GTA IV

Today I'd like to talk about Rockstar's GTA IV and ask the question: if this is the pinnacle of immersive gaming, why am I left feeling so empty inside?

The Good

• Fully realised game-world
• Improved driving/fighting physics
• Engrossing and hard-edged storyline
• multiplayer

The Bad

• Dating is like Sims2:Bitches
• Lack of side missions
• multiplayer

The Fugly

• lack of AA
• frustrating camera

At the age of four, I, freakishly tall and with a humongously large head, waited in frenetic anticipation of my fifth birthday. The day before the event I was a small human helicopter. The milliliters of wee that escaped me in excitement were not un-noticeable and the desperate weariness of my mother is something she still complains about. That night I slept a fitful sleep, eventually waking up at 4am to watch my school-made milk carton candle melt slowly across the face of our mantelpiece.

Twenty seven years later I recaptured the essence of that fine day. Now, still freakishly tall with a humongously large head, I wait in line at EB Games at 10pm on a freezing Launceston evening. Surrounded by short, girly looking teenagers with their spastic 60's-throwback hair, makeup and tight jeans cinched below the buttocks, I fiercely squeeze my thighs together to contain the thin stream of urine that threatens to warm my pants in a very improper fashion.

Many reviews will lead in with Rockstar's sensational visuals and indeed, one IGN reviewer referred to the draw distance as "...nearly Pointilism and at times Impressionistic". To me, GTA has always been about the driving and roaming aspects, so my initial thought on GTA was probably similar to many other people; what the hell did they do to the driving physics? Gone are the forgiving controls of its predecessors where you could recover easily from the worst of spins, instead you find your vehicle actually has mass. The slightest of touches on the handbrake at speed sends the vehicle into a 180 making cornering at speed (with the 5-0 on your tail in heavy traffic) a very different affair.

Stealing cars is more enjoyable now too. Pressing triangle when you approach a parked vehicle causes Niko to use his elbow or a weapon to smash the glass and reach in to quickly open the door. Pressing your bumper buttons frequently allows him to start the car quicker and also assists in removing yourself from the sight of nosy pedestrians (with mobile phones). The accelerator for cars has now been moved to the R2 trigger, a change that is very easy to come to grips with. For those who haven't used a new ps3 controller, the lower edges of each shoulder button are free, making for very bouncy button-action.

The camera aspect is going to piss you off, let me tell you now so you can get used to it. Due to the nature of the controls, there is no longer the option to look to your left or right instead you use the right analogue to direct the camera. The problem is, on foot or in the car the camera desperately wants to snap back to the forward view. Maybe it's me, but I would like at least some snap as it will help me when driving, but it needs to be easier to look around than it is right now.

Accompanying your driving is a staggering selection of radio stations. Rockstar have made good use of blu-ray technology to cram in a large amount of audio into your cruising music. Unlike previous installments there are very few big money tracks to be had with the developers looking for a more unified soundtrack rather than a collection of memorabilia. The overarching theme of the music seems to be as grimy as the city itself from the crazy sounds of Vladivostok Radio to the tripped out stylings of the Journey; my personal favourite is Liberty City Hardcore, nothing beats drive-bys to the music of Agnostic Front. The talkshows are as hilarious as ever and what I most appreciated was the constant flow of real-time news regarding your latest criminal exploits.

Now that driving has been discussed, we can turn to the streets that your tires will tear up. Like the Liberty City of GTA 3, there are three main islands and added to these are one medium sized and 3 smaller islands. At the start of the game, the commentary as to why the islands are locked off surrounds a recent terrorist threat causing the closure of the bridge system. You start on the island containing the suburbs Broker and Dukes. Broker is of course Brooklyn. Low rent, seedy alleys and a dangerous looking population. Your jobs here are for small-time scumbags, killing pimps under the clanking of the train system. Bohan, the medium sized island, is something of a non-event. There are a number of missions here but architecturally it's an extension of Dukes, slightly less of a shithole than broker but you still feel the a strong urge to kill the dangerous looking residents before they bat you in the scone.

Algonquin is the Manhattan of GTA IV and it is contains some of the most impressive real estate. With its own Central Park, Empire State Building, Chrysler building and its very own Times Square, this makes the nightlights of Las Venturas seem like a gaudy suburban Christmas. The city is simply stellar in the twilight hours and night is the best time to be hitting the unique jumps for the slo-mo-flow. Moving out of Algonquin to the west you come to Alderney. This is upstate New York with the larger suburban expanses and the wealthier real-estate (hit up the mansion in the north for the backgarden helipad and free Maverick). Rockstar have again created distinct flavours for their cities (as each suburb is its own city. Your initial welcome to Alderney is a car chase through back alleys and yards that perfectly displays how well the area was built, however I found it very difficult to recreate the same fluid movement without guidance.

