Also when you crash, you can actualy be shot out of your front windshield which is just f***ing brilliant! I had a banshee going full blast down the tollbooth highway and saw a car already in the way. I thought, nah i can squeeze past and keep going. half my car smashed into the gate and i went flying out over the car beside me and into the next lane where i got run over and killed.

best $94 ive spent in a long time. will have plenty of fun with this.

Anyone else feel that the combat to be incredibly clunky? Half of the punches don't connect, especially when you're trying to hit someone while they're on the ground.

i found the combat was more reactive on the ps3 version then i did on my 360 version. which is funny cause the ps3 controller sucks.

i also found i drive better with the ps3 controller, i think its because the way i hold the contoller with the my thumbs directly over the thumb sticks, where as on the xbox360 im more ( i guess you could say relaxed ) with how i hold it and my thumbs are on the edge of the thumb sticks.

everythign else about the ps3 controller sucks though (also dont even f***ign bother with sixaxis for those with a ps3)

the draw distance is better on the ps3, however the graphics are a little more jaggy (not enough for a 360 fanboy to get all excited over though)
they both have frame rate drops and they both have magical appearing items
however the xbox360 from time to time takes a few seconds loger to load textures in a cutscene (so rare its barely worth mentioning)

other then that the game kicks ass (just wait till you get to the heist mission people, brillant)

sixaxis is retarded for any form of car racing. Maybe it would be cool for jets or something

I bought the game this morning. $78, great price. I don't have a 360 to play it on, Getting a hold of one tomorrow. Such torture to wait. I have an 8am start at uni on Friday with a multichoice mid sem exam. I predict average results from lack of sleep. O yer!

mate from work got it yesterday, got home at around 3:30 or so didnt stop till 2:30am this morning..said he did 17% completed..

$500 odd for 1 game? Not a chance.

going to buy it today, no one had problems with places selling out?? just gonna go to eb..

i can't believe just how many people are playing this... I logged on to XBL to play some CoD4 last night and EVVERYONE was playing GTAIV.

I am getting my copy this weekend from big w. hope they don't sell out :-\

I'll have to go against the grain - I just cant get into this. I've forced myself to play it for a while several times now, but I just keep going back to online Mario Kart. Then again I never loved the previous GTAs, so I guess I'd just say be warned - its very much more of the same. Which is suiting plenty of people who loved the earlier ones, clearly.

Aren't you that guy who thinks id games are good though?

wow, my favourite show sunrise dont like gta

:(
i foolishly expected better from them

I played so much tdm last night, so much fun. but the rl is way too op

Posting for sweet gamercard sig

your score is small like your penis

just picked mine up from local eb, heaps of copies and they also price matched big w for $84 = epic win

ripped, isn't the big w price $78 ?

i didn't have a brochure so the guy rang big w and got the price infront of me - EB had it at $110 or it might have even been $120 so i'm not complaining at all

Got my copy today for my PS3... to my dismay though, i think GTA4 pretty much broke my console. It froze after a while of playing, and when i restarted the PS3, it wasn't reading discs properly (even for other games). The error it cites is 80010514.

I then tried reformatting the PS3 and fresh installing it, but it froze halfway through the installation.

After googling the error code, it seems that this is the xbox equivalent of the red ring of death. There are quite a few posts on major forums about people's PS3 getting screwed from GTA4, so yeah.. just a heads up.

some guy was just saying the same thing in one of the other GTA threads on here alt_f4

Link said thread?

Man... I just finished the 1st bank robbing mission last night and i gotta say this cemented in the fact how damn awesome this game really is. for anyone who hasn't gotten to it yet, it's basicly a loose recreation of the Bank shoot out from HEAT, which as we all know, is the most epic shoot out scene ever. i cant get enough of this game

my game was all well and good up until this mronign when i was playing.

i was on a mission and it just froze.. left it there for 5 mins came back and still no response.. couldnt press the xbox guide botton or anything.

restarted xbox and each time it loaded the gta game it would get to the screen just before the splash screen.. like just where it says rockstar games etc and froze there.

opened cd case and had a look at the disk.. it has a perfectly round scratch covering the whole diameter of the disk.. its perfectly symetrical. its not asif i dropped or scratched it so i think my xbox done this.

