Koopamaster reviews Grand Theft Auto IV (360)

Grand Theft Auto, released in 1997 on the PlayStation, introduced the Free Roaming genre of video games. It since has become one of the biggest video game franchises of all time, up there with the likes of Mario and Sonic. The series was introduced to 3D back in 2001, in the game Grand Theft Auto III. 3D made the genre feel truly "free", allowing you to do absolutely anything possible. Since the game was released numerous spin-offs were released, introducing new elements while improving on old elements.

Now, a "true sequel" has been released, and it seems like a fitting time to release the true sequel as this is also the first Grand Theft Auto game on the current generation of consoles. The series returns to Liberty City, the setting of GTA III and Liberty City Stories.

Niko Bellic, a Russian man illegally immigrating to Liberty City, was told all sorts of amazing things about his cousin's success. His cousin, Roman, had told stories of women, sports cars, and a huge mansion. Niko comes off the boat, only to find that Roman lied to him. The sports car is just Roman's cab, the mansion is just an appartment in a poor state, and the women are only to be seen in strip clubs and dating websites. Roman's in a lot of debt, so Niko has to help Roman out of his struggle. In short, Niko needs to earn cash to make a decent living in the city. By any means necessary.

Grand Theft Auto IV introduces some new things to the series, while it perfects the shooting and driving that was featured in the previous games. The added complications of San Andreas are now gone, whether you like it or not. I personally found it a chore to have to go to a restaurant or go to the gym in between missions, so I'm glad these parts were left out of this game. You can still go to restaurants, but its not as complicated as in San Andreas, it's just there to increase your health when necessary.

Grand Theft Auto IV also introduces the mobile phone to the series. This is used to access missions, you'll frequently receive phone calls for missions. The phone is also used for arranging things with friends. You can play Darts, go Bowling, go to a resteraunt and go and do other things with your friends, or date, in some cases. If you want to keep good relations with these people, you're going to have to go out with them in between the main missions. I've never had any fun while going out in the game, and it just feels like a chore.

Now, on to the main gameplay elements. First, the shooting. Shooting in this game feels much better than it did on the previous Grand Theft Auto games, where it just felt clunky. I'll be going through the Xbox 360 controls for this. To aim, hold the left trigger. You can use the right stick to move the aim a bit. There's a new cover system in this game, reminiscent to that of Gears of War. You press the Right Bumper to get behind something. You can get behind nearly anything, so in shoot outs, it'd be wise to park a car in a clever place if the shoot out is outdoors. You can pop your head out and aim, or you can just blind-fire. Shoot outs don't feel as much like a drag as they did in previous games because of the refined shooting mechanics.

And then we have the driving. Driving is done by holding the Right Trigger to accelerate, and the left trigger or A button to stop. This works flawlessly, and I think going back to the PS2's driving controls could be hard for me as a result. The only problem: not effecting the controls at all, is the speed. Sometimes it can go a little too fast. I understand in a Ferrari/Lamborghini (or at least GTA's version of a Ferrari/Lamborghini), but in a normal car, it just seems a bit weird. Slowing down when you're going that fast is really hard. In fact, 99% of the time you try to stop, you'll just end up hitting a car. Another problem is how egotistical the police are in this game. If you even scrape their car, they'll bump you up to a 1 star wanted level.

Speaking of the wanted level, police chases are a bit different now. LCPD now has a search radius, displayed on the games HUD. How big it is depends on how many stars you're on. 1 star is not a problem, you can escape in about 2 minutes. 2 stars is still not a problem, but you'll have to drive really fast (which I've already said has a few problems). And then we get to 3 stars, where the whole thing is just really annoying.It might even take you 5 minutes to escape the radius!

Now, let's get on to the free-roaming. The free-roaming is not to different, it's the same classic free-roaming you saw in the previous games. Now, there's a little bit more to do. You have 3 islands in Liberty City. The first island is the poor-man's island, as I like to call it. The clothes shop there is OK, but you might be a bit annoyed that you can't see Times Square or the Statue of Lib... I mean the Statue of Happiness yet. The second island is pretty good, it's a middle-class area. And the third island is the same, pretty much. Not that it's that bothering, you'll probably want to do the missions, anyway.

This is the first GTA when I actually felt more like doing the missions over free roaming, and I see this as an accomplishment. The story is interesting enough to keep you going to the missions for more. The characters are interesting and funny, and Niko Bellic is a likeable guy, unlike the protagonists in the previous games.

Overall: 9.7

+ A much more compelling story

+ They fixed the shooting

+ Stunning graphics

- Phone calls can be annoying

- Some cars are too fast

- Erm... Niko doesn't always wear a helmet on his bike?

Hopefully you can see why I had to spend so long on this review. A lot of people think that this game didn't live up to the hype. While this is true for some, it lived up to the amount of hype I had for the game. Was it overrated? If Metacritics review average is to be believed (9., then yes, it was a little overrated. Still, it is an amazing game, and one of the best games of this generation. Scratch that, it's one of the best games of all time. My personal pick of game of the year 2008.

By the way: Ricky Gervais appears on one of the radio stations in this game. He's the funniest comedian in the UK, so it deserves an honourable mention.

I disagree, GTA IV was boring garbage.

Rockstar are WAY too far up their own arses.

King Slazo wrote:

koopamaster wrote:Scratch that, it's one of the best games of all time.

