Game Stooge

REVIEW: Grand Theft Auto IV (360, PS3)

• Scribbled on June 3rd, 2008 by Jonathon Howard
• Filed in Action, Microsoft Xbox 360, Reviews, Sony PlayStation 3

Since this is Game Stooge and we create all of this content pro gratis, we don’t get a lot of hand-outs from the publishers of video games. This means when all the reviews for Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA4) were coming out we were just making our way to the store to pick up a copy. This is a good thing though, because our review isn’t going to have all that hype that every review on a major game site had with it. You know what I’m talking about, all those perfect 10 scores and talk of redefining gaming. After I read the first couple of stories on the score of GTA4 (I avoided reading a review, knowing I’d have to write this one), and when almost immediately the backlash against them started, I stopped reading. This overhype-backlash cycle is becoming cliché.

It’s kinda of hard to know where to start what hasn’t been said, all my thoughts on the game from my two previous write ups of it still stand. The real joy of GTA4 is the same joy you experienced in GTA3 so many years ago, exploring a city, just so you can do crazy things in it. Now, the city is larger, more defined, and teeming with “life”. In a word, more “realized”, much more so than any of its predecessors were. This is really what all those 10 out of 10s, A pluses, and Perfect scores were about: GTA4 presents, by far, the best persistent world I’ve ever seen. Driving around Liberty City, or better, walking its streets, gives you small insights into the “lives” of the “people” who reside in it. Hobos stand on street corners heralding the perils of the lizard people, men and women walk along bumping in to each other, talking on street corners, getting calls from their friends, cops chase small time crooks through crowds, trains make stops, people have schedules, they get into accidents, call the police, paramedics and fire departments, and you’ll even catch the waste management people driving around in the early morning picking up garbage. This is what the folks at Rockstar are selling and it is worth buying. The shame is that they’ve saddled it with a game-play that really hasn’t come very far since 2001.

As Niko Bellic, a recent immigrant to these fair shores from Eastern Europe, you’ll take on the crime world of Liberty City by storm, dealing with everyone and anyone who will pay. As you progress through the game and the filthy underbelly of the city, you’ll meet the interesting characters who control the crime scene and learn more about Niko’s past and what his ultimate purpose in Liberty City is. Be warned: you’re going to have to steal a lot of cars, kill a lot of people, and commit a lot of crimes before you do. These crimes are the same ones you’ve been doing since GTA3: take car from point A to point B; kill person A; kill person A after killing his cohort of friends; take car A from point 1 to point 2 where you get into car B and proceed to point 3 all while dodging the cops and/or other criminals; and, various other iterations of the previous except in a helicopter/boat, etc., etc., etc.

This is where the game becomes tiresome, because it’s the game you and I have already played. To make matters worse, this incredible cityscape you just want to explore and have fun in? Almost all of it is off-limit, only opened a piece at a time as you slowly (and it is slowly) make your way through the story. To make things worse, a lot of the fun things you remember doing in previous GTA’s are no longer possible. You can’t steal a taxi and play taxi driver (if you do some missions you can, but not really), you can’t deliver pizza, or  hi-jack an ambulance and play paramedic either – you can at least do the vigilante missions with a police car. Instead of these enjoyable diversions, we have a dating/friend simulator where every character you meet in the game calls you at random times insisting you go and play darts, or pool, or bowling, or god knows what. If you don’t they get unhappy with you and become sullen. Your relationship ratings must matter somehow because the game keeps track of it but I don’t know how, nor do I care. It’s an annoying distraction. I imagine most people bought GTA4 to steal cars and create havoc not take virtual people out for dinner or the strip club (not actually stripping).

The story-line could be a high-light of the game if Niko’s actions actually corresponded with all his dialogue. He comes to Liberty City to make a clean break, a new life, then immediately begins committing crimes. He talks about honor and family repeatedly all while doing his darnedest to destroy both. At the beginning you can ignore it but near the end after Niko has become, in the players eyes, a remorseless sociopath, this talk of honor and family is deeply disconcerting. It is as if the writers of the story and cut scenes didn’t know what type of game they’d be putting their work into. In the end I just ignored it, the story was simply a means to unlock all the islands and get my hands on all the weapons and vehicles - a shame because it seemed like there was the groundwork for a real morality play. It could have been a stark look at the American Dream and the consumerism-at-all-costs that drives it, but instead it’s merely a distraction.

Any review of a GTA wouldn’t be complete without commenting on the soundtra… I mean radio stations. GTA4 has a decent mix; sadly it’s a mix I don’t care to listen to.  There is hip-hop, reggae, hard rock, ”classic” rock, Russian pop, fusion, techno. I didn’t find any of it good though. After playing for several hours and cycling through the stations repeatedly I began to suspect that perhaps my taste in music is no longer current. There are three talk radio stations, each an over the top “satire” of radio stations Americans are familiar with. At times they’re witty, most of the time they cross from satire over into ridiculousness.

GTA4 is a fun game; I don’t think I’ve wasted the time or money I’ve invested in it. It could have been much better though and it’s stellar numbers have much more to do with hype and advertising, than they do with the actual content of the game. Liberty City is the real selling point for GTA4, everything else about the game is merely sufficient, mediocre. I could have been just as happy with the game by simply plugging in the cheats and running amok, which is what I’ll do long after I’ve forgotten about the story or anything else in the game.