So basically im in a bit of a pickle.. cause my game dosent work.. and im not sure if there is a fault with my xbox. i don't want to try putting any other games in there incase the same thing occurs.

what should i do?

after more examination and research ive found i may have moved my xbox when it was on.. to connect to xbox live.

fun times.

so that may have been the problem. my sister works at a video store so hopefully she has a disk buffer.

an expensive lesson for me but oh well.

let that be a lesson to you guys with xbox 360's! don't move the console whilst it is switched on with a game in there..

I'd send your xbox into microsoft and ask for a replacement dvd drive, tell them it wrecked one of your games and you want that replaced too, send the game in with it if need be.

I had a friend who had the same thing happen to his copy of Halo 3, and he got the dvd drive replaced in his xbox under warranty, and a new copy of Halo 3.

Gay.... After a whole week of exams, i bought it today to wind down my week only to have it freeze on the opening cut scene. :(

last edited by Resonate at 14:50:40 03/May/08

ps3 or xbox 360 Resonate?

after research on my problem.. with the ps3 there is a bug.

to resolve you have to delete the save game and start from scratch and this should fix?

pretty sure this is mentioned earlier in thread but no harm in repeating :)

Ps3 version, i tried the deleting game/save files thing but now it freezes before the opening cut scene.

EDIT: Found a fix for others who are having trouble. Disable the consoles internet connection at the start of the game to get through the first scenes.

last edited by Resonate at 15:21:26 03/May/08

Holy s*** few problems out there. Only problem I had was the visuals froze on the opening cut scene but the audio kept going and the video skipped to sync after 30 seconds.

Gametrailers; 9.8/10
Gamealmighty: 9.8/10
IGN: 10/10
Gamedaily: 10/10
Gamearena: 10/10
Gamespot: 10/10
Gamespy: 5/5
1up: A+
Gamestats: 9.5/10 (GPM of 99.9)


Also, Gamershell seem to know that GTA IV is coming out for PC in late June. If that's true I'm a very, very happy person.

calling bulls*** on a june release. None of the the others came out that quick.

Though it would be great cause Im over aiming with a f***** two handed dildo machine already.

GameRankings is reporting an XB360 avg score of 98.8% from 33 media sources
PS3 version sits at 99.5%.

It's fair to say this game has finally taken the #1 VG title of all time from LoZ:OoT after 10 years

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Metacritic has the 360 version at 99% from 42 sources.

these guys report it to be coming to PC in october.

My PS3 version started freezing the day after a night of MP with a friend who also brought over his PS3 (2 PS3s on PSN on same net connection = fine/no problems/awesome fun) but as long as I sign out of PSN before I load the game, the freezing stops. I would assume that the solutions instructing you to disable your net connection are just achieving this by proxy.

Be interesting to find out if the online integration of the mobile phone is also the thing causing problems for 360 owners experiencing freezing issues... Hopefully R* get this sorted out soon, or even better just release the PC version! I, too, cannot wait to be rid of this retarded "control" device.

Also, does anyone else notice striking similarities between Brucie and FPS Doug from PP?

last edited by kos at 03:25:04 04/May/08

my game was all well and good up until this mronign when i was playing.

i was on a mission and it just froze.. left it there for 5 mins came back and still no response.. couldnt press the xbox guide botton or anything.

restarted xbox and each time it loaded the gta game it would get to the screen just before the splash screen.. like just where it says rockstar games etc and froze there.

opened cd case and had a look at the disk.. it has a perfectly round scratch covering the whole diameter of the disk.. its perfectly symetrical. its not asif i dropped or scratched it so i think my xbox done this.

So basically im in a bit of a pickle.. cause my game dosent work.. and im not sure if there is a fault with my xbox. i don't want to try putting any other games in there incase the same thing occurs.

what should i do?

GTA4 is a f***ing awesome game man you should play it,

Are there usable planes in it, that is my only concern. I don't think there is. Motorbikes are a lot easier to handle then previous GTA games.

I'm very impressed with the level of detail for everything, from the very biggest, to the very smallest. I like the very GPS voice that some cars have, often they say turn left/right to late. But I guess GPS wasn't designed for a car hurtling around the city taking corners at 90.

