After achieving 100% on the single player side of GTA IV, I began to explore the multiplayer. I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of modes available, most of which are fun to play. As someone who has never been the biggest fan of competitive multiplayer, the modes I enjoy the most are the 3 co-op missions. Unfortunately you can't play with friends in ranked co-op, so in order for the money you earn in these missions to count towards your rank and to earn the achievement associated with beating Rockstar's mission times, you are forced to play with random strangers.

For the most part this hasn't been as much of a problem as one would expect, but there have been more than a few exceptions. Every handful of games, I run into someone who joins a game with the sole purpose of ruining it for the 3 of us who are trying to complete the mission.

In the Bomb Da Base II mission, you first have to attack a convoy until an armored car with explosives in it stops, drive the armored car to a helipad, then take a helicopter to a tanker parked on the river and plant two bombs on the ship to take it out. I have had people destroy the vehicles immediately after everyone spawns keeping us from getting to the convoy. I've had people wait until we get the armored car back to the helipad before blowing up the armored car which causes an automatic mission failure. Others wait until the copter arrives before pulling out a grenade and blowing it up either on the ground or in the air.

For Hangman's Noose, you have to find a vehicle to transport a guy from the airport to an extraction point while holding off the cops. The quickest way is to take a little baggage cart to the other side of the airport where the helicopters are, then fly one back to the others guarding the guy, pick them up and fly to the extraction point. All totalled it shouldnt take longer than 2 and a half minutes to complete. That is unless you get a griefer to join your game. Then they will either blow up the baggage cart so you cant head immediately to the copters, they could also get in a 2nd copter and as soon as you take off with the CPU on board they will clip the tail off with the rotors of his coptor forcing you to crash, or they will fly the copter towards the extraction and then bail out right before arriving, sending the copter into the water. The CPU can't swim so he drowns and everyone fails the mission.

Its just part of online gaming, but its annoying none the less. You still end up running into the same characters even if you leave them negative feedback and ask to avoid them in the future. It doesn't make much sense why the co-op missions can't be played with friends.

Even with the griefer issues and the other usual personality "quirks" of the Live community, I've still had a great time with the multiplayer. GTA IV has long outlasted when I expected to stop playing it.