GTA IV

Well, this isn't a video, but I thought I'd get my own thoughts down first before today's Zero Punctuation video. I'll try making a video for it later today, though.

The first reason I haven't posted this review already is because I was planning on having a system link multiplayer on GTA IV, only to discover last night that for some reason this isn't possible, only allowing you to play multiplayer on Xbox Live. Well, that pissed on my day like an incontinent puppy while also leaving me as confused as I was earlier that morning when I ran into someone who I know lives 40-something miles away and couldn't think of any reason for them to be where they were. Surely it's a lot simpler to make a system link multiplayer feature for a game rather than online multiplayer, so why the shitting hell can't you system link GTA IV?! Probably the same tepid reason there's absolutely no local multiplayer for Burnout Paradise.

In the same way that it's only polite to let someone know you think they're a complete bastard before engaging them in conversation, I have to admit I've been eagerly looking forward to GTA IV since I knew it existed, even more so after the first trailer showed me how pretty it was. I mean seriously, as far as I was concerned, the box could be made out of a special plastic that give you penile cancer and I still wouldn't mind as long as it looked as good as the trailer showed. Although in the games industry, admitting to enthusiasm is like holding up a big sign outside a developer's offices saying "please god disappoint me".


Considering this is a review, which typically involves seeing the credits rolling at least once (unless a game proves itself to contain a fantastically impressive amount of shittiness), I really think in all fairness I should put a spoiler warning here.

That said, clocking GTA IV this fast was a hell of a task; I've become accustomed to getting hold a game and finishing the single player campaign within a week. This time around, I had to sacrifice a lot of time I usually devote to sleeping. And Sod's law dictates that the week or so it took me would be the week this part of England gets the best weather ever motherfucking recorded. Well, it's not that bad, seeing as it left my room hovering around the 40 degrees Celsius mark over night, so I had something to do because sleeping sure as hell wasn't an option.

I doubt I have to remind you what the game's about; but I'll do it anyway to be fair for the one person who (statistically speaking) hasn't bought GTA IV yet. You are Niko Bellic, a man with the world's largest nose and coolest name, fresh off the crummiest boat ever to sail into America with the idea in your head that your idiot cousin is loaded and getting laid a lot and you want in on it. After about 20 seconds it becomes apparent that Niko has a broody past and the main reason he's come to Liberty City (which is in no way remotely similar to New York, honestly) is to kick some particular ass and chew Release Gum, because remember: you chew, you suck, then POW! Life dumps a load in your mouth. Niko may well be broody, but as far as massive balls go, I can't think of anyone who tops him. I mean come on tied up in a basement by a man with a hacksaw and this comes out:

"Talk, Polak!"
"OK, OK, your dad likes it up the ass. ...what do you want me to say?"

Brilliant.

Aside from having a nose able to sustain small land mammals, Niko also has the hairiest face know to man. And trust me, I've seen some damn hairy faces. This sounds racist, but Niko is "eastern European" after all, so he is genetically inclined to grow an amount of facial hair that would be little other than worrying elsewhere. If you don't believe me, talk to someone from Ukraine.

I'd love to start picking the story to pieces, but it's really quite good. Screw it, I'll give it a shot anyway. Niko comes to Liberty City (definitely not New York still) in search of revenge and a normal, peaceful life. Yeah, that's a bit of a contradiction, but life wouldn't be interesting if everyone was perfectly logical and consistent. Anyway, Niko decides that the best way to obtain this peaceful life is to start off beating the ever living shit out of a bunch of loan sharks hassling Roman (his cousin, for you Mr Cheapskate). Fair enough, but personally, I'd rather find a way to pay them their money and get them out of my life that way, rather than pissing off the Russian Mafia. As the game progresses, Niko constantly lands himself in different situations wherein people can shit on him from varying great heights, while occasionally standing up only to realise that while he busy sat down being shat on, someone else had tied his testicles to a tree - thus leaving lots of people having him by the balls.

Now, if you've played a GTA game since GTA III, you'll be very familiar with the concept of the antagonist being introduced early in the story, with the game ending after a very long time playing and a few hundred bullets in the head of said arsehole (GTA III: Catalina, Vice City: Sonny Forrelli, San Andreas: Tenpenny and no-one gives a crap about the PSP ports, although a trio of these games based on the three cities from San Andreas would have been interesting). You've had your spoiler warning, so I'm free to mention that while the game has multiple endings and in the ending I got, I'd already killed the antagonist, and then was sent on a revenge mission on some random prick I'd seen only about 4 times - all during the last two hours of the game.

While interesting deviations are always welcome in games, this deviation felt more like going on a trip with a friend you haven't seen for a few years, everything's going really well, you're both a lot more interesting, then towards the end of the trip your friend jumps into a bush while someone else jumps out of a tree and mugs you, before cockslapping you and running off with your friend, leaving you alone in a foetal position in the middle of Wales. Sorry, but that pissed me off. After such an anticlimactic end to someone who'd managed to ruin each of my days in Liberty City (because New York was full), I was annoyed that the most intense chase in the game involved Niko chasing someone who'd just pissed him off, although I honestly didn't give a toss about him at any other point in the game. I'd spent so long trying to empty an assault rifle in the real antagonist that the only things satisfying about the last mission were a) knowing I'd never have to chase someone on wet sand again and b) getting the outfit from GTA III as a reward.