The taxi system gets rid of the sometimes tedious getting from point A to B, although the driving and variety of cars makes the trek quite fun. Finding little places like the Spoiler:
Drift Track
is great. :D

No planes, just helicopters...

p.s. how to do spoiler stylez?

use "spoiler" tags in angular brackets

mine started to freeze last night, disabled internet connection and it works fine again. must b some s*** bug with the multiplayer

I'm very impressed with the level of detail for everything, from the very biggest, to the very smallest. I like the very GPS voice that some cars have, often they say turn left/right to late. But I guess GPS wasn't designed for a car hurtling around the city taking corners at 90.

i was driving around in a gps enabled car and it was a female voice, you would hear "ding dong turn right now" anyway randomly the voice actually said "PING PONG! TURN RIGHT NOW!()#@$" (all excited like) i lol'd at how random it was.

Has anyone been able to play a game of Hangman's Noose? Was playing on Live last night with some friends, and we were trying out the different co-op story missions, but every time we tried to start a game of Hangman's Noose, the host would lose connection to everyone else in the game and get booted out.

Also, one thing that kinda annoys me, is theres no way to make a private game with just people you want to invite. You can form a party of the people you want to play with, and when you start a game you all end up in the same game, but its still a public game and it fills the rest of the open slots with randoms.

Next time you're driving a cop car, turn on the siren & roll the car - it sounds awesome. :)

I had exactly the same problem khel, we played through the other 2 coop missions without any issues but that we kept f***ing up for us too

JB indro are sold out of GTA4 for Xbox. WHAT?!!? How could you underestimate that?!

Also, one thing that kinda annoys me, is theres no way to make a private game with just people you want to invite. You can form a party of the people you want to play with, and when you start a game you all end up in the same game, but its still a public game and it fills the rest of the open slots with randoms.

agreed, the multiplayer aspect wasnt very well thought out, it seems like they have gone for ease of use over practicality.

i played cops and crooks today and it was major fun, except my team mates just f***ed around and i appeared to be the only one chasing down the crooks.

It would be good if they could iron out glitches and add functionality to multiplayer in future patches. Hopefully they aren't waiting for Vice City :(

ok so i went into town on saturday morning to pick it up, big w, jb had sold out, ended up getting it from EB for full price :/

but anyhooo, really enjoying this game. it is surprisingly good. almost everything is perfectly executed. characters are _amazing_, especially niko. this game has certainly raised the bar again for story telling. i actually think that this is what will stand out from this generation of games more than anything else: story telling. Mass Effect, CoD4, GTAIV. its all story.



haven't had much joy with online yet though. the matchmaking seems to be really f***ed. it always seems to put me with yanks and i know there are billions of aussies out there. plus i'm getting drop outs.

also khel:

yes you can. start up a party mode and invite your friends in. this area acts as a lobby of sorts where you can just screw around until the host pulls up the phone and then joins another game type. it will bring everyone in that room along with you.

Yeah I know, but once you join another game type, and drag everyone along with you, its still a public game. Say you're in party mode with 5 friends, and you start a game that has 10 slots, it'll drag your friends in there and you'll fill 6 of the slots, then it fills the remaining 4 with random people, when really what I wanted to do was just have a game with the 6 of us.

I'm still trying out all the camera views to find the best for driving, I was using the hood view for a while, but since it has less peripheral vision I switched it off after flying around a corner into a cop car that I couldn't see. The depth of field in the hood top view is a bit extreme as well and makes it harder to judge distance and speed.

I hated driving at first but the more I do it and the better I get, the better I realise it is. In the older games, you would peak really early in terms of how good you could be driving around. Hand brake turns were about the height of skill. In this, I can easily see some people getting freakishly good. (not me, I suck :P)

You can chuck the car, steer away from the corner then over steer into it and pretty much drift through. Handbrake = death in this, gotta learn that early or you will suck for a long time. But yeah, drive like you do in real life... brake into the corner, no brake during the corner then accelerate after the apex and you move through smooth. Brake during the turn and you'll just keep going straight ahead, accelerate through the corner and half the time you'll under steer.

