[Disclaimer: This is a hella-long post, and investment of time to read. I spent far too long writing it and it's late, so I'm going to neglect proof-reading it. My sincere apologies. Proceed at your own risk. There is an unhealthily low words-to-pictures ratio]
[Obligatory spoiler warning here]
Grand Theft Auto IV is an excellent game. The first thing I noticed (after the long, tedious, and inconvenient installation was the story. Grand Theft Auto games, in my experience, have been a good way too kill some time with unique mechanics in a massive sandbox setting. The stories have always been... A loose connection to string a certain set of missions and objectives together. Vice City was kind of a cliche rise to power, San Andreas this stereotypical look at "gangstas". GTA3, on the other hand, I rather enjoyed in a Half-Life kind of way. I rather liked the cast of characters in that one, Donald Love being my all-time favourite from the series.
GTAIV comes in strong with characters and development however. Each personality is unique and distinguishable, and it really helps you to get a better idea of why these people do what they do. I wasn't completely drawn in until a few missions in when you kill your first mob boss. Then Niko reveals he's here looking for someone who betrayed and killed his friends in a war. I AM SOLD. It just gets better after that, as poor Niko, a rather like able character, gets stepped on and neglected and abused.
I knew I was really into it when I was given the choice to kill character X or Y. X had the property and connections, but I kinda liked Y. I liked them both, to be honest. But it's not very often that you find yourself wishing that the game could present you with an alternative, because you're really not fond of either path. This happens again at the end, where you're left with the choice to get revenge or leave it be. One close character, your cousin Roman, pulls for you to leave it be. The other, your girlfriend, wants you to get revenge. No matter what, the one you listens to ends up paying for your choice. It makes a rather dark and poetic ending, that leaves you partially depressed and unfulfilled. The same happens when you find, a few missions earlier, the person who betrayed you during the war. The buildup was excellent, giving the character lots of drive and building tension. But when the moment came... It couldn't quite do the body of the work justice. Regardless, it was an excellent and atmospheric plot that kept me intrigued. I can't tell you off the top of my head what the last game to do that was.
Ok, onto game play. It hasn't changed much over the last four titles - the same 'go to X', 'shoot Y'. It gets changed up every so often by switching 'go to' with 'chase' or 'shoot' with 'collect/retrieve'. Tried and true stuff that tends to get repetitive after a while. At the same time, however, it seems like Rockstar has toned it down from being quite so over-the-top as San Andreas. There were no remote-controlled vehicles, no aircraft aside from helicopters, no rampage missions.
There wasn't any properties to buy either, which was disappointing. There's two things Niko was focused on through the game - revenge, and money. While he ended up getting the former, the latter didn't feel right. For all the emphasis there was on becoming rich, there sure wasn't a lot to do once you got there. You could only spend your money on guns, food, and clothes. And when you have +$800,000 in your wallet... It would take forever to actually use up. My favourite part from Vice City was buying the car dealership and working on it so that it spawned the good cars and gave you lots of parking spaces. If nothing else, buying places give you somewhere nearby to save. But no such luck in IV.
Although, to their credit, there is now an autosave feature. It pretty much only works after completing a mission, which spares you from the frustration of getting run-down in the street across from your save point after completing a super long and difficult mission. At the same time though, it does not spare you from the frustration of getting 95% through your mission and losing. You need to do it aaaallll over again. This especially sucks when it involves driving 5mins just to get to your waypoint, so that you can wait through the scripted sequences to figure out what the heck just happened that made you fail in the first place. It desperately needs halfway checkpoints, especially for the longer and multiple-objective missions.
Oh my, this is going to take forever at this rate. Let me quick bomb through a few points: The driving physics are wonky. I'd almost say that ALL cars have some kind of traction control that prevent you from keeping the power on after you've lost traction. For a brief period after you start to slide, the wheels just don't turn. It's really hard to effectively drift or power slide - you need a MASSIVE and fast runup so that you can afford significant deceleration before your engine kicks back in and you can make an exit. Also, the steering took a long time to get used to. It's hard to describe... Some times they're super stiff and the turning radius is rather large. I find myself having to Scandinavian-flick most cars to get them around corners. Jerk one way to loosen up the suspension, jerk the other to get the card sideways and pointed where you want to go.
The cover system, while rather hit-and-miss, makes for some really fun firefights. Blind-firing over your head looks so neat, but it's eerily effective considering you shouldn't be able to see where you're pointing. And, sometimes, the program has difficulty detecting what or where you're trying to take cover. One of those longs missions at which I failed at the end was a bank heist. After the actual hold up, firefight, and chase through the underground, it was time to go back to the surface. The plan was to take some cover and get a look at the surroundings. I figured I'd duck behind a bench in front of a raised garden area. What did my character do? He took "cover" by STANDING ON THE BENCH. Not so useful.
When you do find cover, it's odd. Because in order to fully see what's around you, you REALLY need to work the mouse. It's like it gets caught on a very narrow viewpoint, and only by giving it a good shove around does it break loose so you can see what's going on. It makes the process of going from taking cover to returning fire to be rather jarring. And, if you decide you want to return fire by throwing a grenade you're in for a real treat. Because what poor ol' Niko does is prime the granade in his hand, and when you go to release it... He drops it at his feet. Tell me, under WHAT POSSIBLE CIRCUMSTANCES WOULD DROPPING A PRIMED GRENADE AT YOUR FEET WHILE BEHIND COVER DO ANY GOOD? Ugh.
