[JemyM]

Grand Theft Auto IV
GTA IV is the tale of Niko Bellic, immigrant in a large American City, where he learns that the American Dream isn't what it's advertised to be. The game takes place in a humongous city with an enormous amount of content. That said, is it still fun to play?

Story
Niko Bellic is an east european man (most likely from Serbia) with a troubld past in war. He have came to Liberty City (modelled after New York) for three reasons, to visit his cousin Roman Bellic, chase the "American Dream", and to find someone. Right after arrival he finds out that the American Dream is little beyond a dream, and all the tales that his cousin told him turns out to be lies. To earn enough to make a living, while chasing down the person he needs to find, Niko Bellic begins a long journey through Liberty Citys underworld, with drugs, mafia, corrupted cops and crazy gangsters.

I had a huge bias against the premise of this game, but even I have to confess that the storyline of GTAIV is surpisingly well written. I hadn't expected that a game like this would have a such deep and complex story, and deep and complex characters as well. Niko Bellic is a loveable and very human character, with both positive sides and flaws. The NPC's you meet are memorable, interesting, and sometimes very funny.

It also have a pretty good narrative. The story is progressing in several ways, chats in the car while going to the missions, during cutscenes, with incoming messages on the mobile phone, e-mail etc. It's uncommon these days that a mainstream game makes so much effort of delivering a virtual tale like this.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
I ran the game with a wireless xbox 360 joypad that worked out of the box, and I ran it in 1920*1080 on my 40" HDTV. That was almost like playing on a console.

The greatest part of GTAIV is the city itself. Liberty City is inspired by New York, and is probably the largest handmade map I have seen in a game ever. One would think that would mean a lot of repetition, copy/pasted models and textures, but no, you will continue to see something new almost everytime you take a car somewhere. Not surprising considering the theme of the game, there's also a humongous amount of vehicles. I still kept seeing new vehicles even when I was almost done with the game. There's also a humongous amount of people walking around on the streets, and you keep seeing all sorts of archetypes, from teenagers, to elder jews, to a biker, to a business man, fat, thin, all colors and nationalities...

All this is set in motion and creates a very believeable universe. Cars stop at stoplights, organize themselves in traffic, people walk over the streets at green light, buys coffee or fastfood, type messages or talk on the phone. While simply walking through the city you will be able to listen in to numerous conversations by pedestrians, and you might even be harassed by doomsday prophets or beggars. But the game is alive even outside the streets. There's a huge amount of radio channels with custom speakers, news that update after ingame events. The radiochannels have a huge list of real music, including several songs you might have heard before. There's also a working TV that plays actual TV shows. There's a internet, complete with e-mail, spam, an online dating service, custom websites etc. There's so much going on in Liberty City that you might not have the endurance to get through it all. Yet it all helps to create the illusion of being in a real city.

Ofcourse, not everything is fine. The PC version is poorly optimized, and you need a graphiccard with 1600 ram to play it in the highest settings. I could override this with a hack so I could play with highest settings with my SLI, which gave me a good framerate but lead to a lot of flickering textures. It sucks that antialiasing didn't work either, even if I played the game in VISTA.

I noted very few bugs beyond that however, the worst being a buttonmash sequence in the final mission that I could only pass by building a macro on my Logitech G15 keyboard. The time between pushes is appearently timed to the framerate, and I have a very fast computer, making it impossible to press as often as you have to with human hand.

You will sometimes see that the AI isn't foolproof. 1 out of about 20 cars have it's rear side smashed in, and you often see cars bump into eachother, something you will do too, maybe because it's impossible to drive cars slow. Also, if you stand in a corner next to a street, the traffic will stock up sooner or later. It's as if the AI can create a temporary scene, and need you to simply pass through the area to keep looking real.

Gameplay
GTAIV have a missionbased gameplay, in which you open a mission, then you carry it out, and the game will autosave when the mission is done. These missions usually include carchases or killing something/someone. The carchases are really well done, relying on physics to make them feel very realistic. Cars all have unique features and having the right vehicle might be neccessary to finish a quest. Walking on foot plays like a 3rd person shooter. You aim, you shoot, you reload, you take cover, you shoot again. There are shotguns, submachineguns, pistols etc, with unique advantages to them. One might feel that the amount of weapons is a bit limited though, there's no silenced pistol for example.

Almost every mission have something unique in it. Which is great, considering the game have over 80 storyline missions. Beyond the missions you have lots of custom stuff to do. You have several friends and you can get girlfriends as well. These NPC's have an upkeep, you need to go out with them once in awhile to keep them happy. If you do, they will often give you an unique ability. Roman, your Cousin, will give you the ability to call a free cab. Going out with a friend/girlfriend is content as well. You might visit talkshows with actual comedians, watch magic shows, go for a game of pool, darts or bowling, or you might just eat something together. Beyond that you have custom missions like stealing cars, assassinations, vigilante missions (meaning hacking into the computer in a cop car, finding a criminal and kill them) etc.

Yes, this is a humongous game, possibly the largest I have ever played, including Gothic 3 and Oblivion. It's the first in a long time in which I had to skip content to get through the game in reasonable time (still took me several weeks). Playing an entire day would make me progress 2-5% on the completion. Despite finishing all main missions, I ended the game with 63% completion. But it allows you to continue after the final mission in case you want to do the stuff you skipped (I did no assassination/vigilante missions, and I didn't bother about several friends).

The mission system might be my greatest issue with the game. The story progress by usually giving you 3 missions at a time, and after finishing all three you will get three new etc. You have no choice to do a mission, even when you feel that it makes no sense. There was a bank robbery that I didn't feel to do, with a character who I never really liked but the game pushes on you as a friend. Not to give any major spoilers, but the game also assumes that you care for someone towards the end of the game, which at least I never did.

The worst part is that if you fail a mission, for whatever reason, you have to start all over again. Sometimes you have to chase down a car, drive a couple of characters from point A to B, then engage in multiple shootouts and carchases, and at any time something unexpected can send you back to zero. I have been forced to replay for accidently bumping into an exploding barrel, numerous times for a key NPC dying on me, or bumping into a policecar by accident, which lead to a deadly carchase. For a game so polished otherwise, this was poor gamedesign as far as I concern. A game doesn't need to be that unforgiving, especially not when it have so much content in it that you don't need to make it longer through replays.

Final Verdict
GTAIV is many ways a milestone in gaming. What it does, it does from decent to well, and it presents you with the largest virtual world ever created. It's very polished and offers a very unique experience. However, the game demand you to have both time and patience if you plan to get through the entire game. It's a very long one, and it can be very frustrating at times when you redo the same 20-30 minutes over and over and over again.