By now, you might have had a chance to check out the preview put up yesterday by our UK editors (and if you haven't, you really should), which beautifully describes what it's like to cut loose from structure and dick around freely in the vast, open playground that is Grand Theft Auto IV. The beauty of an open-ended game like GTA IV, however, is that two people can play for two hours and see completely different things, which is exactly what happened when the US GR editors took their turn at the wheel earlier this week.

The biggest difference is that - while UK editor Matt Cundy played the game on an Xbox 360 - our first taste of GTA IV was on a PS3. For the most part, the game looked identical to what we've previously seen on the 360, although there were a few visual glitches that were due to it being an unfinished product. It didn't take advantage of the Dual Shock 3's rumble, either, although Rockstar reassured us that the PS3 version is about a week behind the 360 edition, and that rumble will be added soon.

Our time with the game started off with protagonist Niko Bellic standing around on a street in Broker, Liberty City's version of Brooklyn. But standing around is boring, so after walking around for a bit (Niko always moves at walking speed, unless you hold down X to make him jog or double-tap it to make him sprint) we immediately hijacked the nearest vehicle - a parked, new-looking pickup truck - and started swerving through traffic as fast as possible. Right away, we noticed a huge difference over previous GTA titles: this thing actually handled well. When we swerved at the last second to avoid slamming into an oncoming car, we actually missed it instead of just skidding into it sideways. Accelerating and braking with the L2 and R2 triggers took a little getting used to, but overall it was a much smoother ride.

It was also much more realistic; if you're driving at top velocity (which blurs the edges of the screen and gives an impressive sense of speed) and you slam on the brakes, well, the results depend on the car. In our case, pulling that usually meant we'd go screeching forward for another block or so. Trying to drift around corners by using the handbrake at these speeds was similarly iffy; in high-performance cars, you might get where you want to go, but in the beaters we usually tooled around in, it meant an awkward, 180-degree skid that frequently plowed into oncoming vehicles. That goes double if it's raining, which makes your ride's handling convincingly slippery.

The truck had a weight to it that felt heavier than any of the toy-like rides from previous GTAs, and so did all the objects we slammed into; lampposts snapped off with a burst of sparks and more resistance than we're used to, and shattered fire hydrants sent up geysers of water that threatened to flip the car as we drove over them. So we decided to test all that weight at our command by ramping the truck up to maximum speed, lining it up with a hapless motorcyclist and smashing him between our grill and the back of a van.

The resulting crash was so spectacular that everyone in the room winced audibly. The motorcyclist shot straight up into the air, flailing his limbs wildly while his ride was squeezed out of the collision and went spiraling off to the left, belching black smoke. The bike was what we were really after, of course, so we ditched the pickup, hopped on our dented new crotch-rocket and juddered clumsily down the street. After a couple of nasty spills, we somehow managed to slam headlong into the back of an ice-cream truck, throwing Niko over the handlebars and leaving a nice blood-splat where his face had collided with the metal.