From the very first days of the 3D realizations of the GTA Dream, the graphics have been at the cutting edge of the gamer experience. We're all familiar with the progression throughout the series, but it will pay to revisit it briefly. In GTA 3, we were presented with three separate islands, each requiring their own load time. In GTA:VC we experienced just two massive islands, each separated by the one load point as well as internal environments with their own individual loads.In GTA:SA the goods were finally delivered and we had one entire state, a super-massive map of incredible depth with no load times and barely perceptible pauses as we transitioned to an indoor environment, however like the past games it suffered in draw distance with cars appearing out of nowhere as you flicked from rear to forward view. In GTA IV the designers have taken an extremely bold but intelligent step towards total immersion in the obfuscation of a view distance.

Using their Euphoria engine from Table Tennis, Rockstar wields the uncanny ability to draw the entire map at once. This isn't the mega-tiling of ET:QW, it's almost a living skin with the pixel count being entirely dependant on its distance from the gamer's view. It really is almost like a painting, anything at more than 20 meters from you starts to obtain the fuzzy obscurity of true depth perception. Take a helicopter 100 feet up at the bottom right-hand corner of the map and you can make out individual buildings at the leftmost top corner. Fly towards it and over distance, the details will start to flesh out. The most amazing thing is just how neatly things draw in. You can't catch the pixels as they bloom, it's an uncanny visual trick that will no doubt carry with each sequel on the next-gen platforms. There is an obvious and unfortunate pitfall to this visual style; it only works so long as you are focused on your immediate environment. While I'm frantically driving or taking fire the fore and aft-ground focus works extremely well. Grab a chopper or drive slowly and the image changes. If I focus on a building on the horizon, understandably it will not come into focus, ruining the illusion of depth perception.

Consider yourself forewarned when I say that there is no anti-aliasing in this game. AA is an extremely resource hungry tool so it is not surprising that it doesn't appear on this scale, but at times the jagged lines of the city detracted strongly from the immersion intended. After a while you cease to notice it, but occasionally it turkey slaps you in the face.

There is so much character evident in the visuals to this game. The myriad population of Liberty City rarely repeat themselves. The lighting effects on the body of your car is spectacular and the true nature of the light is best exemplified in the night/day aspects. The morning sun is a squinty beast which relaxes into the soft bloom of the evening sunset. There seems to be an unlimited amount of light sources in the game which makes for some extremely pretty shading. The best overhaul of the series has to be the water. Not until CoD4 did gamers realize that the sea isn't always a calm, flat Wake Island affair. The water in GTA 4 is choppy and the waves will eat your little dinghy. The character reacts suitably to the water environment too, as do the physics of driving watercraft in the depths. Rain is extremely well handled, it makes driving dangerous and will have citizens pulling out umbrellas!

Much noise is made in the press about Niko's mobile phone. Think of it like a start menu dressed as a Motorola. Get over it.

So you've seen the sights, bought the hotdogs, crashed your car and sworn that A) R2 is a shit way to accelerate, B) Handbrake turns are fucked and C) actually, maybe this driving stuff isn't that bad. What's next? Fairly stupid question, imo. The missions in GTA are exactly what you expect them to be. Work with Gang A to piss off Gang B. Work with Gang B to piss off Gang C and etcetera. Not to say the missions aren't fun, in fact they are a lot more realistically presented than previous outings. Niko doesn't screw around and nor do the people he deals with. Expect lots of profanity and violence, but insofar as content, there's little here that you haven't played before. I finished the main storyline in 27.5 hours so there is a LOT of content here and as GTA has just the one difficulty setting, you'll not find yourself repeating a lot of them more than once (with most deaths being by your own impatience or stupidity). Two notable standouts that I would like to see more of are stealing a van laden with brown heroin and and a kidnap victim who keeps taking the wheel of the car. There is a slight ramp-up in difficulty when you near the end missions however due to the easy nature of the new duck and cover system, there's nothing so taxing as to beat a patient player with a loaded assault rifle.

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There is one very interesting new aspect to mission-play. Decision making is a tool that is seeing a resurgence; first an imperative in text-based games it was then lost to the visceral thrill of shooting shit 'til it died. It came back in a big way in Deus Ex, Fahrenheit, BioShock and a host of other new games. In Rockstar your decisions are about whether or not to kill certain key figures in front of you. On my first play-through of the game I actually spent time on considering the pros and cons of each decision. Killing Vlad was easy, he treated my cousin poorly but the decisions got hard when it came to Dwayne or PlayboyX. A friend told me he killed Playboy because he was an up and comer and would have more jobs to do, but when he chose to kill Dwayne, Playboy removed the teat and cut Niko off from contact. I chose Dwayne because Playboy had treated him poorly and disregarded their history, Dwayne was a nice guy and I just didn't trust Playboy to be loyal. Turns out (sitting in my new penthouse watching GTA television) that I made the right choice. Your final choice in the game is between Revenge and Reality, the choice of either affecting the ending missions slightly... ever so slightly. I had the decency to put a lot of though into my choices and I feel let down. Your earlier choices have little effect and the big final decision really boils down to whether you'd like $200,000 or a Car Service I would like to see Rockstar work on this to make the decisions more meaningful and offer real character paths; I would particularly like to know that replaying the main story line will open up a significant number of extra missions.