The other skill in driving is to manually move your camera as you make the turn. So as you turn with the left stick, you gotta pull the camera around with it so you don't lose vision. Soon as you get that figured out, it makes it ALOT easier to see.

last edited by qmass at 12:51:17 06/May/08

I think we figured out how to have a private game yesterday, basically in your phone settings when you create the match, set your private slots to max and I think that will only allow people in that you invite

Wheres the option to set private slots?

just got my UK copy from gamehubs.co.uk, will report to see how it goes when i get home
been playing the 360 version since friday and it's been working well except for 1 freeze

also wtf @ delete your save game to fix an issue, wouldn't it just pop back up next time you save?
and how are you supposed to finish if thats the 'fix'

I lurv the handbrake turns because it reminds me of those hollywood car chases.

Did anyone switch to the classic mode of in-car control? Even though burnout and a few others used the triggers for accelerate I couldn't get used to it in this game.

edit: also anyone with gta4 and ps3 add me - ctd_au

Yeah, all the driving feels a lot like hollywood car chase physics to me, I love it :) Even how you get air just coming over the top of hills and slam down on the other side.

GTA4 is a f***ing awesome game man you should play it,

jokes on you. took it to my sisters work at a video store and she buffed the disk and it works flawlessly now.

makes me feel so good now that i dont have to buy another copy :)

I'm very much liking the game so far. I do have a couple of issues with it.

GTA San Andreas seemed to have a larger world. I really miss planes. The car modding was fun, silly as it was. Buying Business' and homes. Just the little bits like that.
It seems that, apart from better graphics and physics, GTA IV has taken a step back from previous games. A small step, enough to make me miss those parts of GTA San Andreas that were just fun.

I dunno, personally I didn't like San Andreas much, its probably my least favourite. I felt they got a bit too carried away with all the novelty s***, I much prefer the approach GTA4 has taken.

JB indro are sold out of GTA4 for Xbox. WHAT?!!? How could you underestimate that?!

i pre-orderd the SE version from jb-hifi, then they told me that they didnt order enough pre-orders so ill have to wait for backorder. i told them to get f***ed and got a pre-order from game traders for $30 less.

I dunno, personally I didn't like San Andreas much, its probably my least favourite. I felt they got a bit too carried away with all the novelty s***, I much prefer the approach GTA4 has taken.

Yeh, I liked San Andreas most (not counting 4, haven't played it yet) I guess mostly because I dug the whole gangsta vibe. Half the s*** in the game though i didn't even touch - working out, buying clothes, modding cars, etc etc (except unless I had to for missions).

Understandable, however you can't be happy with the no planes. Surly you miss that. I used to fire up San Andreas just to fly the Harrier Jet around the place, Good Times.

Yeah, no planes is a bit of a bummer, but the choppers and the speedboats are awesome, so I don't miss them THAT much :P

I do like the driving very much. Motorbikes I like a great deal. I usually use those for missions if I can. They also make some awesome stacks.

i pre-orderd the SE version from jb-hifi, then they told me that they didnt order enough pre-orders so ill have to wait for backorder. i told them to get f***ed and got a pre-order from game traders for $30 less.

How much was Game Traders selling it for? Because JB had it for $85 when I got it, but I got it for even less because I got them to comp Big W.

How much was Game Traders selling it for? Because JB had it for $85 when I got it, but I got it for even less because I got them to comp Big W.

it was teh Special Edition version, it was $150 from jb-hifi and $120 at gametraders

Tip: If you can't get the D.E hand gun yet and want it - Shoot a gun salesmen once and wait for him to pull his D.E out, waste him and run like hell.
Dunno if they all have D.E's, just did the one in china town on the middle island. alonquin or whatever

last edited by ctd at 21:04:48 06/May/08

played a couple of solid games of cops n crooks last night, lots of fun.

its rad burning around as the cops. i can really see how ABP is going to rock pretty hard.

Yeah, sorry I ignored your invite, was waiting for some guys from work to get on cos we'd organised to do some games. But then Live started f***ing up for me and I wasn't able to successfully even join a game till like 10:30 :(

Also, got my head around the multiplayer a little bit more now. It seems party mode is kinda like a "clan vs clan" mode. You make your little party, then you start a game of say Team DM, and your whole party gets put on 1 team, and then you get matched with another party of the same size who form the other team.

If you want to just have a normal private game, you don't start party mode, you just start a normal game, and then you can set the private slots like Wetwired said, and just invite all your friends into the game, and set yourselves on whatever teams you want.

