There are still a few issues...but make no mistake; this is the definitive GTA and one of the best video games yet.
The sweeping tale of Niko Belic begins when he arrives in America and moves in with his cousin, Roman. Niko has had a harsh life in his home country and wishes to start anew, but it soon becomes clear that Roman's stories of mansions, sports cars, and hot women were just that; stories. I won't get into specifics, but the story will eventually grow to become pretty dramatic. Players will even be able to change certain events by choosing to either kill or spare different characters. Over the course of the game, Niko will meet many different people. Upon meeting someone, Niko will add their phone number to his cell phone directory. Players can then call up the characters to request missions or just hang out. Once Niko has spent enough time with a friend, he will gain a special perk for earning their trust. For example, hang out with Little Jacob enough, and he'll let you buy weapons from the back of his car at low prices. These interactions are great in that they allow players to get closer to all of the numerous characters in the game. I just wish that they weren't so intrusive. If a friend calls you up and asks to hang out, it is possible to answer either yes or no. However, the game almost forces you to say yes because if you say no, the contact will start to like Niko less. Also, while bowling and darts are fun a few times, and pool is a little interesting, most of the activites get boring after a while. I'm glad that Rockstar has put these events into the game because it brings players closer to their friends and develops a sense of comaradarie between the player and the characters, but at the same time they can get annoying.
Another flaw with the relationship system is Niko's girlfriend. While it's fun to watch the two grow closer over the course of the game, and seeing her slowly catch on to Niko's criminal activities is a great moment in gaming, she is a bit of a hassle. You'll need to change your clothes and your car before you pick her up, or she won't be greatly impressed.
The gameplay itself has improved a lot since the last game. Auto targeting is still an option, and it actually works. But free aiming is available as well, and that works well too. Niko can also take cover against any flat object in the environment. All in all, the moving and shooting just feels right. The driving, on the other hand, can take a little getting used to. Car physics feel a little bit off, so it is literally impossible to be a good driver in Liberty City unless one drives at the speed of the NPCs or slower. That's no fun. Rain and other weather conditions will make the roads slick, which is a really cool addition. But if Niko is trying to chase down a target in a car while it's raining, it could very well turn into a very frustrating chase. It is a testament to the skill of everyone at Rockstar that, despite these annoyances, driving around in Liberty City is still very fun. Most of that fun comes from the attention to detail that permeates every aspect of the city.
The little touches are simple amazing. If Niko is driving his girlfriend somewhere and he has to slam on the brakes, he will put his arm out to stop his girlfriend from smashing into the dashboard. If Niko crashes at high speed, he's gonna go flying out the windshield. If he steals a car and speeds off, passengers will attempt to leap out of the back seats, often to hilarious results. Much of these awesome interactions are the result of the integration of the new Euphoria technology into the GTA world. Euphoria allows the game's characters to react realistically to almost any given situation by grabbing onto ledges if they're about to fall off of something to flying out of the windshield in a high impact crash. This is the technology being put to use in the upcoming Star Wars: Force Unleashed game, and if GTA 4 is any indication, it's an amzing addition to any game.
Considering the amount of detail that went into Liberty City, anybody who complains about the graphical quality of GTA IV is a fool. The graphics look fairly nice when taken on their own merits, but considering the size of the world and the amount of additional information that had to be crammed onto the disk, they are actually pretty great. Characters faces are much more expressive than they were in the older GTA games as well. The sound is uniformly great as always. The radio stations are hilarious and the music is diverse. The sounds of the city are all natural sounding as well. The great voicework just adds to Rockstar's hilarious skewering of American life. And what a parody this game is. While the story itself is serious and tense, all of the extraneous content in the game is purely satirical. From the steriod-pumping Brucie to the rich Playboy X to the hilariously right-wing Weasel News Network, it is clear that Rockstar just gets it. They hunt down and make fun of everything in our country in equal measure, so while you may not agree with some of the parodies, it's clear that Rockstar is at least fair with their tomfoolery. The best part of all of this is that all of the parody is spot on and true when you think about it.
The multiplayer aspects of the game don't hold up as well as the single player portion, but not for lack of content. There are many different modes for up to 16 players, and it's fairly well integrated into the game (just take out your cell phone and select Multiplayer on the menu), but there usually aren't enough people online to make it fun. Games will usually have under 10 players, often as little as 3 or 4, and the levels are pretty huge. This makes many games a chore to play online.
While it's impossible to cover every detail in GTA IV in one review, it is possible to stress just how much action fans need to play this game. Rockstar has finally managed to create a game that lives up to the open world promise.