Grand Theft Auto IV

Having written already two versions of this review, it’s dawned on me that reviewing a game like Grand Theft Auto IV is obscenely difficult. How do you approach a review of a game that literally offers over 60 hours of varied gameplay? Not just that but you also have to take into account the multiplayer, the fun that you’ll have just roaming around the sandbox-like city… It’s difficult to take all of those into account and a write a review that will inform you on every aspect that makes GTA IV what it is. That is why this is the 3rd, and final, draft of this review. This is also why it’s going to be a really, really harsh review. Certainly not literally, simply in comparison to the endless swarm of perfect scores floating around the Internet. I’ll say in advance that I didn’t hate the game. In fact, I love it. For reasons I’ll explain later, however, it was much more of a disappointment than a revolution in the open-world genre.

The first thing you’ll notice when driving around the streets of Liberty City is how much closer it is to reality. The surreal, cartoon-like depictions of famous cities is gone and replaced with a much more down-to-earth look. Store windows are dirty and sidewalks are cracked and filled with years of residue. The pavement on the road looks like it hasn’t been there for the past 10 minutes and buildings look like they’ve been erected, in existence and lived in for over 20 years. Districts look different from one another and you’ll very rarely see the same building twice. The city, for the first time in the franchise’s history, looks alive. It sounds completely superficial and like it has no gameplay ramifications whatsoever but the difference it makes is immeasurable. You’ll rapidly be absorbed into GTA IV’s world and you’d be hard-pressed to find a game that can even compare. Liberty City, along with feeling like a breathing city, is also fully engrossed in its own world and by this, I mean everything you’ll see on billboards, hear on radio ads or read on the game’s Internet is all tied together. If you hear an ad for a TV show and you check the TV at the time advertised, that show will be on. Billboard says to go to a fast-food joint at a certain intersection? You bet your murderous-ass it’ll be there. Unfortunately, this leads to an issue I had with the game. The humor in the GTA series has always been pretty out-of-the-ordinary (Approaching juvenile levels, at times) and in IV, this remains unchanged. The problem is that it doesn’t work anymore. The entire game takes itself seriously yet you’ll find yourself constantly pulled out of the reality it’s trying to depict when hearing a radio DJ drop the F-bomb between 2 or 3 times per intermission. Almost everything is a joke related to sex, violence or general idiocy and for a game that is trying to establish an overtone of change within the series, this does everything it can to burden it.

That isn’t the only problem that plagues the streets of Liberty City. The game consists of three major islands: Broker (Brooklyn), Algonquin (Manhattan) and Alderney (New Jersey). The progression through the game’s story between the three is well-paced, but the problem lies elsewhere. Once you’re done with the story, there isn’t anything to do in any of these islands besides Algonquin. Each island is extremely dense and is filled with sights to see, a departure from GTA: San Andreas’ vast, expansive and ultimately empty forests and deserts. Density doesn’t make for interesting, however. Algonquin is filled with skyscrapers, parks, construction sites, marinas, helicopter tours… it’s exploding at the seams with things to do. Broker has an airport and a closed-down attraction park. The airport is inaccessible due to the developer’s decision to give you an instant 4-Star wanted level as soon as you step foot on the runway and the attraction park has nothing of interest to see. Alderney has a correctional facility that is nearly impossible to enter (With no reward once inside, I might add) and an oil power facility that has nothing of interest there either. It’s a terrible shame because every area mentioned is so much fun to visit. It’s like you really are visiting different districts of a city but once you’ve seen it, there is absolutely no incentive for you to go back there again.

How you’ll get to these places, however, is a better story. The series has pretty much always relied on stealing cars or bikes to make your way around the city and GTA IV is no different. The change this time is around is that vehicles actually handle pretty well. Cars now have a much more believable physics engine, bikes handle like the nimble, two-wheeled speed demons they are and helicopters no longer control like airborne tanks. The impression that every car handled the same is gone as you’ll instantly noticed that you’re better off stealing that Lexus over the beater Ford parked in the street. Cheap cars will break down faster and will take turns as sluggishly as possible while luxury cars will make no problem of turning and will last you a formidable amount of time. One could argue this would hinder the player more than anything else and it’s certainly true that there are those “Oh shit, I wish I had taken that other car” moments, but for making vehicles actually a believable part of the game this can be overseen pretty quickly.

