JUST OVER TEN years ago now, some of my more financially endowed acquaintance’s started telling me about a new game called GTA. Enthralled, it seemed, by the gratuitous violence I was inundated by phone calls and conversations that consisted pretty much of “lolz, I brok da lawz”. Within minutes I equal parts bored and confounded that something so banal could keep grown men entertained for hours on end. I finally had the chance to play one of them in late 98 and was less than enthused. Then again a year later when a friend picked up Grand Theft Auto II on the Playstation and lent it to me for a while. Yeah, it was fun randomly blowing things up and killing everyone in sight for the sheer hell of it.

For about ten minutes.

Fast forward to 2003 and I decided to give Grand Theft Auto : Vice City a try because I’ve always been something of a Ray Liotta. And this time my attention was held for much longer than ten minutes. Yes, all of the childish propensity for random acts of violence and gratuitous law breaking was still in place. And, yes, our good chap Tommy is an homicidal, sociopathic maniac hell bent on earning as much money, and screwing over as many people as possible as he can. But this time there was also a strong plot to propel us forwards. And though many have accused Grand Theft Auto, and Vice City in particular, of glorifying this kind of behaviour, it simply isn’t true.

Yes, the Grand Theft Auto series does focus on the criminal underworld. Dredging up the very worst possible examples of Human behaviour. But glorifying? Nee I tell you. A simple representation. Like it or not, accept it or not, these kinds of people really do exist in the world around us. And there are strong arguments in favour of exploring this darker side of our nature via the medium of film and video games. Surely, ’tis better that than doing so in the real world. But I digress. This article is to discuss my impressions of the latest chapter of the Grand Theft Auto series and is not intended to be a sociological thesis (though I’ve been known to do those as well from time to time).

Once again, before the game was even released there was a furor of controversy surrounding it. Mostly by people who have been condemning Rockstar right from the beginning without ever actually stopping to fully explore the games themselves. Of course, the argument there being that the games are so intrinsically warped and criminal in their nature that these good, upstanding people would never sully themselves by stooping to such practice. But then, how can you truly know the games are so bad if you haven’t taken the time to see for yourself and are judging only from second hand information?

Which brings us to the meat of the matter. How does Grand Theft Auto IV compare to it’s predecessors?

Well, the technological advances that have been made since the previous generation of video games consoles show immediately in both the appearance, and the scale of the game. The environments are impressively large and extremely well realistic. Though the people themselves are still obviously animated, at times you could almost believe that the vehicles at least have been photo-captured rather than graphically rendered. But still, this is only the window dressing. Is the game any good?

Well, in short, yes it is. Though it’s never that simple. As with anything, some people will like the game, and some people won’t. The story is typically convoluted and follows pretty much the same pattern as each of the prior titles in the series. Our boy Nico Bellic arrives on a boat from the Motherland and is met by his cousin Roman who, it turns out, is well versed in the ways of hyperbole. Far from being a wealthy entrepreneur with a girl on each arm as his letters back home have attested, the lad lives in a grotty, cockroach infested dive of a place. And so our erstwhile anti-heroes quest for fortune begins.

As with each of the games before it this is the motivating factor throughout the entire game. Even after your fortunes have turned greatly for the better. There’s a bank job about half of the way in which earns you a nice, tidy, quarter of a million dollars so the whole “I need the money” argument doesn’t really work so well. But this is typical of Rockstar, and has lead to phenomenal sales of each installment so far. So, basically, if you liked the previous games then this will be more of the same. If not, well, it will still be more of the same.

However, just because the meta-plot is, to put it mildly, a little flakey, it doesn’t mean the game itself suffers from poor scripting. The dialog is strong and the voice acting is, as ever, top notch. And where, in previous games, we were used to a half minute to sixty seconds of cinematic before heading out on our latest mission, some of them now go on for four to five minutes at a time. A definite plus.

Add to this the introduction of some new gameplay features such as being able to pop out and fire from cover and “micro aim” (using the right analogue stick to shift your reticule from the default chest target after lock-on so as to pop out for head shots, or shoot someone in the legs as they flee), as well as the option of controlling the speed of your vehicles via R2 (no more tapping the X button to keep from driving too fast for those of us who like to cruise rather than speed our way through the cities) mean that the game flows a lot better.

Another, on the surface minor, but in actuality huge new feature of the game is that Niko can actually smash open the window of any vehicle he comes to and reach in to unlock the door. No more of this running around madly trying to find an unlocked car in the middle of a gun fight. Extremely useful I’m sure we all agree. Also, now that we’ve moved firmly into the present day, we have the opportunity to visit internet cafés and download new themes and ring tones for your mobile. All of which add to the immersion of the experience as a whole.

The greatest feature in my opinion, is that at certain points in the game you have to make key decisions (mostly of the kill or don’t kill variety) that will have some minor, and some not so minor effects on the flow of the story. Culminating in two possible endings. Neither of which is particularly happy, and this has lead to some degree of animosity from many people who have played the game. Some going so far as to accuse Rockstar of preaching about the dangers of leading a criminal lifestyle no matter how moral you choose to be throughout the flow of the game. But when all is said and done, those moral opportunities are very few and far between, and though Niko is as much a victim as anyone, and is actually quite a likable individual, the fact remains that he is still a criminal. And some of his actions show a truly callous undertone to the primarily quite approachable man on the surface.

Unfortunately, this seems to be, once again, an effort by Rockstar to argue back against it’s detractors which will go unnoticed by all except the wrong people. And whilst I doubt it will have any significant overall impact on their future releases, it has gone some way to alienating people. Personally, I liked both endings. They’re very sad and dark, but that fits with the entire feel of the game. Liberty City has always been a harsh, forbidding place in previous titles, and even more so now that it has been realised in such intense visual detail. It only makes sense that the events that take place there should be equally depressing.

One final feature I would like to discuss before summing up is the new “random encounter” system which has been introduced. At times you will notice a small green cross on the radar. Approaching these areas will lead to short sub-missions both with unknown, and previously encountered residents of the city. They have no significant impact on the flow of the game as a whole, but, again, they heighten the experience as a whole and add a sense of life to the city in so far as that there are people leading lives that have nothing to do with the primary events of the plot.

Overall, I rather enjoyed the game. Though it was on the short side (only around eighty missions) it still took a long time to get through it all because the missions themselves were notably longer than we have had before. Though some, still, were of the couple of minutes to finish variety, others would keep you going for significantly longer. Though it has to be said, this is a controversial game because it does break away somewhat from previous chapters as I have said above. Still, on the whole, this gets a recommendation from me. Just be aware that the game is both very similar, and radically different from previous experience.

Graphics 8.5/10
Gameplay 8.5/10
Audio/music 9/10
Plot/Scripting 9/10
Overall 9/10