Played some Team DM last night with the weapon set to Rocket Launchers only, that was pretty mad, chaotic fun :P

yeah no worries, you should join in next time and bring in all your mates, the more the merrier.

the multiplayer is good but the only way to play aussies i have found so far is to invite people off your friends list. did you have any luck matching up your party with another party of aussies khel ?

also i don't understand why people want to turn the locking on system off. the game isn't about twitch shooting, its more about knowing the maps, getting a good car, good weapon, and good position. turning off the lock on takes away a fair bit of the strategy imo.

Those games of cops and crooks last night were pretty awesome

Shame I'm so aweful at driving, I must of rolled the cop car at least a dozen times. Tho flipping it off the overpass, landing it and driving off was a good effort :P

Yeah, we had no luck matching our party up with another party at all, there was six of us, and we sat in a Team DM lobby for ages and no other parties joined. Which is when we ended up just doing the thing I mentioned above, where we just started a normal game and invited people in separately.

Also, got my head around the multiplayer a little bit more now. It seems party mode is kinda like a "clan vs clan" mode. You make your little party, then you start a game of say Team DM, and your whole party gets put on 1 team, and then you get matched with another party of the same size who form the other team.

If you want to just have a normal private game, you don't start party mode, you just start a normal game, and then you can set the private slots like Wetwired said, and just invite all your friends into the game, and set yourselves on whatever teams you want.

That's pretty much it hey, it's such a massive dickaround that's really the only thing that made me actually give a s*** about a possible PC version.

It really is the game's biggest failing imo. Multiplayer has such awesome potential but there's just this frustrating element that doesn't need to be there.

Despite the waiting, the retardedness of having to load singleplayer first to get to multi and the difficulty of playing against people that aren't lagged. It's still stupid amounts of fun and very "just one more game"ish.

yeah khel we had 6 people too, we could have had 6/6!

Fail! Why did it never match us with you I wonder?

you were playing TDM we were playing Cops N Crooks...

played ps3 version all last night, way better than xbox

xbox = poor lighting/contrast (to be fair I was playing it on a projector so I don't know if that had any effect on the contrast for 360, both were plugged in via hdmi)


ps3 = 6axis controller wins at helicopter 10 fold, contrast is way better - you can actually see s*** at night
the ps3 controls just s*** all over the 360 controller
only con for the ps3 was the fact that it took about half an hour to get the game going (update + install)

PS3 controllers are the same shape as PS2 controllers aren't they? If so, then 360 controllers are soooooooooooooooooooooo much better than that s***.

yeah i much prefer the 360 controller, however i still prefer playing it on my ps3, looks nicer imo.
if only there was a way to use the 360 controller on the ps3.............

yeah the physical size of the ps3 controller is pretty lame for anyone who doesnt have tiny hands but the actual playability is what i was getting at
have y'all used the 6axis with the helicopter yet? much nicer than the joystick setup

I don't want to be too opinionated about it because I haven't tried that specific control situation yet, but I'm pretty confident that I would way prefer even the regular PS3 control over the 6-axis motion control for GTA4 helicopter flight, seeing how I've found the motion control utterly useless in every PS3 game that I've played to date.

Also worth noting that the whole time I was playing mariokart wii with the motion wheel, I was wishing I had a dual analogue control in my hand instead.

360 controller has a better design. for one its man sized.

also:

360 = Left thumb rests on the left thumbstick. Right thumb rests on action buttons.

ps3, ps2 = left thumb rests on the D-Pad, right thumb rests on action buttons.

(to be fair I was playing it on a projector so I don't know if that had any effect on the contrast for 360, both were plugged in via hdmi)

Playing it on a projector would make a huge difference in contrast.

Also, the PS3 controller is just as bad as the PS2 one. The only thing I can't personally comment on is the SIXAXIS controls for the helicopter, but you're the first person I've heard from who hasn't called it a gimmick and gone back to controlling the helicopter with a joystick.

I've only really used it in the 6axis demonstration but after having used the cheaty hax extensively on the 360 version I was well impressed with it the ps3 control

as for contrast, the ps3 looks fine on the projector but the 360 was too dark - just not sure if that would be the same on a regular old tv

Best game ever.

(not really)

Seen this courier-mail website story about GTA 4's sales. Sounds like it's an absolute monster.

Yep. Half a billion in like 2 weeks. Man, that sounds like a fun company :)

Patch released for the PS3 version, 18megs. Supposed to fix some multiplayer issues.