I'd also like to point out that Rockstar's obsession with keeping the story completely under wraps (i.e., my job was threatened if I bought GTA IV before the launch day or even if I opened the box containing the strategy guides - seriously!). It's basically a story of revenge that doesn't go away. Each major kill you get generally reminds you there's someone else who's pissed you off, so you have to trundle along to them and kick some more arse. That's not strictly true, seeing as there's a pretty pointless system of letting some people live or die. Such a thing is Fable territory, wherein it affects your alignment, appearance and the world around you. Aside from being able to occasionally being able to run into the people you've spared on the streets, there's no real difference. No one finds out you haven't killed them, and if you do kill them you get to see a cool, gritty and rather gruesome execution.

I'd like to take a moment to criticise the way Niko moves at slow speed. Yes, it's all well and good making him move like a real person in a straight line, but my god, who the hell leans like that when turning?! With the Euphoria engine in action, you'd imagine that every time he leaned that much he'd stop and rebalance himself. Other than that, I'm really impressed with the way Niko moves. Something I always notice about games is how fast the characters always move. In the past, it seems that every character from a console is quite happy to jog perpetually without breaking a sweat, but only being able to sprint for a short time. This time, Rockstar finally realised this isn't exactly realistic, so the left stick alone with only make Niko walk. Not run, jog, or sprint, but walk, hike or ...yomp? Despite being very impressed with this observation and making Niko more human than any other character (aside from possibly the Mudokons from the Abe games), combined with actually having a past which he acknowledges and can't escape from, this whole "your own marching pace" thing started to piss me off around the time I had to start chasing things, which was, I don't know, after about 2 FUCKING MINUTES INTO THE GAME.

You'll have taken note at some point over the last year or so at missions involving dicking around with the internet, or your phone, but don't be fooled. Niko automatically answers important phone calls as ever and there's only a handful of missions you need the internet for. The rest are generally more of the same stealing stuff, killing stuff and chasing stuff (which you either have to catch and kill, or follow somewhere - the only noticeable difference being that on the latter your target moves at Mach 4).

There are a number of brilliant touches in GTA IV, starting with an eye-boggling attention to detail - like the tread of tires, the ground looking perfect when wet, Niko smashing windows to cars instead of just giving up on them, getting arrested for drunk driving, being able to start fights with people, then get them arrested by phoning the police - I could go on for a few months. All I'll say is I feel sorry for the people who had to go over every inch of Liberty City (no even New York's bitch, it's really that dissimilar) to make sure it was perfect. It's the only way I can imagine why everything looks so damn good.

I'm at a bit of a loss now, because the last line of attack a reviewer has always had in the past when it comes to GTA is the aiming. In the originals, it involved just looking in the direction you wanted to shoot, then hoping for the best, and it didn't change much until San Andreas gave you a free aim option which was still a bit shit anyway. Now you see, GTA IV uses an aiming system which is (and I know everyone else has said this already, but it's true) very similar to Gears of War. Take cover. Aim. Shoot. Try not to die. Well, it's not as good as Gears of War, because you can't just hold down the cover button and push different directions to climb over stuff or dive out of the way. If you're lucky, however, you can run in the direction of cover during a shoot-out, hit the cover button and watch Niko slide to your chosen hiding place, and if you're in the right place, you can switch to somewhere adjacent really fast without getting hit. It's... it's... it works. OK, GTA IV has a damned good aiming system and it - no, I'll leave that for next time.

I feel I'm perfectly fine in saying that while GTA IV follows the tried and tested idea of "three islands" (don't get started, Bohan and Happiness Island don't count as separate islands), and it also follows the idea of "the third island is pretty shit". Seriously, not much happens in Alderney and it generally looks like a landfill fell on it too. Hopefully some of the downloadable content will make Alderney more interesting. If you don't believe me remember that in GTA III, Shoreside Vale was small and boring, even though it had an airport. You only went there to prove you've got that far in the game. Yeah, it had the airport, but you couldn't fly anything, so it doesn't matter. In Vice City, they realised how bad the third island was and decided to ditch it all together. In San Andreas the third island had an abandoned airfield, and only two casinos you could go in. You get the jetpack there too, but you only use it afterwards to collect the horse shoes on the roofs of casinos and hotels which thinly veiled the fact there was nothing actually interesting in Las Venturas.

I could keep ranting on aimlessly about your phone going off every few minutes because your friends want babysitting, but I seriously doubt that even saying that the pool mini game just as crap as in San Andreas only looking a bit better is worth mentioning. In fact, I strongly doubt there's anything a small time hobbyist reviewer like myself, of even the ballsy phenomenon that is Yahtzee Croshaw can say or write that'll make any difference to the sales figures for GTA IV. To put that comment into perspective, read up on the total perspective vortex. Something like that.