Holy shit that does look nice!

You know one thing I noticed about GTA4 was the nice facial expressions the characters have. Plus the main character is totally cool.

Sure beats that gangbanger bullshit that SA was.

Mmm truck humping.

Can't wait for it's release already *impatient and fidgety*

Man is my finger not on the pulse, I loved San Andreas, then again Windwaker is my second favourite Zelda, after Minish Cap.
But yeah, these look sweet.

Does "unpolished" mean those aren't bullshots? If so, then silkylove is well pleased.

Id like to title the picture of Niko with the glock "WARFACE"

I'm sorry but how far away is this game from release?

I'm pretty happy with the way this game is looking. I actually expected it to look a lot worse.

Gorgeous screens, can't wait to see this game in motion.

they are not entirely new..... they were actually in a magazine for preview few months ago... but the quality of them used to be rubbish because they used to get scanned.... now theyv released the uncompressed digital format

I missed every single GTA after the original top-down one... Think it's about time I made up for it! Looks awesome.

The dude on the phone is art not a screen, right?

My word that looks nice.

I have reason to buy a new xbox now!

Hey, look! The flag of Portugal (my beloved country) is in Liberty City. That's nice.

Graphics look so much nicer in that first screen than in any other.

Looks beautiful. I hope rockstar nails the gameplay down as well.

@cdr: first screen is just a drawing it seems...

this and MGS4 are reasons i would buy a PS3.

@theexcitingone: You do know that GTA4 is also coming out on the 360, right?

@Carroceiro: Bora cantar o hino. XD

@Ashurahori: Presumably with more content than the PS3 version.

Didn't stop me from pre-ordering the PS3 SE though. A fifty million dollar bribe (to someone else, hint hint) can help change people's minds real quick.

wow... just wow.

It sure does look very nice but I have 2 issues with it. The low resolution road and jacket in some of the shots and the fact that everything is using muted grey/blue hues. I think the real world contains more than greay, blue, and dull red. I hope its all a filter like in Gears of War, cause I like it when games use tons of color (thats why I liked Vice City the most).

So there is a portuguese community in that city huh? I wonder if on GTA IV there are groups of "portuguese mafia" and such.

I just preordered the game yesterday. I love it! This game is a total female orgasm. This looks like hours of fun.

@Witzbold: Sorry you didn't enjoy SA, I loved it, although I thought it was a great example of last-gen tech kind of peaking, disappointing because it was so close to true greatness but had issues.

Of course, I still laugh my ass off at Friday (same writer as SA), so perhaps I'm just behind the times and such.

This game is the reason I bought a 360 (that and the at-the-time-unannounced NG2), nuff said.

!

@DaiMacculate: The direction the gameplay took and the size of the city was great.

I just hated the story and characters.

Looks amazing.

@Witzbold: Isn't the main character also a gangster, albeit an eastern european one. I'm guessing its the relative 'freshness' at work here.

it's a little hard to tell in the pics here, but at [www.gta4.net] you can see that the individual teeth in his zipper are modeled, not just an alternating light/dark texture, which hit me as one of the most "wow" detail bits.

@JP_Neptune: That could potentially be the most awesome (and LOL worthy) thing to hit videogames. EVER!

Can't wait until this game is out my ps3 will working on overtime.

It's impressive that this will fit on a 360 disc considering GTA:SA practically filled the format in the last generation. Don't expect any "extras" for the 360 version on release, I suspect they are doing deals with Satan just to compress what they have in the v1.0 game without worrying about extra content. Personally I hope the PS3 version goes all out for hi-def graphics and sound, considering all the extra capacity available. And no, I am not expecting extra content on PS3 either.

Loving the graphics but if it is at the expense of frame-rate then I'll not be so happy. GTA games were always great though despite the choppy frame-rate from time to time, but this is a whole new generation and I want a flawless product pur-lease. And the textures on the characters aren't so hot, are they? Nevertheless, it's a GTA game and I am sooo looking forward to adding it to my collection (of GTA games).

Don't hold your breath for rock solid frame rates. Rockstar has never seemed to care much about that, and it seems like that's continuing if the trailer is anything to judge by. (I've watched the hi-def version.)

The game looks good, but it means nothing if they're doing it at 10-15 fps.

@Mr Bentley:

Quick Google search:

[thepiratebay.org]
(Ads oin site may be NSFW)

According to the above link, San Andreas was under 4 GB. Sounds like they have some wiggle room with regards to the DVD-9 format for GTA IV.

@trav23: You're kidding, right? It's clearly one solid model with a zip texture on it.

You believe the hype of 'next-gen' wayyyy too much. It's an absolute waste of time and technological resources to even bother testing such a thing on a character model.

Witzbold, I've asked this around Kotaku Comments before, and never really got a satisfying answer... [i]Why[/i] do you dislike the story and characters in San Andreas so much?

(And why has that handy auto-preview feature, which would help me figure out if I wanted to use square brackets or pointy ones, disappeared?)

@badasscat:

Even in the older games with the expansive environments I would rarely get any stuttering with the frames, sure occasionally but you make it sound like a common occurance....dayum, I hope they just give up on the SHITBOX3FIXME version-I bet that is the real reason it is delayed.......they are busting their asses to get the game onto the DVD disc.

@holytramp - Is easily scared by gawker artist adverts: LOL

@Witzbold: Gangbanger bullshit? SA was just as awesome as any other GTA.

@Witzbold: You do realize that one of the characters was an homage to Eazy-E?

And the game takes place on the West Coast? In 1992? San Andreas had the best hip-hop video game story of all time. They got it right, just like The Boondocks did, though I'm sure you hate that as well.

I'm slightly gonna miss the crappier graphics of the older GTA's- no wait it's gone.

Also, I wonder what people and movies are they basing this one after. Stealing and homage is like, GTA tradition.

@Ashurahori: "às aaaaaaarmaaas..."

On-topic, it is nice to see the flag of Portugal there. At least I'll be able to understand damned culture jokes, being familiar with Portuguese culture in genereal. Can we expect a Portuguese mafia of sorts in 'Leftwood'? Would be awesome!

@Mr Bentley: It's possible to compress things much more if you just put some more time into it.
Check out this for example, it's pretty amazing: [www.theprodukkt.com]

I dunno... I honestly must cry shenannigans, simply because this is so many steps up from the trailer that JUST came out.

I mean. If they did make such a graphical leap in such little time, then awesome!!!!!

but these pics seem a bit too nice.

Let the hype machine begin. It's not going to be Halo-esque, but it's gonna be close.

And, like Halo, we'll all take about how great/shitty the game will be before we play it.

Not that I'm not greatly looking forward to this game, but I do it with some skepticism. I still think GTA III was the best of the PS2 versions. Vice City just lacked to same feel for me and SA seemed like 20 pounds of stuff in a 10 pound bag.

I'll be buying this game. I've liked all the GTA's after III.

this is a totally new map, right?

GTA has NEVER, EVER, been about graphics or 60fps.
I'll gladly take this, they do look slick.
Let's hope it plays as well as San Andreas.

@Seoulfood:

These screenshots look no different than all the ones they were showing for the past year.

@kingclip:

Oh, then bash the piss out of it when it launches and sells 5 million in less than two weeks, and say how horrible it is.