With all the hype and internet activity around Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 4, you can be forgiven if you've decided to wait a bit and see if this game really is worth all the hysteria. Having just finished the single-player game, I'm here to tell you that in general it is a very good game - and one you'll want to play if you have any interest at all in it. But contrary to some opinions, it is NOT the best game ever made (I have to wonder if these folks who rated GTA4 so high played Mass Effect or Bioshock or Crackdown.)
I have not played multi-player yet - hopefully more of my boys will get the game and we can try out the mayhem it provides soon!
Note that I am a raving fanboy when it comes to this series. I've played every game in it and finished them all (OK, I didn't finish GTA: Liberty City Stories on the PSP yet, but that's only because I play it on airplane trips.) This is the first one I've played on a console since I prefer the PC, but figured I go the 360 route in order to increase the likelihood of online play with my buds.
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Let me run through some of the pluses and minuses of this one. You might feel my negatives are nits, but if people are going to say this game is perfect, then it shouldn't have these things.
Graphics
The Good
This game has fantastic graphics, especially the cars and facial expressions. The scene at night and in the rain is great. The lights from a bridge reflecting off the water as seen from a helicopter is really well done. The same is true for distance car lights seen through a haze of rain. The close-up characters seen during the cut-scenes are just great - the best I've ever seen in a game probably. Extremely high polygon counts and a great understanding of how to do facial expressions. I really felt the pain of the lead character many times thanks entirely to the graphics.
The Bad
There are a number of graphical quirks on the XBOX 360 version that distract from gameplay. The worst is the annoying tendency for cars to pop into existence and settle on their suspensions. It is very distracting and odd. Also, there are several places where the texture or lighting disappears (one spot where you enter a tunnel is especially egregious). Finally, the objects clip into the environment enough that is is noticeable. Cars that dip into the curbs are one bad example. These issues above are bugs - they should have been fixed prior to release but I guess the team decided the software was *good enough* and let it go.
And as in previous games, there is a strange tendency to see the same model car you are driving in the area. It's not so bad with some of the run of the mill cars, but very odd with the high end sports cars.
The Ugly
There is one design issue I have with the graphics, and that is in the bushes / trees. To be blunt, they are a total joke. I know they increase the realism from afar, but get close to them and they are 2D objects straight out of 1997.
Audio/Sound
The Good
The voice acting here is outstanding. It is movie quality - and a good movie at that. The reason you end up caring about these characters can be found in the dialog. The writers get a lot of credit from me, but the actors bring these words to life. Better than almost any game I have played - better than Mass Effect and Bioshock.
The Bad
The radio stations just didn't work out for me. It's hard to imagine that with 200 songs and a slew of celebrity DJs (including musician Iggy Pop, actress Juliette Lewis, and fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld) they could get this wrong, but for some reason they did. I don't know if its the repetitive DJ interruptions or the poor choice of songs, but while I really loved the music in GTA3: Vice CIty - in GTA4 I ended up just turning the radio off. It didn't help that the radio seemed to be louder than the character dialog on a number of missions (the game is supposed to turn down the radio volume automatically during these times but it didn't always work.)
World
The Good
The city is fun - lots of interesting things to do from play in-game video games, play pool, bowling, or darts with your friends, or take your dates out to a show (adult or comedy), dinner or drinking. The in-game internet is darn funny, with a variant on Craigslist personals. There is in-game TV with several channels and shows (although I didn't find this all that enjoyable because I wanted to be playing a game - not watching TV).
The in-game cell phone is a huge gameplay improvement that also increased the overall realism. Being able to get text messages and make phone calls (either to your contact list or to random numbers ) is pretty sweet.
The Bad
They removed the ability to buy upgraded housing. As it was, I had no use for the vast amount of cash I had. I missed being able to purchase an up-scale home and getting a free car always in the garage or a helipad to keep a chopper on. There are fewer car models in the world than in previous games, and the overall world is a lot smaller. I also missed the various environments of San Andreas. The world here is all city and water.
Gameplay
The Good & the Bad
There is a lot to cover here, some good and some not. The cars are fun, but harder to drive with crazy amounts of under-steer in every vehicle. The default camera view automatically shifts based on what kind of car you are in which is good, but I still fought the camera like crazy in helicopters like I have done in all the other games in the series. Combat is much easier than in prior versions - the lock-on made it trivial to get headshots against the AI. I thought perhaps this was a console staple that the PC versions didn't have, but looking online I see that others agree the combat is simpler. That isn't to say that I didn't fail some missions (1 versus 20 is hard no matter what) but a good addition to this version is a way to restart failed missions easily through your cell phone.
There is a whole system that allows you to increase your friendship with several of the people in the game, and getting to a certain level allows you to ask them for favors. Those favors might be asking for a bomb to be planted, a carload of gang members who help fight for you, or medical advice (given over the phone!) to heal yourself. All told this is a cool idea, if only the process of getting them to like you wasn't boring and a little tedious. You don't go on missions with them, but instead go to one of the mini-games and play pool, bowling, get some food, go drinking, etc. Sadly this devolves into the game version of Driving Miss Daisy. You go pick them up, drive them to the activity, do whatever, then drive them back. Then repeat, and repeat, and repeat. One of the friends wants you to race, but you don't get much value from that. Another wants you to deliver drugs for him, but that's mostly about generating cash and instead of improving the friendship.
There are fewer story missions than in previous games, but lots more side missions. It's too bad that the only real benefit to these side missions is cash given that there is rarely a reason to spend the money. The side missions are usually pretty fun on their own so are worth doing. I just wish they had benefits in the friend system rather than in cash.
The Ugly
The game relies on tricks to keep things from getting too easy - for example, some enemies during missions spawn when you get to certain locations near them, so you can't kill them early by sniping. I found this to be a major disappointment, because one benefit of the open world game should be that you can accomplish the task in any way that works. But unfortunately, in order to make some of the set pieces work out you end up on a rail with only one way into a building or one way through the mission. I found this the most disappointing aspect of the game, because I felt that previous versions had less of this and rewarded innovative play. If you wanted to take a helicopter and slam down on top of enemies fleeing you, you could. In GTA4 that's not really an option because the crooks are often invincible until they arrive at a destination and then they go inside where you are stuck entering the one door. In honest, in most cases the set piece is worth it - there are some really interesting circumstances that feel more like "playing a movie" as a result. This is the trade off they had to make, and while I appreciate what they have done it did change the gameplay subtly from other games in the series.
Enemy AI and buddy AI is generally pretty bad. It isn't that it is worse than other games in the series, it is that it has never been a strong aspect of the game. I've seen guys walk around in circles and get stuck on barriers doing a crazy dance trying to get free. Because you end up killing them quickly the enemies don't get noticed much, but when one of your partners gets stuck on the world and can't advance, it is really annoying to have to restart the mission (this happened to me twice.) I'm not sure why GTA gets a pass on this fact from most reviewers, but the AI found in many other games today is far better.
Conclusion
Don't let the negatives here fool you. I enjoyed the heck out of this game and played it nearly non-stop. I did a few of the side missions and finished the main story with about 36 hours of play. Luckily there is more to be had, and I'll be playing it some more to try everything out.
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