Grand Theft Auto 4
Developer: Rockstar North
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Reviewed Platform: Playstation 3
Release Date: April 29, 2008
Posted: June 14, 2008
Niko Bellic at sunset. Ah, Amerika.You are Niko Bellic and you have just arrived in America on a boat from the Motherland. The “American Dream” that your cousin has been bragging about to you over emails is a complete lie, and it is up to you to make a name for yourself in the criminal network of Liberty City. First thing to do is to jump right in.
Liberty City has been featured in several of the Grand Theft Auto series titles and is representative of New York City. This game’s rendition of the Big Apple is claimed to be much more accurate than the others, complete with the towering buildings shading out the sun, terrible traffic throughout all hours of the day, and an unfortunate lack of open field areas to wildly drive through. Despite the vast number of buildings, the number of which can actually be entered is disappointingly low for a renown “sandbox” title. Over the range of games, the city it self has changed drastically, but the motto has remained the same: “Worst Place in America.” Sounds like the perfect place to find a lot of fun trouble to get into; despite the absolute swarm of police around at all times, there is a fair share of relatively exciting danger for Niko to get his hands dirty with.
The characters that the player interacts with throughout the game are miles beyond any other from a Grand Theft Auto title. They are unique individuals, they are real, and they are in need of Niko’s assistance. Niko’s cousin, Roman, is the most optimistic of all the characters despite his gambling issues and thus far failure of obtaining the “American Dream.” 
Dimitri, your first arch-enemy you gain in the States.Little Jacob, a Jamaican buddy of Roman’s, is one of the first characters that the player is introduced to, and even though I had to turn on the subtitles to attempt to understand what he was saying, I became more connected to Niko when he too was having difficulties understanding Little Jacob. The cast of characters is long, and it is amazing how separate they all are from each other. Everyone in the game is more or less appropriately voice acted, breathing life into each character.
The vehicles have not changed as far as looks are concerned, as I can still identify my Blista Compacts from a mile away, it seems that vehicle control has changed drastically. Steering has become more sensitive and it is much easier to spin out, even on dry pavement. Wrecking your car can result in two different outcomes: one is it lighting on fire and exploding, the other is that it will merely slow down to a stop and refuse to start. Both of which are followed by strings of Russian curse words. Damage that has been done to the player’s vehicle appears on the vehicle more accurately than in previous games. Also, if your car begins to smoke, running the gas too hard can actually cause the vehicle to catch fire. Fortunately, if you happen to (accidentally) flip your car over onto its hood, you no longer have to worry about it blowing up on you. Well, unless it is on fire of course. An interesting addition to vehicles is the built-in GPS navigation. When on a quest, or if you activate a waypoint on the map, a highlighted route will appear on the mini map to guide you to your destination. Also, if enabled, the navigation system will vocally instruct the player with turn-by-turn directions. While the system is useful, it drew a lot of attention away from the environment and finding your own way and focused instead on simply watching the mini map.
Highway fender bender. They actually expect you to stop and pay those tolls, but we know better than that.
Public transportation is as abundant in Liberty City as it is in New York City. The train system can cover a lot of ground quickly, but does not offer very spectacular views or pinpoint drop-off. Taxis allow you to pick exactly where you would like to go, and you can spend the entire trip gazing out of the window up at the skyscrapers or click a fast travel button. The taxi trips are relatively inexpensive, especially after you have accomplished a few missions and have a hefty sum of spending cash.
Weapons have not changed much; although it did seem as though they were more abundant than in other previous titles as your comrades will give you plenty of arms before missions. New combat mechanics were introduced: cover and blind fire. Cover is buggy at times; standing in an appropriate place to take cover and hitting the button does not always activate cover, and sometimes will pop Niko onto the wrong side of the object that you are attempting to hide behind. Auto aiming while driving would have been a nice new mechanic; as shooting while driving, especially during high-speed chases, is difficult because riddling the target’s car with bullets does not appear to do any damage. Shooting while on foot is more effective than anything that you can do from a vehicle.
If there are no cops around, that does not stop you from gaining a wanted level as people who witness your crime can dial-in and report you. When the player has attained a wanted level, a blue circle will appear on the mini map to show where the police are searching for Niko. Exiting the circle will allow the wanted level to disappear after a short period of time. However, any time that a police officer comes in line of sight of Niko the circle will be re-centered around him. 
Niko taking cover as the police cars start to arrive. The player can use almost any object as cover, some are much better than others.Losing a wanted level by running or driving from the cops is easier than in past games, but the Pay N’ Spray stores that used to instantly remove your wanted level no longer works if there are police in line of sight of you. This renders the Pay N’ Spray useless in most chase situations.
The prime, and most disappointing, aspect of the game has to be the missions. Most of the story-related missions are the same: drive for 10 minutes to get to a spot where you need to kill one or several guys, and then the cops show up. The only part of the missions that change is the means of getting to the target; usually involves driving to a location, or following in a vehicle. Generally, the following missions are more annoying as they still require the player to drive far distances, and it is very easy to fall behind as the slightest fender bender will allow the pursued to fly ahead of the player. On top of the worthless lengthy driving, Rockstar has still failed to implement a checkpoint system for missions. While failing a mission will prompt the player with a restart option, you start from the moment the mission had begun, meaning that any driving or chasing must be done again. Police show up so frequently it makes killing them a hassle, and simply running away will save Niko from being arrested. With the amazing variety of characters, one would think that a similarly excellent story would follow suit, but not with Grand Theft Auto 4. 
Sometimes it is better to deal with situations how you think would be best.Instead, the missions are strung together through the people you meet and their needs, and you go around helping everyone out with their problems. While that is one way to make a name for yourself, it is not much to run a story with. Unlike any other Grand Theft Auto game, there are a few missions that allow the player to make a decision on whether or not to kill a particular individual. It does not make any difference however, except during the final mission. Niko himself, how he was portrayed and handled himself in situations made the game addicting and far more enjoyable than the “story line.”
