I admit, I had never played a GTA game prior to my experience with GTAIV. So, I did not pop the game with any expectations. In fact, the only things I expected to see were killing hookers, blowing up massive amounts of innocent people, and being transformed into a bloodythirsty killer ready to mow down the neighborhood. Good news: none of that happened.

What did happen is that I was hooked from the moment the ubiquitous loading screen stopped looping. All the gameplay elements created a wonderful atmosphere for the first 3 minutes of the game.

That’s about how long it took me to get into a car. Trying to drive Roman home was so amazingly squirrely, I wondered if I could stand the rest of the game. Luckily, like most things in GTAIV, you get used to them after the first little bit.

In order to keep this thing a bit more organized than a ramble, the rest of the view is divided into sections for your perusing pleasure.

Gameplay

More than anything else about GTA, I loved the gameplay. Okay, that’s not entirely true, but I like to think it is. To rectify that statement: I love GTA’s gameplay when it was being GTA and not some other game.

In and of itself, the gameplay is amazing. The control scheme is fluid, considering the number of things you need to do with it; the driving system is adequate once you get used to it; the com

bat system is surprisingly decent for a being 3^rd person; etc. More or less, GTA does everything well enough to create a giant cocktail of real life. The problems start showing up when the game gets too specialized in one of those facets.

GTA suffers from sporadic overspecialization. When a mission would emphasize a single facet of the game too far, all the flaws of that mode came straight to the forefront. For example, when you were forced to shoot your way through more than 25 enemies in an enclosed space, you began to see all the flaws in the aiming, cover, and weapon selection systems. At times like these the game felt like a crippled version of Gears of War, and reminded me why I liked Gears of War’s so much more. Similar problems demonstrated themselves in Cars, Motorcycles, Helicopters, etc.

My only other beef with the gameplay was the fact that seven hours into the game I was still getting tutorials on how to do different things. While this was annoying, I can’t really complain, considering just how much is packed into this game. I’ll put up with late game tutorials if it makes me feel like my $60 was well spent.

To be perfectly honest, the quirks didn’t detract that much from the gameplay.

Story

The only way to describe the story is The Godfather mixed with Our Mutual Friend and Crime and Punishment. It had that very mafia/mob/underworld feeling from The Godfather, the mature darkness/Slavophilia of Crime and Punishment (Yes I know Niko is not Russian), and the long, complex feel of Our Mutual Friend that only a Dicken’s novel can accomplish.

This wonderful soup of styles blended together quite nicely. As in, the story is what made me finish the game. While I love the gameplay, the story is what drove me through 20+ hours of GTAIV. Considering I find most video games stories to be dull, testosterone driven wankfests, this is quite the turnaround. Almost.

While loved it, the story wasn’t without quirks. There were a few portions of the story that contributed absolutely nothing to the overall storyline. They were interesting, but the fact that they were bridges for the rest of the real story was maddening.

To put in a subplot that is obviously a subplot is one thing, but to put in a subplot that appears to be the main plot is just annoying. I began to be paranoid about any new characters introduced to the story. After a while I wasn’t sure if a new character would actually relate to the main storyline or if I would do 5 odd jobs for him/her and never see them again.

Regardless, like the gameplay, the quirks in the storyline didn’t detract too much from its original, fresh feeling. As I said, it’s the only thing that propelled me to the end of the game.

Graphics/Sound/That Jazz

First off, graphics were nothing special. They looked good, but it was very obvious they weren’t the selling point of the game. I wasn’t terribly impressed or distressed about them at any point. They didn’t look bad and they didn’t look good; they just were. Considering GTAIV is more or less a fantastic life clone, this is probably a good thing.

Sound, on the other hand, was very impressive. Sound effects, voice acting, radio stations, etc were all very convincing and awesome. People and songs never did seem to get repetitive, which for a 20+hour game is pretty impressive. That might have something to do with the massive amount of content, though.

Content has to be the thing which blew me away the most about this game. Yowza! Radio stations, internet, tv stations, thousands of citizens, dozens of characters, hundreds of cars, bikes, helicopters, etc, etc. You get the general idea. For my money, I’ve never seen this much content in a video game. Absolutely stunning. There is no other way to put it. (I’m guessing that’s why the credits were 20 minutes long. My controller turned off before they finished.) It’s not just junk content, either. Most everything in this game seemed polished and professional.

oPgFactor

Now that I have tried to be relatively objective about reviewing the game, here’s the subjective part:

Would I play this w/ my mother? No
Would I play this w/ the guys? Yes
Would my dog enjoy this game? No
Was I constantly run over by taxis? Yes
Do I hate flying helicopters? Yes
Am I now a bloodythirsty, merciless killer? No

Overall, I enjoyed the game. The story was fairly exhausting, but the gameplay made it up for it. There isn’t anything quite like being able to drive 90+ MPH in the wrong lane through Time Square knowing that you have absolutely no risk if you screw up. What made this game, besides the aforementioned, was the fact that you could finally do anything and everything you’ve ever wanted to do without a care in the world.

Overall Score:
Gameplay: 8.7/10
Story: 9/10
That Jazz: 8.3/10
oPgFactor: 9.008/10

Total: 8.752/10 = Could Kill a Baby Zebra