One last gameplay problem - the Friends System. Oh boy. I get that they're trying to be 'realistic' here, and that having a social network of sorts makes sense. But if you're going to do that at least be REALISTIC ABOUT IT. Jeez. Over the course of one in-game day cycle I get called by about two friends who want to hang out. I tell them 'no', because driving all the way across the city to pick them up and then all the way back to do activity X isn't that enjoyable. Then I lose reputation points. If you're going to be realistic with these things, why not be realistic? Whith only 4-6 friends, you're getting pestered all the time. I'd be way more understanding if they only called once an in-game week cycle. It'd be a lot less annoying.
That being said, however, I rather enjoyed hanging out with them on a few occasions. The dialogue generally gives way to some interesting tidbits about Niko's back story. And the bar games are an alright, albeit clunky, change of pace.
Ok, non-gameplay points. Performance, multiplayer, and interface.
When you pay +$1000 for a new computer 3.5 years after the XBox360 has been released, you figure you should be able to beat the console in spades. Or not, because the development studio (I'm looking at you, Rockstar Toronto) did the absolute bare minimum to port this magnificent game to an additional platform. I hate to rag on my fellow Canucks here, but... Common guys! Did you even TRY? I'm running a 3.3GHz Core Duo with 2.5GB of detected DDR2 RAM, and a 9600 GT with another 512MB of memory. And I am hard pressed to configure this game to get ~30FPS at 1680x1050 with the lowest of low settings. It wasn't until the recent patch that added sliders for the previously unaccessible settings that I was able to bring things down far enough to bump up the res to full size at a playable frame rate. And the game looks horrible. Jaggies, poor textures, bad visibility... As a PC gamer who shelved over the big bucks for the big performance, I feel sorely neglected and let down.
One thing I noticed was that Niko's character seemed to have less detail then other people in the world. I understand this from a performance budget issue - if you can squeeze some details out of the one thing that is going to be on screen all the time, it's a difference you'll notice throughout the game. The problem is that the details don't get raised in the cut scenes. And being the main character, he's in every single one. And seeing him next to the other characters really illustrates the issue and strips away a level of immersion. It's too bad, really.
The interface for the game isn't quite has snappy as past versions. Part of it may have to do with the necessary Games for Windows Live interface. It feels rather slow and bogged down, the layout isn't as clear as past GTAs. There's a part of the game where you can use a computer to do things on the internet. /rolls eyes. Now you'd think, playing this on a computer, this would seem fluid and natural. But it isn't - you can tell they keep it the same as the console version. It feels floaty and disconnected. And why does previewing different clothing options take so long? Why not use thumbnails? And MULTIPLAYER?
(This is going to be a great segway)
When it comes to a game's interface, it should be straight forward. You boot up, click on something like "Multiplayer", and off you go. Not here. Not here at all. To play with other people, you start up your game (by reinserting the disc into the drive because SecuROM won't detect it right away), logging into Rockstar Social Scene, and pressing the 'Play' button. THEN, you need to login to a multiplayer Games for Windows Live account, which you need a MSN/Hotmail/Microsoft address to register. Then you start a single player game. Pull up your in-game cellphone, go to "Multiplayer", and arrive at a clunky server broswer. From there, good luck finding a decent game.
Seriously guys? Does ANY of that process make sense? I don't know about you, but generally it's a three-step process: Open the game, click 'Multiplayer', join a server. But ok, I'll bite. I went through all this hoopla the other night to play with my brother. Once you get in game, you're into a treat. If you like floating cars, disappearing pedestrians, and all-around shoddy netcode... VOILA! IT'S ALL HERE FOR THE LOW, LOW PRICE OF $59.99! IT CAN BE ALL YOURS, JUST ACT NOW!
There were some fun gameplay modes, I admit. The co-op levels were a hoot, and it was fun to just mess around in Free Play. It was pretty fun, I had a big grin on my face. It's just a shame it so frequently turned into a gramce of confusion and anger because a police car flew over the oncoming traffic and landed directly on the front of my truck. I guess where they're going, they don't need roads.
No joke, this second part of the review has taken me about TWO hours to write. THRILL as I wrap this up double-time!
The interface for Games for Windows Life in incredibly unintuitive, it took several minutes to figure out how to start a private voice chat. When we got it working, we sounded so encoded it was hard to tell what we were saying. We opened Steam up in the background and used that instead.
Around Liberty City you find misc people who send you on bizzarre little errands. Some of them are quite rewarding, as you get to help people in need and see how they change their life around.
The City really feels like it's a living entity. People fixing broken cars at the side of a road, joggers, cops stopping speeder, gang fights, garbage trucks doing their routes, a whole bunch of odds and ends that seal the atmosphere up.
The "flying rats" that replace the hidden packages are a pain. Not only are there twice as many as before, but they're in very obscure and hard to find locations. I only found 14 over the course of the single player campaign.
Liberty City is absolutely massive, the level design is very impressive. There's always something to see - from flying over at sunrise, seeing downtown lit up at night, or driving over a bridge and looking out over the water.
The amount of ingame media is staggering. TV channels, websites, and radio stations. Hours and hours of content. I almost found myself sitting there and watching a fake TV show from inside a fictitious video game. I figured I had better things to do, so I went outside and blew stuff up.
Here's some art:
Here's a sig:
-Cril
Here's a song:
Riding along in my automobile
My baby beside me at the wheel
I stole a kiss at the turn of a mile
My curiosity running wild
Crusin' and playin' the radio
With no particular place to go
Chuck Berry - No Particular Place to Go
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