Review: Grand Theft Auto IV

By Dimorphic

Stepping off the boat as Niko, an Eastern European refugee, your met by your verbose cousin Roman on a dark and wet night in the docks of Broker. While you have your rather loud reunion some dock workers tell you to shut the hell up, which annoys Roman and gives you your first glimpse at the detail put into the game. You calm Roman down and drive back to his apartment, and find that his ”American Dream” is still just that, living in a run down place in an equally run down part of the city. Far less than what you were expecting after Roman promised you a mansion and models.

However you are there, in Liberty City, the land of opportunity and Grand Theft Auto IV has arrived. Rockstar have created a living, breathing city for you to wreak havoic in and unlike the previous installments of the series, GTA IV is a revolution, not an evolution.

Liberty City is the single most realistic city, most realistic envrionment ever crafted in a video game and I have no problems making such a bold statement. The level of detail in GTA IV is incredible, from the fact that Niko actually turns the key in the ignition of a car before driving off to pedertrians having conversations on their mobile phones that you can follow and listen in on. GTA IV is unbelieveable.

Liberty City is a recreation of New York. I say recreation because while it has all the simliar landmarks it is still a GTA game, so things have been made to suit the game, its mission and storyline. The city itself is broken up into five areas; Broker, Dukes, Bohan, Alderney and Algonquin with each area fully detailed and alive. In Broker/Dukes, where you start the game, its a poorer part of the city, so you find it a more depressing area with drab apartment blocks and stingy food and clotheing outlets. The area for the mos part is run by the Russian mob, which is who you do the opening missions for.

Algonquin on the other hand is the high class, snazzy and rich area of Liberty City. You’ll visit Star Junction, Liberty Cities version of Time Square, shop at high class fashion stores, go to Comedy Clubs and even visit the Statue of Happiness (Statue of Liberty). All the while you’ll be completely immersed in the nature of what Rockstar have created. The city dosen’t feel like it has been made for a game, it feels as if the game has been set in a living city. Subway trains run all hours of the day, cabs drive people around (you can even hail a cab), at night there are less people on the street and the more dangerous people come out. There was one point where a man went to a diner everyday for breakfast before going to work, I followed him one day and knifed him out the back of the diner, and a few days later the workers were asking where he had gotten too. The level of immersion and realism seen in GTA IV is beyond anything ever before seen in a video game.

The driving has also undergone some changes. Different cars react in various ways depending on the weather and how your driving them. Jack a car in Broker for example, and its less likely to have ABS, so braking and turning become more difficult, where as if you take a car from Star Junction or a similar place, it’ll have ABS brakes, a GPS navigation system and all the perks you’d expect from a modern day car. While your driving a car you can hold down the X button to turn on your high beams as well, the attention to detail is astounding. Hit a pedestrian hard enough and their blood splatter will be stained on your car until you go to a car wash (thats right, your car can get dirty) or run into a wall or lightpost fast enough and Niko will fly, screaming through the front windshield. If it has been raining your car will handle a lot looser and if your drunk then its obviously very hard to drive, you the controls a little less responsive and the camera waving all around.

Keeping in with the theme of revoluton, the combat system has changed from the previoius games. You still have a wide range of weapons (pistols, shotguns, RPGs, assualt rifles) but the way by which you use them has changed. By holding down the left trigger you lock onto your target and can target different parts of the body by moving the right thumbstick. However you can free aim, by slightly holding down the left thumbstick you can enter free aim mode where by you can aim at anything you like. If you aim at a pedestrian they’ll put their hands up, they do the same thing if they are in a car though some might just hope out and run, others will try to speed away.

The damage modelling on the characters is great, if you shoot someone in the foot or knee they will slowly limp or crawl trying to escape, shooting them in the hand and they might drop their weapon and when you do shoot the blood splatter effects are very nice. The Euphoria engine that is used in the game creates the most realistic body effects ever seen as well. Bodies flail and crumple when hit by cars, fly when an explosion goes off and fall realistically when shot, the engine is amazing and adds just another level to the already rich tapestry that is GTA IV.

Another addition to the game is your mobile phone whereby you can keep in contact with everyone you meet in Liberty City. It serves as a main function in the missions you undertake but can also be used to download ringtones and wallpapers from the ZiT service, inititate the odd jobs that have become a staple of the GTA series (courier service etc) or call up friends and girlfriends.

