A beautiful game. But not perfect.
In the story you play Niko Bellic, an East European illegal immigrant to the fictional Liberty City in the USA. Niko's cousin, Roman, promises him wealth and women but when he arrives he finds his cousin running a second-rate taxi firm and up to his eyeballs in gambling debts with Russian mobsters. The story unfolds as Niko does whatever he can for he and his brother to get by in LC.
Compared to San Andreas the story and characters are vastly more interesting and engaging. You really begin to empathise with them, Niko especially, and the occasional choice event will really drag players in different directions depending on how they are influenced by the many varied and colourful characters throughout the story.
One of the first things though that will stun you when you begin playing is the visual improvement over previous entries in the series. GTA IV is the first open-world game on the new generation of systems (360 & PS3) that looks like a next-gen game. Games like Saints Row suffered from below-par graphics engines, but in Liberty City the lighting, buildings, people and even open-water areas look superb. Not only that, but the number of pedestrians and volume of traffic has been ramped up to a spectacular level, really creating a living, breathing city for the first time. You'll see people packing groceries into their car, visiting shows and restaurants and can distract them just by brushing past them on the side-walk.
As always mission structure involves meeting with mobsters and friends in designated locations to be given instructions on what task awaits you. The missions themselves have changed very little from previous GTA games. Most involve delivering items by vehicle, chasing someone in a car-chase, or gunning down every goon in a given area. They have though, become much more realistic than in San Andreas. You certainly won't find jet-packs in Liberty City! There are also one or two amazing set-piece missions, including a bank heist very reminiscent of the Michael Mann movie, Heat.
Along side the main missions you are required to keep friends happy by entertaining them with activities like visiting strip-joints, going for meals and going drinking. The last of which results in some brilliant drunken effects making it difficult to balance when walking and reducing reaction times when driving. Learning different friends' preferred activities is down to you and improving friend ratings with each character can unlock special abilities, such as the ability to purchase weapons cheaper from one friend. The problem with the friend activities is that you constantly receive phone calls from people asking to be wined and dined which can really intrude on your progress through the main missions.
You also have the option to date a variety of women, including some accessed via a dating-website if you visit an internet cafe. This works in exactly the same way as San Andreas. Take them to places they hint at interest in, wear nice clothes and drive an expensive car and it's hard to go wrong. Like friend activities though, these can also intrude on mission progress.
Side-missions this time around include the usual GTA traditions; car thefts, hidden packages (now "Flying Rats"), vigilante missions (now accessed by hacking a computer in a police car) and stunt jumps. You also get new "random character missions" accessed simply by bumping into certain people on the street who appear as blue icons on your radar when you're near them. Then there's assassination missions, involving finding and taking down specific targets, and also drug deliveries. However, taxi fares, paramedic services and fire dept. missions have all been left out of GTA IV. That said, there's more than enough side-content to go around.
Perhaps the best new additions to the single-player are the little things which enhance the experience. You can now hail cabs and ride them to anywhere in the city you choose, skipping the cab-ride by pressing A if you don't want to watch the whole ride, which vastly speeds up long-distance travelling. The in-game cell phone allows you to contact friends and mission contacts as well as take photos and choose multiplayer modes and options. Even car-jacking has become more detailed requiring you to break windows of locked cars and hot-wire some (by quickly pressing both triggers) before they will start. Finally, there's the new cover system, which works very similarly to Gears of War, but with much more cinematic animations. Thanks to this and a revised lock-on mode, gun-combat has improved 100%.
On the other hand, this being a GTA game, it certainly isn't bug free. Pop-up is less frequent than in San Andreas but it hasn't gone away completely. Character customisation is also dramatically reduced in comparison with San Andreas, with far fewer options. The rag-doll physics are triggered by the slightest brush with an object, leaving you a sitting duck sometimes in combat, or forcing you to flop pathetically to the floor in the middle of the road just because you nudged a passing pedestrian.
Then there's the multiplayer. The co-op missions work well with friends and can be great fun, but there's only 3 of them. Making up your own games with friends in free-mode is great and the races aren't too bad, but the more traditional game-types (deathmatch etc.) are very poor. For the most part the map is just too big, even if you limit it to certain islands. Using vehicles is pointless too because you're guaranteed to be on the receiving end of an RPG as soon as you get near an enemy. GTA has always been about the story driven immersive experience and competitive mulitplayer just feels a little out of place.
Overall, GTA IV is a truly outstanding achievement and a great example to the rest of the industry, showing what this generation of hardware is really capable of. The core story is the best since Vice City, despite it's niggling distractions, and the wealth of side-missions will keep you going for sometime. However, it stops short of perfect because of the tacked-on multiplayer and usual GTA bugs. But then, it's still GTA and millions of people can't be wrong.