Grand Theft Auto IV – out now
This morning, I’ve mown down three pedestrians, stolen a car, torched it, beaten a policeman to death and nicked his gun. Then, I got into a taxi and rode halfway across town before getting out and refusing to pay the fare. The violent exchange which ensued ended with the driver sitting in a slowly growing pool of his own blood. As the feds closed in, I managed to accidentally explode and scatter myself across the pavement with my own rocket launcher, aimed as it was a hair too close to the car I was crouching behind for cover.
Then I jumped in the shower and got ready for work. The above paragraph is not some Patrick Bateman-esque flight of fancy, but a description of a ten-minute early morning blast on Rockstar North’s seminal Grand Theft Auto IV…
The game begins with players stepping into the scuffed shoes of one Niko Bellic, an émigré from an unnamed pan–Eastern European shard of the former Soviet Union referred to simply as the “old country”, who arrives in Liberty City (GTA’s version of New York for those new to the series) to help his cousin Roman chase the American Dream.
It soon turns out that Roman’s dreams of fortune were little more than that – he is struggling to pay off debts to powerful people. Which is where you come in. As you begin running errands and performing tasks to help keep the wolves from Roman’s door, it becomes apparent Niko also has a dark past of his own, having some beef with a former army comrade of his who is apparently residing somewhere in Liberty City.
I can’t really say too much about the plot, because I don’t want to spoil it, and also because I’ve been having so much fun enjoying the unparalleled sense of freedom the game offers, I’ve not actually concentrated on completing the game so far. Those who’ve played the previous games in the GTA series will be familiar with concepts such as the in-car radio stations and the ability to ‘intimately interact’ with certain NPC’s in certain areas of the city.
IN GTA IV, I’ve been arrested for drunk driving (you can get drunk, which severely messes with the controls), hotwired a fancy car which came with its own voice-assisted satnav, and have reported a false crime on a mobile in order to divert police attention away from my own illegal activities. You can even sit and watch the in-game TV shows, in which your actions sometimes feature – set off a bomb in an apartment block and you may make the evening news headlines.
Controls have been vastly improved, although the basic concepts remain. The selecting and aiming of weapons is now much more intuitive and easy, you’re less likely to end up accidentally killing yourself in the manner described above, and the sniper zoom mode has to be played to be believed. It’s not perfect, however, as the auto targeting feature is more of a hindrance than a help when in a firefight with the po-po.
The guys at Rockstar have also implemented a shockingly realistic physics engine developed in conjunction with bio-engineering students in Oxford. If you brush past someone in the street, your shoulder will swing to the side accordingly, and if you crash or stop a car suddenly at high speeds and you’re likely to go flying through the windscreen.
Despite all this, the biggest change in the fourth Grand Theft Auto title is perhaps the social aspect. As well as allowing you near-free reign to do pretty much whatever the hell you want, the consequences of your actions are emphasised more than ever.
There are several ‘morality points’ in the story, points in the narrative where you are forced to make difficult choices which affect the rest of the game and how other characters perceive you. Should you be lenient and merciful and let your enemies live? Or should you be vengeful and give the scumbags what they deserve? The game invites, nay demands, that players to become involved in the world; the fourth wall is broken on a regular basis.
In short, Grand Theft Auto IV is the best instalment in the series so far. The ante has been upped considerably. It’s a technical and artistic triumph. We can only assume that if equivalent Vice City and San Andreas remakes are on the cards they will be of similar scope and invention. We’re silently praying for a 3D update of GTA London 1969, which allowed players to kill soap dodging hippies for a cash bonus.