Vehicle handling isn’t the only that’s improved this time around– gunplay has also taken a turn for the better. Gone is the horrendous targeting system of past games and replaced with a fluid semi-lock-on system. Pulling down the trigger completely will lock-on to the target closest to you and switching between targets is a breeze as it no longer targets random pedestrians while you attempt to shoot down an armada of cops. Akin to Crackdown is also a manual-aim while locking-on to a target. Moving the right analog stick will allow you to aim specific body parts when shooting a target allowing for easier headshots. Pulling down the trigger only halfway will prompt a ‘free-aim’ mechanic similar to that found in Saints Row, though the view is constricting and is ultimately rendered useless since enemy health isn’t displayed this way. Also new to the series is a cover system, very close to what is found in Gears of War. Detection of what to hide behind can be pretty finicky during times but for the most part, it works very well and adds a lot of depth to the parts of the game involving a lot of shooting.

All these new tweaks and additions make for a much more satisfying gameplay experience, but with it comes a bevy of problems. No different from past GTA titles, IV is one glitch-infested game. They aren’t necessarily glitches that will burden your experience while playing (Though those will come) but once you notice them, they will never go away. I’ve had cars fall though the game’s world, motorcycles flip upside-down when getting on them, people remain alive after 6 clips of M4 bullets, the list goes on and on. Not just that, but in the small details too. When walking, a quick tap of the Circle (or B button on 360) will have your character make a pushing motion to shove or heckle pedestrians. Doing so near a bus stop’s glass will cause it to crack and shatter as if you shot a bullet through it. Public telephones will tear off, fall to the floor and start to spark wildly when simply walking into them. Not running, walking. These are common occurrences that the developer could of easily have taken notice in and it’s a horrible shame that the game has to be plagued with glitches.

On the brighter side, GTA IV delivers on another staple of the series: its absolutely brilliant writing. The story of Niko Bellic’s arrival in the US to live out the “American Dream” is told in a tale of betrayal, loyalty, cynicism, hatred and love by an unparalleled cast of characters and voice talent to portray them. Each character has their own distinct personality and the dialogue shared between them is so natural and fitting that you’ll forget you’re watching cutscenes. Yeah, it’s that believable. Witty and gritty at the same time, the writing is what will keep you interested in the story until it’s end. Then you’ll probably start a whole new game one more time just to hear Brucie tell you, again, that you’re genetically different. The story isn’t the only part of the game that’s well written either. The pedestrian dialogue bank is so varied and entertaining that it’ll make you wish running into people was that amusing in real life. … Wait. … Anyways, even the side characters that you get to see for maybe 20 minutes of your entire play-through are well written. The pissed-off cab driver that works for Roman, the simpletons you meet on the street to help kill their cheating husbands, all of them are voiced with top-notch acting and written to the same caliber. Really well developed characters makes up for some faults, particularly when you become fairly attached to them. There are some moments in the game that will leave you in a state so utterly perplexed that you’ll struggle to see a solution. You’ll be given choices to take regarding certain characters’ progression and it really is the first I’ve ever put the controller down and through about what I was going to do. The character are just that good.

Interesting as they may be, the characters and writing came at a sacrifice, one that is one of my biggest problems with GTA IV. Side missions are almost completely gone. Vice City introduced them to a larger scale and San Andreas blew them up into a second game unto itself. GTA IV has taken out 90% of them and replaced them with one of the most heinous acts against gamers to date, relationship caring. Tending to your friends' social status is of utmost importance and you will constantly be called on your cellphone to go bowling or go play darts, none of which are particularly fun to do. There are no taxi, ambulance or ice cream missions anymore. Vigilante missions remain but in a completely different format, one that has no foreseeable reward to it. There are no more hidden pictures to take (A huge mistake in my opinion), no more shells to collect (Not so sad about this one), no more graffiti to cover up, no more video poker to play, no more pizzas to deliver, it’s like a gigantic portion of what gave San Andreas its replay value is gone. Of course, Rockstar has taken it upon themselves to add multiplayer for replay value but I’m not even going to elaborate on it. You can’t make multiplayer for a GTA game unless it’s drop-in/drop-out co-op play. In its stead is a series of multiplayer modes that never work properly because the Internet is full of morons who just want to shoot, steal and kick everything in sight. I like the addition of multiplayer. Freeroaming with up to 15 other players is fun, very much so. That isn’t what I want out of a GTA game, though. GTA was meant to be a single-player experience and I shouldn’t have to rely on other idiots around the globe to extend my play time when I’ve been able to do so alone with the previous entries in the game.

