Game review: GTA IV

I have talked about one big game so I might as well talk about another. One of the biggest games this year and one that is sure to win a lot of awards come next year is Grand Theft Auto IV. Now even thought this is Grand Theft Auto IV it is actually the 11th game in the series if you count everything else including the expansion packs. But Rockstar seems to subscribe to the theory that numbering systems don't really matter. But since the is the next game in the series after GTA III to be set in Liberty City it's logical that it be the next number.

You play as Niko Bellic who just came into this country illegally after fleeing from his past in Eastern Europe. You meet up with your cousin Roman who has filled your head with tales of the American dream. He talks about his beautiful big titted girlfriend and the huge house that he lives in. You come to find out that he is barely hanging onto his girlfriend and he actually lives in a rundown apartment. As is the usual style in Grand Theft Auto games you need to get money so Roman offers you a job driving his cab. So you spend the first part of the game driving people around while the game gives you some tutorials. In fact this game has a lot of tutorials. There are so many gameplay elements here like driving, shooting, taking cover, flying, boating and the various mini games that it takes a while to get through all of them.

But after a bit you get into the business that GTA is best known for and that's killing a lot of people. GTA IV does this really well. One problem I had with the previous games is how damn hard they are. Like in San Andreas it was very hard to go into a gunfight without being hit from every direction. Even with a full load of health and body armor you could only take this for so long. I actually found myself cheating to get through the game. I had the same problem with GTA III and Vice City. Thankfully GTA IV has helped this problem with the cover system. You just go up to an object like a car, box or wall and press the button and your character hides behind. Then you just need to lock onto your enemy and hit the right button and you'll pop out and take a few shots. Now this doesn't make the shooting parts easy by any means. It just means that they won't get the point of being next to impossible. Just imagine if you'd had that option in San Andreas when you were asked to take over new territory from rival gangs. The guns in the game are pretty good and don't deviate too much from the norm. Of course it is always nice to pick of an enemy's head or arm with a sniper rifle or to climb on a roof and play clock tower sniper on the masses below.

Talking about the game’s graphics the game is great to look at. The character models are done well and they have a good amount of expression in their faces. The cars also look great and show very realistic levels of damage. The buildings look good too but there is a bit lack of color expect in the Times Square type area. But even that looks kind of dark and dreary at times. But don't let that detract you because overall the game looks great and outside the draw distances are really good. The only problem I found was texture pop-in. Where you'd walk into a room and suddenly objects and textures would suddenly come into view. But this wasn't enough to distract from the rest of the game. Now I have been told that the PS3 version didn't suffer from this as much but on my 360 it happened quite a bit.

Let's talk about the story. The game's story is quite good and there are even some branching options. While the early ones don't affect gameplay too much at the end of the game you are given a big choice which will affect how the game ends. At this point I've only seen one of the endings but if you save in the right place seeing the other ending is too hard. It will probably take you about 20 hours or so to get through the story if you don't do too many of the side quests but I say don't pass those up because they are quite a bit of fun in themselves.

Now one thing that has turned a lot of people away from this game is the driving. In the old GTA games the cars handled a bit like the tires were covered in grease. It would only take the slightest movement to send them sliding back and forth and then wind up slamming into another car and into a wall. Now the cars handle much more like real cars and are a bit more stiff. I personally like this because once you get the hang of it it's pretty easy to brake at just the right time to take a turn at high speed. Also at high speeds your car still handles about the same so if you get pretty adept you can weave in and out of traffic like a pro. But just be careful because if you hit another car or stationary object too fast you'll find yourself sailing through the window like a lawn dart shot out of a cannon.

Every Grand Theft Auto game would not be complete without the police. Some people could say that there aren't that many cops in the city but I say they are kept to a realistic level. In some previous GTA games they were almost as numerous as taxi cabs. Now they will ignore your driving for the most part unless you slam into them, slam into another car at a high enough speed or run people over. This will trigger the always beloved police chase. In previous games it would sometimes be quite a task to evade the police and when you did you'd feel very satisfied. In this case they dumb it down quite a bit. On your map will be shown your location as well as the locations of any cops in the area. Also on the map will be a large flashing circle. This indicates where they are patrolling. All you have to do is drive outside that circle without being seen and park your car for 10 or 15 seconds the chase ends. Now this can be complicated if there is a helicopter after you but those can be lost by going into tunnels or narrow streets or alleys. So most of the time when you do evade the police you don't get that same sense of satisfaction as you did in previous games.

When it comes to the missions they are pretty standard GTA fare. There are the ones where you are sent somewhere to kill this guy or that guy, or you have to drive this person somewhere, or you have to pick up a package and deliver it to someone. There is enough variety to them that you don't really notice you are doing the same ones over and over again.

There are a few more things I need to nitpick a little bit. First there is your cell phone. It is a neat concept and works for the most part. The biggest problem is when you are speeding down the road at breakneck speed and you get a text message. If you try to read it you are going to crash. So you'll either have to skip it or stop the car. Also even though my eyes are pretty decent I sometimes had a tough time reading the text on the phone so I'd read what I could and close the message. The other thing is the map that appears at the bottom of the screen. You can use a waypoint system that will give you turn-by-turn directions to your destination. But the only way to tell is with the map. Normally this wouldn't be a bad thing but they make the line for it a dark green and it winds up blending in with the rest of the map. Now in missions they make this line yellow. So my thought was why not make it another bright color instead of dark green?

One of the biggest things with this game is the addition of multiplayer. There are quite a few modes of play including your standard deathmatch and team deathmatch. Then if you get tired of killing people there are races but you can compete in GTA races which allow you to use guns. There are quite a few other multiplayer game types but I'm not going to name them all so I'd shoot over to Wikipedia and look them up if you are interested. Now they do break up the standard multiplayer formula a bit. In games like Halo 3 the guy with the most kills wins. In this game that isn't always true. When you kill someone they drop money and you have to pick it up to increase your score. So the person that wins is the person with the most money. So the fun comes in running up and stealing it from someone's fresh kill. Now you can compete on either small sections of the map or the entire map. Now I didn't ever find anyone playing on the whole map because even with a full lobby of players it would take forever to find each other.

The multiplayer runs pretty smoothly and I didn't notice any lag. The problem I did have early on was actually connecting to it. I bought the game right when it came out and I either couldn't get into a game or I'd constantly get booted. But after a few weeks this problem seemed to correct itself as all those retarded monkeys that had been playing before were replaced by real people.

So lastly I say if you like the Grand Theft Auto games then at this point this game is a no brainer. If you are new to the series this is a good place to start and if you like the open world style gameplay then you can't go wrong with the series that really invented the concept.

My score is 9.5/10