This is a game that should not be missed by anyone.
Everything
Excellent story and characters
Amazing graphics
Top quality voice acting
Awesome soundtrack
Greatly improved driving and combat
High production values
Multi-player is tons of fun
High replay value
Liberty City feels real
Tons of side quests
Social life is a nice new feature
Cell phone is a great tool
Highest polish of any GTA game to date
THE BAD:
Virtually nothing
Minor frame-rate issues
Difficulty is toned down somewhat
Mission structure is still a little repetitive
I'd be the first to admit that I haven't always been a fan of the Grand Theft Auto games. Although I've played every GTA game (except for the portable versions) since GTA 3, I never really got into any of them except San Andreas. This was largely because of the game's setting and RPG elements.
Although San Andreas was a great game, it wasn't without its flaws. The biggest being that it tried to do too many things, and at times lost sight of the plot and what made the game great. These issues, and virtually every other problem in the GTA series have been removed from Grand Theft Auto 4. This is not only the best game in the series, but also one of the best video games in history. GTA4 is a milestone in gaming world.
The story in GTA4 takes a different tone from past games in the series. GTA: SA focused on police brutality, racial inequality, and family, as it's main themes. The focus wasn't really on the main character, but rather the world he lived in and the people in his life. In contrast, GTA4 focuses almost entirely on the main character Niko Bellic and the relationships he makes with the games other characters. It's a much more mature theme compared to other games in the series. Specially GTA3. Niko is a war veteran and immigrant from Eastern Europe, who has been convinced by his cousin Roman, to join him in America where he's rich, has fast cars, and women with huge breasts. Only when he arrives in Liberty City via boat does he realize that his cousin has been lying to him.
Roman is really living the low life, and owes money to the wrong types of people. He's hoping Niko can help him out of this situation. Although Niko has his own reasons for coming to America, the first set of missions revolve around helping Roman with his taxi business, and developing a social life in a new city.
Niko is immediately a very likeable character. He differs a lot from protagonists of past games in the series. He has a dark past, and is forced into a life of crime to survive on the mean streets of Liberty City. He's a tragic character that you feel some genuine emotion for. He's in a new city, doesn't speak the language well, and that comes across throughout the game. You'll often see Niko struggling to express himself, or failing to understand this new world around him. Seeing him evolve over the course of the game is sure to be remembered as one of the best moments in video game history.
Story and character development aren't the only improvements made in GTA4. One of the biggest improvements comes in the form of revamped combat and driving systems. One of the major complaints about past GTA games has been the boring combat. This consisted mainly of holding down the lock-on button, and pressing the fire button until everything was dead. It involved very little strategy.
Although the lock-on system is back, it's tempered with a new cover system similar to the one seen in Gears of War. No longer can you stand in the open, and expect to survive taking dozens of bullets. Damage taken is much more realistic now, which forces you to take cover behind objects in the environment. Nearly everything in the game can be used for cover. If you're driving a car, you can drive it into the middle of a firefight, bail out, and then use the car to shield yourself from bullets while taking out enemies. Cars are also much more durable to gun fire, so using them as cover will rarely result in the car exploding on you. This adds a whole new element of strategy to the game, and makes combat a lot more enjoyable.
Also improved is the driving. All the vehicles use realistic physics, and handle differently. Drive up on a curb, and you'll feel the car shift. Go airborne, and you'll feel the car swerve and struggle to maintain control upon landing. It really makes the car chase sequences more enjoyable. Vehicle combat has also had a makeover. You can now fire from a vehicle using the right stick to aim, and the left stick to steer. It takes a little getting used to, but is greatly improved from only being able to fire left and right out of the car.
The way you evade police is revamped as well. You still have your familiar star based wanted levels, but you evade police differently. In the past you would need to enter a Pay 'N Spray to lose the cops. Pay 'N Spray's still exist, but they only work if the cops don't see you enter. The best way to avoid the police is to get out of their search radius. When you commit a crime and are spotted by the police, a blue radius is placed on your map around that location. The size of the blue area depends on your wanted level. If you can get out of that area, and not be spotted by the police, you will lose your wanted level. However, if you're spotted again, the radius will re-center. This makes the game a bit easier to evade police on lower wanted levels. But much harder once police helicopters become involved since they can follow you, and maintain that line of sight.
A new feature to the game is the introduction of a social life. There were hints of this via the dating system in San Andreas and the infamous "Hot Coffee" mod. Although there's no hidden sex in the game, you can still go on dates with girls and reap certain benefits. But it's not just limited to romantic interests. Niko can also develop relationships with other people he meets. For example, if you hang out with certain characters they will start to like you. These sessions can involve any of the games social activities including going to strip clubs, bowling, pool, darts, etc. If they like you enough, you'll gain special abilities such as being able to buy guns anywhere from the trunk of a car, calling to have a car bomb placed, and even get gang members to assist you on missions. It's a very well fleshed out system that feels right at home.