Characters you meet throughout the game can become your friends and you have the ability to call them up and go out with them, Get something to eat, shoot some pool, go bowling or take a helicopter ride are just some of the many things you can do in the city. Not crucial to the main story by any means, going out can accrue some benefits as each person has a service they can provide Niko which ranges from getting a free cab from your cousin to a trunk full of cheap weapons from Little Jacob, a Jamacian drug dealer. Each character is also memorable and many of them are funny, Brucie for example is my favourite in the game, a steroid pumped psychopath who is in love with himself and has some of the funniest lines in the game.

And what of Niko, the protagonist. Well, not since Tommy Vercetti has a lead character in a sandbox game been as fun to play as and be. Niko is a sociopath, mass murdering tough guy who is deeply flawed and has reasons for the way he is today. He fought in the war back in Russia and was changed forever by the things he was forced to do. Niko has values and knows what is right and wrong but sometimes has to ignore them to save someone or keep himself alive. It’s this inner strugle that makes Niko such a memorable character and Rockstar have fleshed out their lead unlike they have before.

But the main draw to any GTA game, other than the city that it occupies, is the story and GTA IV does not dissapoint in that department. The main story revolves around Niko looking for some people from the Old Country who have fled to Liberty City. But before he can focus on that he has to make enough money for himself and hos cousin to live. He does this by undertaking a variety of missions that range from small scale car jackings and hits to large bank robberies and assasination missions on important people. The missions are varied enough to never get repetitive and the stories behind the missions compelling enough for you to never want to put the controller down.

Without giving too much away, the best mission in the game lies about midway through where you have to rob a bank. The job goes horribly wrong and suddenly your fighting the cities best through the streets and ally ways looking for a car to loose the cops.

Speaking of the cops, the wanted system has undergone a change as well. Pay ‘n’ Spray garages are still in the game but they are seldom if ever used due to the new line of vision system the game uses. You still have a wanted level, ranging from one to six stars and depending on how many stars you have there is a radius show on the mini map of the location that the cops are looking for you. Once you are being chased your goal to lose the cops is to make it outside the circle radius without being seen. This isn’t too difficult on one or two stars, but when you start hitting three, four and five things heat up. Taking back alleys and switching cars while the cops aren’t looking becomes crucial and if your spotted while before you lose the tail the circle repositions itself over your new area. It’s a very innovative system and adds more to the police chases that have become part and parcel with the series over the years.

Another big improvement over past GTA games is the graphics system. Now obviously it is going to be better as it is on a HD next gen console, but Rockstar have really put effort into the graphical system, with only a slight texture pop up souring an otherwise great technical achievement. The water effects are fantastic and the city in the night time looks amazing. Star Junction in the middle of the night is lit up like Vgeas and looks very nice indeed. The animations are fluent and smooth as is expected from the Euphoria engine.

The sound is also top notch, with GTA IV featuring 18 different radio stations catering for all tastes in music. There are three talk back stations (which are the funniest to listen to) and music ranging from soft and hard rock to techno and RnB. The voice acting is also of cinematic quality with every voice sounding the part. Niko and Roman’s accents sound authentic as do all the others in the game.

The biggest change to GTA IV though isn’t the fantastic city, mission structure or physicis engine, it’s the mutliplayer. Rockstar have put time and effort into the online component of the game and it shows. The multiplayer isn’t just some tacked on bit at the end of the development cycle, its integrated into the game.

You access it through the mobile phone and can enter player, ranked or party mode and partake in a range of gametypes including the standard FFA and team deathmatch to the co-op mode Hangmans NOOSE (think GTA terrorist hunt) or the fantastic fun of cops and crooks. Cops and crooks sees two teams of up to eight players, one as the cops, the others as the crooks try to take each other out. Well, there is more to it than that. One player, chosen by random on the crooks team is designated the boss and the others have to see him safely delivered to the extraction point. The cops, obviously, have to stop that.

Other gametypes including GTA Race (race with weapons) and the free-roaming mode where 16 players can go crazy in Liberty City with the story turned off. You can just try to take each other out, pull off crazy stunts or get in a six star cop shootout with your friends.

Grand Theft Auto IV takes everything we thought we knew about gaming and shakes it up. It presents cinematic quality with a level of interactivity and detail not before seen in a video game. The characters are deep and believeable and the story is compelling. The city is amazing and the graphics and physics engines need to be seen to be believed. GTA IV may just be the game of this decade, beating out titles such as Halo 3, Gears of War and all the other great titles that have gone before it. Rockstar have entered a new era of video game development, the question is, can the rest of the pack catch up?

Visuals - 9/10
Sound – 9.5/10
Gameplay – 9.5/10
Longevity – 9.5/10

Overall – 9.5/10

~ by Dimorphic on May 6, 2008.