I want to hurt you so badly for that.

This game deserves a mid / high 70s. This was my first GTA, and after all the hype and goos things I'd heard about this and past GTAs, I was expecting to be blown away.

Instead, I got bored within the tutorials, found the story lacklustre, the "realistic" car handling pisstake annoying, and the whole single player a bore generally.

Multiplayer is the only reason I've even played this game nowadays. I named this my Flop of the Year, and I stand by it.

Agreed, Slazo.. Flop of the Year.

But, don't be put off the whole series... GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas are all still well worth buying and playing through.

King Slazo wrote:

koopamaster wrote:Scratch that, it's one of the best games of all time.

I want to hurt you so badly for that.

This game deserves a mid / high 70s. This was my first GTA, and after all the hype and goos things I'd heard about this and past GTAs, I was expecting to be blown away.

Instead, I got bored within the tutorials, found the story lacklustre, the "realistic" car handling pisstake annoying, and the whole single player a bore generally.

Multiplayer is the only reason I've even played this game nowadays. I named this my Flop of the Year, and I stand by it.

The game was brilliant. The story not so but then again I could point to any number of "brilliant" games which shoddy story.

Well, reviews are opinion based. If I don't have the exact same opinion as you, then tough luck.

I liked it

I wouldn't give it such a high score though, personally

Especially 'cos the multiplayer's balls

King Slazo wrote:

koopamaster wrote:Scratch that, it's one of the best games of all time.

I want to hurt you so badly for that.

This game deserves a mid / high 70s. This was my first GTA, and after all the hype and goos things I'd heard about this and past GTAs, I was expecting to be blown away.

Instead, I got bored within the tutorials, found the story lacklustre, the "realistic" car handling pisstake annoying, and the whole single player a bore generally.

Multiplayer is the only reason I've even played this game nowadays. I named this my Flop of the Year, and I stand by it.

Helps if you play it for over an hour.

Havent even played it. My brothers got it. I just havent got round to playing it. Its not supposed to be as good as previous games in the series but it's still good apparently

Adamzzz wrote:

King Slazo wrote:

koopamaster wrote:Scratch that, it's one of the best games of all time.

I want to hurt you so badly for that.

This game deserves a mid / high 70s. This was my first GTA, and after all the hype and goos things I'd heard about this and past GTAs, I was expecting to be blown away.

Instead, I got bored within the tutorials, found the story lacklustre, the "realistic" car handling pisstake annoying, and the whole single player a bore generally.

Multiplayer is the only reason I've even played this game nowadays. I named this my Flop of the Year, and I stand by it.

Helps if you play it for over an hour.

Adam... He got too bored to want to play it for that long. Surely that's a sign of a bad game?


It SUCKS BALLS.

Timmy_the_tortoise wrote:He got too bored to want to play it for that long. Surely that's a sign of a bad game?

Genius theory. Judge a game by the first hour! God, I could have finished this review ages ago. Better start doing that in the near future. Thanks Tim.

koopamaster wrote:

Timmy_the_tortoise wrote:He got too bored to want to play it for that long. Surely that's a sign of a bad game?

Genius theory. Judge a game by the first hour! God, I could have finished this review ages ago. Better start doing that in the near future. Thanks Tim.

What?

Look... if a game cant hold your attention for more than a hour, then I think it's fair game to call it shit.

You felt it was worth playing beyond an hour... Slazo and I didn't. As you said, opinions are subjective.

Timmy_the_tortoise wrote:As you said, opinions are subjective.

It helps if you would have said that earlier, because it's easy to get the impression that your trying to be-little mine.

Timmy_the_tortoise wrote:

Adamzzz wrote:

King Slazo wrote:

koopamaster wrote:Scratch that, it's one of the best games of all time.

I want to hurt you so badly for that.

This game deserves a mid / high 70s. This was my first GTA, and after all the hype and goos things I'd heard about this and past GTAs, I was expecting to be blown away.

Instead, I got bored within the tutorials, found the story lacklustre, the "realistic" car handling pisstake annoying, and the whole single player a bore generally.

Multiplayer is the only reason I've even played this game nowadays. I named this my Flop of the Year, and I stand by it.

Helps if you play it for over an hour.

Adam... He got too bored to want to play it for that long. Surely that's a sign of a bad game?


It SUCKS BALLS.

A slow starting game isn't necessarily a bad one.

Why did it have tutorials still 3/4 of the way through the game? It seemed like it was treating me like a 4 year old who couldn't remember the controller.

I'd give the game between 7 and 9.

I disliked the game at first. It was boring, there was less to do, the weapons sucked, the driving sucked and everything was "Dogshit Brown and Gunmetal grey". It was a very slow game, very tedious at times. The lack of checkpoints, the tendancy for 'Invincible enemies' and the abundance of dodgy AI driving made this game very frustrating.

Upon giving this game a second chance, it was apparant that the game was well made, combat was satisfying fun, the missions were 'usually' well made, the story was well done and the general physics were pretty good.

Overall though, gameplay wise it was a step back from San-Andreas but a step forward from GTA3.

The best game of our time? That must have been a pretty big bribe.

Haisheikah wrote:I'd give the game between 7 and 9.

That's an 8 then?

he might be saying he cant decide its either a 7,8 or 9 but its a misleading comment XD