Bought GTAIV tonight

I bought GTAIV yesterday and absolutely love it. The cars are very detailed and looks and handling. If you hit the brakes and turn expect to crash into the wall, or if you hit a curb going fast you will roll your car. The camera angles area a bit different but still alright. I already found my two favorite cars: the banshee( dodge viper) and the 69 charger will the huge blower on it.

On the PS3 version of course you have the install, takeing up i believe 3.5gb, but once you get done with the install, the visual stimulation begins! First of all I want to note to everyone that when i first started playing the game it seemed very very dark to me, couldn't hardly see anything, I had to change the color scheme on my t.v. (good chance you might have to do this depending what you already have it set at.) I was on dynamic, and now had to switch to movie. if you have vivid setting i always like that one the best. So anhow, right off the bat you will notice the graphics in GTA4 are nothing short of amazing!
Once you start the game I know you are gonna wanna jump right in and play, but you have to sit through a little background story. This tells you about Nikko and why he comes to the U.S. By the way so far I seem to like the russian accents, it ads a nice touch. I was a little worried about that when i read the previews, but the actors do a great job with the voice overs, and its actually not bad, anhow ....

Driving down liberty city you will right away notice the control in the cars...Amazingly realistic, more like playing gran turismo then grand theft auto, and once you get in that first crash, you will know why you bought the game, the realness of the crashes has me blown away!
other then that, to me the character still has the same sluggish control as the previous gta games, but i havn't tried any gunfire yet, or any covering, so i will let everyone know how that goes... so thats about it for now, so i will post more in the 3-6 hr impression range ....

Also I purchased the strategy guide, so if anyone needs to know anything i can look it up for you.

Yah I also noticed the darkness of the game, I just cranked up the brightness in the game and a little on my TV. My favorite car is the dukes, it is the only car you can actually whip around and go fast in. I am 10.23% done with the game, it seems shorter, and a little easier compared to the other GTA's but we will see later on. I got 5 stars last night and lets just say good luck trying to live, the cops will blow your head off through the window with a shotgun if they get the chance. I have not seen any sports bikes in the game so far, I have driven the chopper, dirtbike, and the moped. They all seemed to handle decently well.

I did see a couple of sport bikes, didn't get on one, but I do love the Banshee,...wow does that thing fly, this game gets you moving faster then any game i can think of... and like i said switch the settings rather then actually turning up the brightness.
I continued on with the story a little bit, standard gta style story line, Nikko's stupid cousiin owes ppl money, you gotta save his ass,etc. So after I was about ready for bed I thought.....why not check the multiplayer quick......WOW!!! ....thats all I can say....WOW!!!!

If you weren't looking at buying this game already the multiplayer is more than enough reason. I did a quick Free Roam, there was only two of us at the time, but initially we just ran around and killed each other, when you die, you farily quickly respawn within half a block radius of where another player is, which is very helpful, then we said hey lets blow some Sh*t up....thats where it went from pretty cool to F**kin Sweet! as i said there was only two of us on this particular server, but it can support 16, imagine the mayham!!!! I also did a quick team death match, and gta race which were both AMAZING also.... I could probably keep playing this game multiplayer forgetting about the single player as great as it is, and still feel like i got my moneys worth!
so as an idea i have, if you are playing single player and decide you just wanna mess around, i.e. kill ppl, drive around, whatever, open up your cell phone quick and hit multiplayer free roam....makes it so much crazier!!!

multiplayer has been seeing a few problems, the online servers cannot keep up, you can currently play, but when too many ppl get online the servers crash..... such as 3:30pm to about 11:00pm they are working on the problem, prob be an update here within a week or two i would think..... but right now its pretty random on weather or not you can get in to a multiplayer game...

I'm currently at 14% and the story is getting alot more interesting. I don't want to ruin it for all of you but around 10% it starts getting alot more fun. Driving drunk is really hard to do.

I was reading an article in my magazine about the online gameplay. It was saying that you get stars from playing,im assuming these are good stars, and you can unlock new clothes guns and even cars. If that is the case I am getting online when I can, im up to 20% now and it seems that there is so much to do in this game that I have no time for online.

You dont earn stars for playing online you earn cash! for example you play team deathmatch, its not who gets the most kills its who collects the most cash,(but you get $100 for every kill) and after the game you keep the cash(for your online character) and can level up to unlock new clothes and accessories. I have already unlocked a few, but need another $5000 for my next level.

Im finally on the second island after 20 some percent. I like this one more because the roads will go straight for a long time and you don't have to worry about turning so much. Also did my longest mission last night which took me about 12 minutes to carry out.