Ok so finally GTA4 was released this past tuesday (unless you were insane and went to the midnight release monday night), and I’m guessing the pizza delivery guy probably knows your name and address by heart. So whats the big deal with the game anyway?       Lets go over a few things first. Who the heck is this game about anyway? And why is he in Liberty City? Niko Belic is a Serbian immigrant who is thirty years old and a veteran of the Bosnian War. Looking for a new start and after reading constant emails over the years from his cousin Roman about how he is living the big life and other amazing tales, Niko decides to give it a go and come to Liberty City. Only to find out that Roman is full of crap and his “big life” is owning a small taxi service and living in an apartment that the roaches wont even go in. To make things worse, Roman is in debt to the local mob. God bless america.

      Gameplay: Overall its the same ol GTA we grew to know and love. But some things have been changed. More interaction with your environments for example. Need a weapon fast? Pick up a brick and hurl it at your unsuspecting target, or break a window with it. Running from the cops and took a wrong turn only to find an alley with a fence or wall at the end. Have no fear, you can now climb fences and walls with ease! Or what about when you pull that e-brake too hard and end up in the river. Before you had to spawn at the hospital. Now though, you can swim!!! One of my favorite addons though has been the gears of war cover system. Also the fine aiming has been tweeked and refined to make some parts more of an FPS than a random spray and pray.

   Graphics: OMG they did an amazing job with the detail on this game. The waves in the ocean, the detail on building, bridges, and vehicles is stunning. Plus anything you shoot or hit shows damage. When you slam your car into a wall, both your car and the wall have realistic damage. Though you may overlook the little visual aspects of the game if you arent careful. Take when you hit a street light for example. In other games you just mow over it. In GTA4, you mow over it, but sparks fly from the severed electrical wires and buzzing sounds come from the exposed conduits. One of the most useless things has to be the ability to turn on your high beams when driving. They dont do much, but its the little things in this game that give it that edge.

      Multiplayer: Ok this is the meat and potato’s (or potatoe’s if you are Dan Quayle) for all you xbox live fanatics. There are 15 modes of multiplayer which include, deathmatch variations, free for all destruction, race modes, and coop aspects. My favorite by far is Cops and Crooks. Where the Crooks have to reach the extraction point before the cops track them and put them down. Free for all is a lot of fun, but my major gripe is that lack of the bars, restarants, and clubs not having any npc characters in them. I would like to be able to interact with the npcs in these modes, but oh well.

      Overall this game is 9/10 stars. With the long “Tutorial” in the beginning, the game doesn’t have that instant gratification factor the others in the series had. But with dozens upon dozens of hours of gameplay, its not that big a factor at all. It just takes some patience to get through. But in no time you will be killing hookers, robbing stores, and stealing cars. My favorite of this series is still Vice City, but GTA4 sure does come close.

 

Here we see some Loyal GTA fans waiting anxiously outside Gamestop for the midnight release.

 

And here you see the amazing prize that Andy and I got for standing in line. Yup thats right! Free soda!!! Those Gamestop people are so nice!

This entry was posted by James on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 11:35 pm and is filed under Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.