GTA IV 'A step in the right direction but still lacking'
Then this came along. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, though, is it a step forward or a step backwards? The truth is it's a bit of both. The graphics are (mostly) polished and detailed, the vehicle handling is much more realistic and the general populace of Liberty City seem more real; they walk around talking into mobile phones, smoking cigarettes, sitting on park benches, it's much better than the older GTAs when they just walked down the street for very litte reason. There are a total of, I think, about 90 missions in the main story plus numerous side missions including assassination missions, drug dealing missions, Police vigilante missions and missions given by "random characters" who appear on your radar from time to time, and I should add there is an achievement for meeting all of them. Another handy feature is the mobile phone; if you fail a mission, you immediately get sent a text asking you if you want to try again. This is great because it means you don't have to go trudging all the way back to the mission giver and sit through a cutscene again. If you die, you keep your weapons when you respawn back at the hospital although you do lose your weapons if you get arrested and respawn back at the nearest police station. Little things like this are great improvements, plus there's more I don't really have space for in this review.
But, despite all this, there are problems. Out of the 90 missions, I'd say there's about 6 or 7 different types of missions that get repeated endlessly over the course of the game. It all basically amounts to chases in different types of vehicles or standard warehouse shootouts and because of this the missions get repetitive, samey and predictable quite quickly, especially when you consider that all you need is an assault rifle and body armour and most of the missions are far too easy anyway. I understand that Rockstar have tried to make GTA more realistic this time around and they have, it's just nothing like as much fun somehow. In my opinion, there are far too many motorbike chases. The bane of GTA games, I had to do 4 across GTA:Vice City and GTA:San Andreas combined but I had done 7 in this game alone by about 3/4 of the way through; it does get repetitive and annoying given how bad the motorbike handling is and, if you fall off or crash, you've basically failed instantly. I am currently stuck at the final mission and, in true GTA fashion, the earlier part of the game is far too easy and the final mission far far too difficult. It feels really unfair to have played through all that to get stuck so badly on the final mission, it feels like a complete waste of time and effort especially after the 20+ attempts I've now had.
The graphics, although mostly great, do suffer from pop-in issues. It's not unheard of to crash your car into something which hasn't actually appeared on screen yet, plus some of the character animation seems jerky and not too natural. Sometimes, also, even with my TV brightness on 100% it's still often too dark to see some things even when it's currently daylight in game. The controls don't exactly help, though. The controls for this game aren't exactly stellar, they're clumsy, sluggish and unresponsive most of the time and this isn't aided by the basically broken cover and auto-aim system, which will happily allow you to rattle off all your ammo into a wall but when you have a clear shot you press the trigger and nothing happens, while you're getting filled with enemy lead all the time. The auto-aim system doesn't properly prioritise, either; you're getting shot at, you try to aim and you immediately find yourself turned around pointing at a random unarmed civilian across the street, it's just frustrating and annoying and makes very little sense at all.
The multiplayer offers a whole load of different modes, but lag and connection problems have turned quite a few people off, unfortunately. When it works it's great fun, though.
All in all, this game feels like GTA III with a fresh lick of paint. All the fun activities like skydiving, flying planes, basejumping, ambulance missions, cycling etc. have all been stripped out completely, there seems to me to be little reason to keep playing after you've completed the main story as it gets boring even before then and, without spoiling anything, one of the fun side-activities may or may not get taken away from you at the end of the game depending on which path you take to the end. I spent hours and hours and hours playing San Andreas even after I completed it because it was great fun and there was loads to do, but I don't see myself doing this on GTA IV. You can't buy property or really make yourself feel like a real person as opposed to a cog in a machine, you get the safehouses you're given which are erratically placed at best. There's no point in trying to make money other than for the achievement for making half a million because, besides guns, there's really nothing to spend your money on and it seems pointless even having it.
I paid quite a bit of money for this game and can't help but think it maybe wasn't totally worth it. Sure, the story is suitably long and is a good story, but what afterwards? Probably not a lot, I don't think. I no longer have my PS2 so going back to San Andreas isn't an option, unfortunately.
That said, it gets a 8.5 because it's a solidly built, good quality game, just lacking in a number of key areas. Hopefully Rockstar take these things on board and expand it for the next one.