Outside of story missions, there are a few side quests available for the player to partake in, and they are nearly as unsatisfactory as the former. Niko has a mobile phone that can be used to call contacts to open up missions, request services from them, or to hang out. Hanging out, which can also be initiated by your friends calling you, can raise your friend’s respect and like percentages towards you; these activities include playing pool, bowling, drinking, visiting strip clubs, and dining, all of which are relatively uninteresting save for the conversation. The games in particular are lengthy and not very exciting. Going out drinking with one of your friends, like Patrick McReary the Irishman, will result in hilarious dialogue. Not to mention, driving around while your character is inebriated is quite thrilling, so long as he is not so drunk that the camera is circling the entire screen. The player loses almost all of the steering control, as Niko decides when and where he wants to turn, making it quite obvious to the cops that Niko needs to be pulled over.
Liberty City, look familiar?Failing to spend time together will result in a decrease in the respective percentages, and if you do not spend time with them once every ten minutes of game time they will call and bug you constantly. For instance, if you call and hang out with each one of Niko’s friends one after the other, by the time you are finished with your last the first person that you saw will be calling you and asking why you have yet to spend any more time with them. Running through a single story mission will cause everyone to incessantly call Niko as well, requesting him to hang out. However, there appears to be little reason to be concerned with these numbers, especially if all missions with that particular character have been completed. This progress can be checked on the pause screen’s statistics page.
The main idea that the phrase “grand theft auto” represents has once again been shunned to the side quest area. Upon meeting and performing a few missions for Brucie, a steroid pushing mechanic, he will start emailing Niko vehicle request missions. These are your typical car theft quests, but instead of having to find the vehicle yourself, Brucie will give you the exact location of the car that he needs you to retrieve for him. Of course this means that someone will be waiting there for you to come by and will attack you for stealing the vehicle, making these missions not much more exciting than any of the others. For additional disappointment, look no further than taxis, ambulances, and police cars, as the side quests for each has been removed. No longer can the player drive random people around the city, save dying individuals, or take the law into his own hands and make a decent amount of money from it.
The most unique radio station from any Grand Theft Auto game.Niko’s mobile can be used to do more than just contact his friends; one can also dial for emergency services, call in a cheat code, and even customize it with different ring tones and backgrounds. Listening to a car radio and just can not remember the name of that boy band head-bopper tune? Dialing a radio station number will inform you of the artist and song title for a later purchase. There are nineteen radio stations available in Liberty City, including Vladivostok FM the Russian station voiced over by the famous Ruslana herself. While some of the previous Grand Theft Auto games were acclaimed of having radio stations for nearly ever genre, those available in Grand Theft Auto 4 are rather limiting and do not seem to venture far from hip hop, jazz, electronic, and reggae.
The most notable feature of this game is the multiplayer availability; not so much the online play as the plain fact that it is an active element of Grand Theft Auto 4. It seems that a game is automatically better just because it has the option to play some part of it online whether or not the actual online game play is any good. Killing non-player characters all of the time can get boring after awhile, nice to actually make another person feel bad by shooting their character in the face repeatedly. To encourage online play, winning matches earns money, which in turn raises your rating level that is visible to all players as a little “star rating.”
While the game boasts having fourteen different playable modes, four are only slight alterations of others. Deathmatch, and similarly Team Deathmatch, are mere killing sprees, but killing and dying are too easy to be satisfactory. 
Besides cars, the player can also utilize helicopters and boats. Free Mode is actually just like Deathmatch, except there is no score, and I am unsure what else Rockstar expected Free Mode to turn into. Mafiya Work and Team Mafiya Work allow the player to attempt to do missions while competing against other players. These modes are some of the more exciting ones; Deathmatch with a greater purpose. Car Jack City and, you guessed it, Team Car Jack City you compete against others in attempts to locate and return vehicles containing drug related items. With how poorly the system handles gunfire and vehicles, these modes are not that grand. There are two types of racing modes: Race and GTA Race. The latter is simply a race in which you can use guns against the other vehicles. An interesting concept, Cops ‘n Crooks divides players into two teams; one of the crooks is designated as the boss and the cops attempt to take out the boss before he can reach the escape vehicle. As a console multiplayer mode, it is virtually impossible to coordinate with your teammates, leaving it as rather undesirable game play. When I first looked at Turf War, I got excited because one of the best parts of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas are when the gangs each control part of the city and you can go around taking over their different turfs. Unfortunately, this online mode is nothing like that at all; instead there are simply small highlighted circles to represent a hang out area that you can stand in and “take over.” The round usually results in little more than another Deathmatch.
The last three modes, Deal Breaker, Hangman’s NOOSE, and Bomb da Base II are each a separate co-op mission. Deal Breaker consists of a long drive and a tall multi-tiered platform layered with bad guys to kill. Bomb da Base II more resembles an infiltration mission; you and your teammate(s) steal an armored car, retrieve a helicopter, and then place two bombs on a boat; all in the name of business, or something along those lines. Unfortunately, it seems that there are not many people online playing Hangman’s NOOSE, which could be because it sounds like an escort quest with tons of policemen around.
Overall, the mechanics of the game have changed little over the Grand Theft Auto series lifeline: kill people, steal cars, and make money. What could be fun game play is sacrificed once again to attempt combining it with an under-developed story, unnecessary realism, and strings of indifferent mediocre missions.
TLDR: An unfortunately rather poor-plotted title in the Grand Theft Auto series with a game-saving Eastern European main character and stellar accompanying characters. But do not worry; there is a good deal of killing to be had.
