So I decided to take out my trusty cell phone as Niko and hit the world of online gaming last night! GTA IV does not have a lack of online features. In fact, it's probably got the most diverse style of online multiplayer I have seen in a while. This is a game that you can waste hours doing all kinds of things for fun. It also has a more chaotic feel to its targeting, bullets, strategy, as well that will prevent tournament play but also encourage players of all skills to play. You may get pwned, but you'll get a couple kills yourself and enjoy yourself while you're doing it.

There's the obvious deathmatch mode(s), where you pick areas and shoot the heck out of each other. There are racing modes for those that actually want to race cars in GTA (wasn't this one of the more annoying parts of this series). They even have objective based modes where you are cops and robbers (and I'm seven again, but loving it!) and where you're given a certain car to boost and get it back to a chop shop. All in all, you can kill hours and hours just jumping the different types of play and enjoying the wild world.

There's another mode, though, that might be overlooked or might be completely popular, I don't know, that makes the essence of GTA come alive. Its a free roam. You and like 7 of your friends are just dropped into the city. You can shoot each other, steal cars, blow stuff up, yell at each other, help each other out, explore the whole city, and do anything you really want. It's so cool. It's just the type of sandbox freedom that everyone loved about the original. It doesn't help your "score", so to speak (it doesn't affect your single player and doesn't help you with ranks on multiplayer and doesn't help you with missions), and I'm not even sure if you can use it to unlock achievements. On the other hand, like I said before, it's so much fun that you won't care!

I have plenty of games that are taking up my online multiplayer time, but I must admit I'll probably be wrapping up Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and the Metal Gear Online Beta just so that I can spend the tail end of May roughing people up in Liberty City!