"Taxi!"
Here's why:
- massive scale. detailed environment. i mean when you play, you live live there.
- cool looking cars. lots of variety.
- interesting relationship stories.
- choice.
- some humour.
- good graphics and lighting.
- thank goodness for all the cabs, as i criss-crossed the city to meet some guy or other.
What didn't work for me (a FPS guy, admittedly)
- poor vehicle control. sloppy, sloshy.
- so so weapon feel.
- jog, jog, jog, jog, run out of breath, walk walk, jog, jog, and so forth...
- a lot of work to do a fairly unimpressive errand.
- bowling, darts, not executed that well...
- a feeling that i'm not a good guy. i'm just a lousy crook.
as i was stealing cars, punching cops and running over poor pedestrians on their way to fake offices, it suddenly dawned on me that the snail's pace of the game and being an errand boy for criminal immigrants had turned me into a real jerk. frustrated, lashing out at my virtual society, with my only joy in life reduced to punching elderly people i don't know and crashing stolen cars off freeway ramps. i wanted to be a small time crook (through no fault of his own) who made the best choices he could in tough world, but that was just no damn fun.
so in summary: GTA IV is monolithic and ambitious and deserves praise for trying to create a rich and varied experience, right down to the most mundane things in big city life. but it's that very thing that makes it do a whole bunch of stuff kind of poorly. no one activity is best in class, which is something that single minded games can accomplish. obviously, millions feel differently than i do about the game, and that's great. hey, i even kept my copy. just in case i might get an inkling to pop it back in one night. it probably deserves another day in court. get it? sorry.