The storyline will take you from 25 to 35 hours to complete, without doing any of the side missions.

So, you've mastered the game, made your choices and completed the missions... what's next?

Sadly, very little. In each of the last iterations there was a wealth of extra content to be had. It really made striving for 100% mean something. However, there are no paramedic or firefighter missions. There is no list of cars for you to pick up and export. What you do have are vigilante missions, 200 hidden flying rats, races, missions for Jacob and Bernie, mini-games, strippers and the detestable Dating and Friendship challenges. Seriously Rockstar, we aren't Japanese and don't want to play a dating sim. During the main mission you are constantly interrupted by bit-part players who want you to go out with them, if you refuse them they sound disappointed and your rating with them goes down. I think it would have been smarter to have this occur when the player had time after the main missions as it would also add to a feeling that you have not yet finished. As it is, they are an annoyance, the mini-games are shit and the Jacob missions are stupid; do a deal, it turns sour, survive. If that shit happened in the main game, Niko would insert hot buckshot into Jacob's rectal cavity at 200 feet per second.

Screw 100%, let's get online and frag. The first time I heard of GTA online I was very wary. How on earth can you even begin to make an online game out of what is essentially an immersive single player experience. For those who still doubt, I ask you to grab 15 friends, arm up and head to a big city. Now, chase each other around and blow up everything you see. The very concept of Liberty City running as normal but containing 16 real people is figuratively mind-blowing but to see it at work is alternately the best thing since Brazilian waxes and the most frustrating thing since adolescent puberty. There are over 10 different types of online play from plain old Deathmatch to the tour de force of Cops and Crooks. Online is accessed by dialing in on Niko's mobile phone. If you are the host you set the game and the parameters (weapons, traffic, pedestrians etc). Once players join you all spawn and off you go. GTA Race is one of my favourites so far where you can race (boring) or beat everyone around a corner, hop out and use your rocket launcher to send their spleens into their mouths.

Cops and Crooks is genius with one side playing the police who can see the crims on their radar. The crims have to get their mob boss (randomly chosen player) to the extraction point and can only see that point on radar. Much mayhem ensues and the team that practices teamwork will win.

The main problem with online is that most players don't know what they're doing. They don't work together, everyone steals vital weapons and armour from the mob boss or they just end up sodding off for a drive. When they do work together it's a sublime experience. In one round I ran a mob boss over to a garage and shot at the ground where there was some body armour. He picked it up, shot twice in the air and the gestured at me. I ran out, confident he was behind me and jacked a car. We piled in (a third player joined us) and we ran, with the cops close on our tail. I kept braking to position us to the rear of the cop car where the mob boss shot out the wheels of the cops causing them to pile-up on every corner. We enjoyed a 5 straight win with this tactic; Stiv_71, I love you.

You will also enjoy Free Roam. Invite in your psn friends and load up into a motor vehicle then drive around the city. They shoot out the windows and you find things for them to shoot at. If ever you need a driver, pick me. I will keep your shit in one piece.

There are of course many more aspects to the game. The 133 pages of fully detailed internet content from tw@t cafes, the genius of calling 911 on your mobile just to jack the cop car and access Police Computers and the new face of vigilante missions, the simple physics of a dropped paper cup (mentioned in an IGN article), the incredible five TV stations including a full computer rendered standup set by Ricky Gervais (he says cunts), the increased difficulty of cop chases (3 stars in IV are like 5 stars in San Andreas); there is a lot of cosmetic depth to GTA IV and the makers have fleshed out a full city with its own special essence.

However, I don't feel the same compulsion to achieve 100% as I did in previous titles. Maybe it's that I've now discovered online gaming but I can't help but feel that this is just San Andreas with a new look and missing a few tricks (it's kind of like your favourite hooker had a boob-job but also gave birth). This was to be the ultimate moment of gaming glory and I had expected to be offline for weeks as I wrung every last drop of possibility from the game. Instead I found myself loading up my PC to revisit my favourite shooters. Gone was my old desire to just drive the NGR up to SanFierro for some hilly craziness. Is it just me? Am I so jaded and spoiled?

Fortunately, I can expect Rockstar to up the ante dramatically with each new release. They took us places with the GTA series that no-one ever predicted and I have faith in them to do so again.

Even with the disappointments visited on me by GTA IV; it still does offer an experience well above most gaming fare. What it does, it does brilliantly. What it fails at it only fails at only a little bit. This is an engrossing title with a solid main campaign, a number of extras and a very decent multiplayer component.

But I still feel a touch hollow and I'm hoping the ps3 DLC (yes, there is word about that it will eventuate) will fill that with some side missions. With a record breaking $500 million 6-day worldwide take it would be economically foolish to ignore the ps3 consumer base.

Overall, this is not the GTA I was expecting but it's a solid ten steps in the right direction...

9.5 out of 10.