GTA IV doesn’t have the replay value that its predecessors had, but thankfully it has one thing that makes up for close to all of its shortcomings. This, ladies and gentlemen, is called the Euphoria engine. I still don’t fully understand how it works in a technical sense but what I do know is that GTA IV is almost a better game because of it. It makes people react to the environment and move like a human being would move. There is no more motion capture outside of cutscenes, everything is rendered in real-time and the result is outstanding. Pedestrians will throw their hands on your car when you get obnoxiously close to them or gently bump into them. Fearful civilians will throw their arms up and cover their face when an explosion is nearby. Niko will crouch back and protect himself when a car is close to ramming into him. The ragdoll physics commonly found in games are gone as well. People will bounce off and tumble on the pavement like they would if they were to get hit by a car, their leg will not crumple behind their neck when they die, shooting them in the leg will cause them to limp and shooting them in the foot will have them crash to the ground like a soon-to-become cripple would in real life. It’s so incredible to watch it will have you hooked to bringing the utmost of pain to the citizens of Liberty City for hours, if not days’ worth of time to see it unfold.

By now you’re probably thinking why I’m advising you to think twice before purchasing the game, right? I mean, I’d certainly be tantalized to buy it at this point. With all the positives outweighing the negatives so far, it’s time for me to close with what I think is the biggest shortcoming of the 10th (!!!) entry in the Grand Theft Auto series. This game, ultimately, just isn’t as fun as its predecessors. Bringing a serious, realistic overtone to the game required Rockstar to cut away from the absolutely ridiculous events that happened in San Andreas and bring a much more down-to-earth approach to how things are handled. Parachuting is replaced by internet dating, stealing jetpacks is replaced by museum shootouts and F22 Fighter Jet theft is replaced by… There really isn’t anything that can top that. For the first time in my life, I feel like hype killed for me. The gaming press has gone around swearing this was the end-all-be-all of open-world games and it led me to probably the biggest disappointment of my time as a gamer. Yes, it radically changes how characters and story are presented in open-world games and yes, the Euphoria engine makes all the difference. At the end of the day, I don’t care. I don’t want grittier and well-told-stories in a GTA game. Heck, I think the story in San Andreas is better than this IV’s story. It’s certainly not presented as well, but the series of events and the incredibly satisfying ending had me thinking why IV’s absolutely predictable end-game and stale conclusion had to be so. A GTA game should be about stealing jetpacks from the military, running errands for crooked cops in a small, country-like town and planning a casino heist with a blind, Asian entrepreneur. When it comes down to it, I simply just didn’t have fun. It was a serious journey the entire way through and when the end finally came, I wished something had happened that I could look back on the game and think “Now that was fucking awesome.”

It’s incredibly hard to live up to the hype GTA IV had coming to them during the final weeks before it’s release and in some fashion, they succeeded. It certainly is an accomplishment, but in the grand scheme of things, this game disappoints on nearly every level. It really isn’t Rockstar’s fault but more the press’ fault. This game isn’t a revolution. It’s far from being one. As far as games go, it’s top-of-the-line quality. As far as GTA games go, you’ll enjoy this one a less than you did the previous ones. If you are a GTA fan and you’re looking for even more than what San Andreas delivered, you’re going to be disappointed from every possible angle. I wish I didn’t have to say it but GTA IV just isn’t fun. It sacrificed what made the series the massive success it was on the PS2, Xbox and PC and with it came a slew of additions that makes it look superficially better than its predecessors. Unfortunately, most pretty girls turn out to be completely spoiled bitches. Grand Theft Auto IV is not exception to that, besides not being a girl.