Your social life and your missions are all handled by a new addition to the game: the cell phone. Cell phones have been used in GTA before, but never have they been part of the gameplay. You'll get calls on your cell to start missions, but you can also make calls to people you've met to arrange dates and side missions. You can send and receive text messages, change the wallpaper and ring tones, and even get info sent to you in real life about songs you hear on the radio. Also tied into this is the Internet café called Tw@. You can browse over a hundred different websites, check your e-mail, read the news reports about your exploits, and even use the matchmaking site to arrange dates. It's a very cool way to interact with the game world.
There are some minor problems with the gameplay, though. The mission structure is pretty much the same as it was before. When you accept a mission, you watch a cut scene about the mission giver having been wronged by someone. You're then tasked with going to a location, killing everyone on-site, and returning for your reward. Nearly every mission from past GTA games has played out like this, and GTA4 is no exception. Granted, most games can be boiled down to a structure like this, so it's not something you can fault the game for. Besides, the clever use of things like the cell phone and GPS navigation to get to your destination help make this more bearable.
Visually, GTA4 is one of the best games on the 360. But not in the way that you'd think. It's not pushing the hardware for extreme character or environment detail like we've seen in Gears of War or Oblivion. But what it is doing is having dozens of characters and vehicles on screen and interacting at a single time. Having so many things going on at one time can drop the frame-rate from time to time, but rarely will you ever notice this.
The characters aren't anything special, but they do look good in the cut scenes and have expressive animation. The lip-synching is a little off, but it's still not bad. What really looks amazing is the dynamic lighting and the constant day/night cycle. Seeing shadows move across objects with the tracking of the sun is a wonder to behold. Explosions and weather effects like rain and fog look very nice too. Although there is some occasional pop in, you can see for miles. It's really breath taking to see skyscrapers towering in the distance from another island.
Liberty City finally looks and feels like a real city. With the afore mentioned day/night cycle comes routines for the various characters and businesses. Stores close at night, and there is less traffic than during the day. One time I even called a girl to arrange for a date, only to have her chew me out for calling her at 2:30am. People on the street will get into accidents, argue, and even start fights all on their own.
Like previous titles in the series, GTA4 is no slouch when it comes to music and sound. The voice acting is the best in the series. Niko and his friends all speak with an Eastern European accent, and it sounds great. But this also means that some players will need to turn subtitles on to understand the characters. There's a Jamaican man named Little Jacob who's accent and lingo is so strong that even with the subtitles on he's difficult to understand, but this is how the character was designed. Even Niko will make comments that he can't understand him. He puts Brad Pitt's character in Snatch to shame.
The soundtrack is likewise amazing. There are no less than 20 radio stations, all with their own style of music or talk. The songs selected to play on the stations fit the theme of each, and are some of the best examples of their genre. The commercials are just as funny as ever, and you'll even hear news reports about what's going on in the city. There are TV's where you can watch hilarious TV Shows, and even go to a theater to watch live performances. All of this adds to the feeling that Liberty City is a real city with it's own history and heritage.
GTA4 will take the average gamer about 30 hours to complete the story missions. It will last even longer if you do all the side quests, social interactions, mini games, and hidden packages. There's even a significant replay value thanks to multiple endings. Other characters attitudes will also change based on how they like you, and the things you do. This adds its own replay value to see how the different interactions play out.
For the first time, a console version of GTA has online multi-player, and it's some of the most fun you'll have on the 360. You start a multi-player match via the in-game cell phone. From there, you can customize your avatar, and partake in the various modes. There are co-op missions that task your team with doing various story-based tasks such as robbing a bank. Competitive players can get their fix via death-match that spans the entire city, or various team modes. Included in the team modes are Mafiya, which has each team performing various tasks before the others. Car-jack City has you steal specific cars, and bringing them to the drop off point with as little damage as possible. Turf War has each team attempting to control various points on the map. Finally, Cops 'N Crooks has one team play as the criminals, and the other as the police. The police have to either kill the crooks, or their Boss while the crooks need to flee in their getaway car. There're even online races, which can be played both with and without weapons. All these online modes are a blast to play, and sure to be one of the most loved elements of GTA4.
The achievements are very well balanced between single-player and multi-player. Some involve completing certain mission branches, while others are awarded for unlocking special abilities, and for exploration. Some even have that usual GTA humor. Like an achievement called "Warm Coffee" where you need to be invited into a girl's house after dating her.
I have never given a game a perfect score for a good reason. Some like Oblivion and Forza 2 have come close, but have missed the mark because of some minor flaws that effected the gameplay. The beauty of GTA4 is that even though it does have some minor flaws, these really don't matter considering how great everything else is. A 10 doesn't mean that the game is flawless. Just that what flaws it does have are so minor, that it doesn't effect the rest of the product. Grand Theft Auto 4 is that type of game. It's an outstanding game in everyway, and will forever be remembered as a game that took video games to the next level of interactive media. This is a game that should not be missed by anyone.
STORY – 10
PRESENTATION – 10
GAMEPLAY – 9.5
GRAPHICS – 9.5
SOUND – 10
VALUE – 10
OVERALL – 10