GTA IV is _the_ game we’ve been waiting for. For four long years we have been fed with crappy clones that never managed to hit that sweet spot that GTA has been managing to do over the years.It’s finally here – and it’s awesome!

The StoryThe story is pretty basic. You’re Niko – a hot shot Eastern European who came to Liberty City (a replica of New York) in search of the American Dream…. And a few revenge issues. You came to your cousin Roman who was telling about the fabulous life in the US. But as it turns out most of what he said was BS. He lives in a crappy flat, struggles with debt and local gangsters. It’s up to you to help him out and build your own empire in Liberty City.

Since this _is_ Rockstar, expect the story to be very unpredictable – especially with such deep, whacky, and overall enjoyable characters. You will see numerous plot twists, grow to like some characters and hate the others. The story just keeps you wanting to keep on banging the main quest which will last you anywhere from 30 to 45 hours. Fortunately or not, the sidequests are indistinguishable from the real thing. There is no way to determine whether you’re playing a sidequest or not – but these were done with great care and are a really enjoyable experience. The GameplayWe all know that GTA has always been about driving and shooting. That hasn’t changed here. Although while previous GTA’s had somewhat downgraded shooting systems, GTA IV is different. - Resident Evil 4-esque over the shoulder shooting view
- Gears of War-style cover system that lets you cover behind ANYTHINGCombine those two things and you have a perfect shooting game. Imagine driving into an alley filled with mob members, covering behind your car and having a good old shoot-out. By the way, you can also blindfire… even with an RPG.

A big addition to the driving-shooting formula is that now you can shoot while driving. This is especially great in multiplayer modes, but later on that. Rockstar definitely looked closely to the Wii’s casual gaming success and dumbed the game down a bit. They dropped the whole RPG aspect of the game, including body building, skill raising and so on. That said, the game is definitely a lot more accessible to the players that were scared by the complexity of San Andreas. Although this does feel kind of stripped down to me as a fan of the previous game. Escaping from cops is now easy as pie. First of all, they won’t be on to you if you run over people or smash other people’s cars. They don’t give a crap about you unless you smash their car. Then a “search zone” appears on your radar, the more stars you get the bigger that zone will be. You pretty much have to escape it while avoiding cops using your handy GPS unit. That unit also shows you paths to your destination.
While we were promised that a lot of buildings would be accessible, that was pretty much bs. You can enter some buildings, but not too many. But there are no loading times, ever – which is really cool. Multiplayer?!You have a cell phone that can be used for getting mission objectives, arranging dates or whatever. But also you can use it to jump into multiplayer matches. That’s right folks, you can easily get into a 16 player warfare with ALL OF LIBERTY CITY OPENED to you. This compensates with a clever spawn point system. There are over a dozen match types, but even a simple death match mode has it’s twists when you have mad players running around with RPGs or trying to kill you on tractors. A simple race becomes unique because you can shoot while driving.

This is definitely a great achievement for consoles and is probably the best multiplayer experience I’ve had since Team Fortress 2 came out. But hands down GTA IV is the best multiplayer experience on this gen of consoles. I can’t see any other game that would offer THIS much variety for $60. This could’ve been sold as a standalone multiplayer experience – drop the story. Nothing can beat this open world multiplayer experience feeling.

GraphicsWhat can I say? It’s GTA. The graphics were never top notch in GTA games, but GTA IV raises the bar for open world games. While the character models are a bit sluggish, when you get into open air and see the city blooming on the horizon, it’s an indescribable feeling. When you see the city at night, you’ll think that it’s a picture of NY. It looks _that_ good. Especially if you’re hovering on a chopper above the high scrapers.

The car models look good, and running people over and seeing the new Euphoria physics engine in action never felt better. The cars look and feel as if you’re driving the real thing. The developers dropped the arcadish feel of driving for a more realistic one, and so are the physics of people leaving blood prints on your car.

How does it sound?If you know Russian, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Even the Russian dialogue within the game is superb, not to mention the English bits of it. Rockstar has a great reputation for making the characters come to life with great voice acting – and GTA IV is a marvel in that regard. The radio stations rock. Rockstar employees must be great fans of music, as the stations cover a huge variety of genres and each song hits the spot. Even the Russian radio sounds great with some inside jokes on emigrants. The random comments from pedestrians aren’t that random anymore. They actually make sense, and Niko adds some great commentaries like “Sorrryy” when running people over. Overall this is definitely one of the greatest games this millennium. It’s worth buying just for the multiplayer… or the singleplayer… or for running people over, or for going to strip clubs, or for going on virtual dates. God damn, just buy the game, you’ll love it!