Grand Theft Auto. Back to the Basics. Literaly
NEXT GEN CONSOLE = Great graphics
ROCKSTAR = Solid controls and good story line
So i set out with certain expectations in mind and found out how short the game came to meeting my expectations. GTA Liberty City is a perfect title for this game because its basicly like its predecessor. All you do in this game is run missions to increase someone elses criminal influence. For now lets just do some comparison with only the last installment of the series and the newest one since this is the game that got my hopes up. In GTA San Andreas you got to actually build your criminal empire and run missions to increase your influence in the criminal community. This is totally absent in GTA4, the closest you come to having a criminal empire, is your cousins taxi bussiness. All you are left with is missions that do nothing but move the storyline along and leave you with a fat bank account. Which brings me to my next point. What am i suppose to spend my money on exactly? I came to the end of the game and found that i had all this booty and nothing to spend it on. Also they did away with ability to increase your skill with different weapons and increasing your lung and running capacity, this added alot to the series in helping people feel like they are building something unique. In San Andreas you got to customize your rides, i remember there was never enough garage space to hold all the cars that i customized. This was a great addition to the game so why did they do away with it. San Andreas also had a plethora of ways that you can make your character uniqe tattoos, clothes, hair style, facial hair, accessories, jewlery, even your weight. The whole time i played i was expecting any of these great things to be unlocked after the next mission. I was sadly mistaken when i came to the end and found that none of this was available. San Andreas even had different areas that felt truly different then each other (city, country towns, hill billy huts, las vegas) in GTA4 all i got was a remake of liberty city, dont get me wrong the city looks gorgeous but once again it fell short of expectations. Another huge problem with this game is that you dont have your own little stooges that follow you around and help you annihalate the competition or murder police officers, WHY!!! This WAS the greatest addition that was brought into the GTA world. This detracts from drive bys and i guess since you dont build an empire you dont really need soldiers because there is nothing to protect or attack. Enough comparions lets move on to the simple ups and downs of the game itself.
The missions that are suppose give you some options and leave you with the feeling that you truly had a choice in the matter is a joke. All they do is give you one of two options to choose from which boils down to what character you want to kill and which one you want to save. At the end of the mission it doesent really matter who you save or kill because both of the characters parts in the plot are finished and you wont here from them again unless you want to take them on a date or give them a phonecall. The driving controls were a little loose also, i found myself taking a taxi cab everywhere just because i didnt want to drive myself and power slide into everything i see. The camera does a medicore job in the game for one reason is that in close quarters there is some problems with wanting to see in the area that you need to, but this dosent happen very often. Also the camera angles while driving the car is a little tricky, you have to move the camera around a turn to see what you are turning into, after a little practice this is not a big problem.
The taxi cab is a nice addition to the game as well as the cell phone and being able to surf the net. There is alot of taxis in the city and they can take you anywhere that you need to go and take a friend with you if you want. The cell phone is an awsome addition. The restart mission option that you get from the cell phone is also a nice addition. After spending a couple of minuetes surfing the net i found that it wasnt used for much more then checking my meaningless email and gettting good laughs out of different ads on the web. There was alot of potential in this but it wasnt really fleshed out. Something i would of liked to do was commit a some cyber crimes. Another good thing this game offers is the special abilites you gain from your friends after they like you enough. The online game is medicore there could of been more done like adding a lobby where you can team up with random people for a bit of random fun. This was a great game but its not as epic as i thought it could of been. Better luck next time.