Review: Grand Theft Auto IV
By MacGyver | May 1, 2008
Category: MacGyver
When you work as an undercover operative for a company like the Phoenix Foundation, you start to become familiar with the seedy underbelly of the criminal world. Since my retirement back in ‘92 I’ve felt something missing in my life. Maybe I miss Murdoch’s clever schemes to kill me (God rest his soul), maybe it’s Jack’s penchant for excess (cocaine is a hell of a drug), or maybe it’s just that feeling I got after jackin’ up some bad guys and making a run for it. Well, after playing Rockstar Games’ latest masterpiece Grand Theft Auto IV, I can tell you with absolute certainty it’s the latter. To think for all those years I risked my neck in the real world when I could have just been sitting on my ass playing video games. Stupid Mac, stupid.
For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last year, stay there. Obviously you enjoy knowing nothing about the world around you. But for those of you who have heard about GTA IV, you already know what I’m about to tell you… This game is fucking awesome. The 7 month delay? Doesn’t matter. Waiting in line at midnight with the biggest D&D/Star Trek nerds you’ve ever seen? Totally worth it. So break up with your girlfriend, disconnect the phone line, and put Papa John’s on speed dial, because once you start playing this game, you’re not going anywhere for a while.
(I’ll be reviewing this game for the Xbox 360, although I play mine on my modified Sega Genesis, retrofitted with a 2 cylinder gasoline engine, a circuitboard off of a Cuisinart blender, 2 rolls of duct tape, and 15 paperclips.)
Story
Meet Niko Bellic. He’s the eastern European you’ll be spending the next 40-50 hours of you life with. Niko’s come fresh of the boat from Russia, hoping to experience the “American Dream”, only to find out what all of us already know: it doesn’t exist. He comes here with the intention of starting over, trying to shake his dark past as a soldier in the Bosnian conflict; little did he know that he would begin to slip into old habits and rediscover the criminal that he once was.
GTA IV takes us back to the city we all knew and loved… Liberty City. Except this time around Rockstar has decided to up the ante; their latest iteration of Liberty City is a block by block replica of the greatest city in the world: New York. Replica may be the wrong word, however… more like caricature. The story, setting, and characters epitomize our consumer-driven, pop-culture society. And I love it.
Gameplay
Anyone who’s ever played a GTA game in the past knows that they weren’t without their flaws. Apparently so does Rockstar, because they’ve certainly gone out of their way to fix them. The targeting system has been completely revamped. Gone are the days of having to play a mission 3 times because you couldn’t properly aim at all of your foes. Now with the simple press of a trigger you automatically lock on to any nearby enemies, using the left stick to cycle between them. While targeted you can also move the right stick to further target an arm, a leg, or for the coup de gras, their head. Coupled with a new cover system that allows you to duck behind virtually anything in your environment, one of GTA’s greatest downfalls is now a distant memory.
Driving has also been drastically changed. I say for the better, but I have a feeling some would disagree. Why? They’ve made it more realistic. Rockstar built this game from the ground up using their new RAGE game engine, in tandem with NaturalMotion’s new physics engine. What does this mean for you? No more riding around town at full speed, whipping around corners with total disregard for the laws of physics. Each car has its own characteristics: weight, handling, speed, and braking ability. Throughout playing the game I actually found myself driving like I would in real life, braking at intersections, staying behind traffic until it was safe to buzz around it. Everything Rockstar did this time around has amplified the level of realism far beyond 11.
Graphics
GTA has never been known for its good looks. It’s an incredibly large sandbox game with virtually no load times and great gameplay, so we’ve forgiven that. Proving just how much they wanted to bring it in the next generation of consoles, Rockstar has gone above and beyond what I ever thought was possible in a game like this. The level of detail that has been poured into this game is amazing. Every block has been meticulously detailed, down to the trash on the sidewalk or the hobo in the alleyway. In a game that, again, has almost no loading screens, you can’t help but wonder how they fit it all on one disc. Drive your car to a top of a hill, get out and look around. See that skyscraper miles away in the distance? It’s real…you can hop back in your car and drive to it. This game has no false backdrops; everything you see in the distance you can take the train, fly, walk, or drive to. While still not as detailed as say Gears of War or BioShock, GTA is still a stunning work of art.
Overall
In all my years of gaming I have never come across a game that could immerse me in such a complex and convincing environment. The story is top-notch, with characters that you actually feel connected to. The gameplay is smoother and more refined than any GTA predecessor. Graphically, the city itself is absolutely stunning and hours can be wasted just walking around and taking everything in. Is this game perfect? No, no game will ever be perfect. It has its flaws, but compared to everything this game has done right they’re almost unnoticeable. Want me to rate it on a number scale? Well, everyone else has given it a 10/10, and I see no reason to disagree.
May 5th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
i agree totally. whats exciting to me is that how far rockstar has pushed the envelope with this game. it can only mean developers will have to provide gamers with much the same level of detail (graphically and through the use of the physics engine) to make thier games ‘next gen.’ Imagine a madden game that uses the euphoria physics engine? god, it makes me drool just thinking about it.