Grand Theft Auto IV Review
By: Josh
Greetings all. I recently had the opportunity(1 week ban) to play and complete GTAIV for the Xbox 360/Playstation 3. I fell for the hype, and turned out plesantly surprised. I didn't go in expecting even a slightly good game and what I got was a great game with a few notable flaws. I hope to present my opinion here, not as fact. Let's get to it.
GREAT START
Let me first say, that before this game, I absolutely loathed the GTA series. I felt, and still feel to an extent and it representes everything that is wrong with the "hardcore" gaming scene. Flash and style over substance, and in the past, the series has been hugely over-rated, as in Halo 3 levels, with most American reviewers giving these games Famitsu-level hype-scores. When I booted it up, and saw the first few scenes, I knew the story was gonna be good. Roman and his constant illusions to "titties" and other orgy affiliated activities brought a smile to my face as much as the pretty graphics and better than expected framerate brought delight to my eyes.
The Gameplay - "Tedious, difficult, fun, balanced."
The gameplay in GTA varies wildly. I'll take it one section at a time.
The driving felt loose and good, and the powersliding was fun, while the cops seemed much less bothersome than they did in previous games. The radio has a virtual plethora of interesting crap on, right off the ticker, and I was digging it.The first fly in the ointment was when the game first introduced melee combat.
The combat felt clunky. Really clunky. Clunky to the point that I felt and still do feel melee combat is completely broken in this game, even worse than in previous versions of GTA. Apparently, this time around, the developers felt it necessary to give the computer a chance to stop your easy beatdowns, but they did this in a lazy way. Instead of increasing the AI, they simply gave the computer a few stun moves and made you swing slower.
The controls don't help either. They are mapped to the 4 buttons, you have "attack," "alternate attack(ok)," "kick(wtf)," and "block/counter(omfg no)." Blocking is absolutely necessary, since your punches and attacks are slow and weak, and there is some weird complex mechanic to actually dodge and counter punches, but it wasn't instantly clear, and since the melee combat is....well....godaweful, I decided that rather than learning the correct way to go about things, I would instead be better off simply never using melee combat ever again. It worked out quite well.
On the other hand, gun-play combat is very exciting, rewarding, and intuitive, contrary to the previous games. It seems to have taken a page out of the Resident Evil 4 playbook, with an Uncharted cover type mechanic. Works really well.
Several meaningful changes have taken place since GTA:San Andreas, and they are for the better. Most notably is the use of the phone in missions, and the GPS.
...and yes, you get a phone in this game, and yes it's cool. Most of your mission initiated or guided via phone, which makes for a much needed improvement from the fetchquest non-intuitive and confusing missions in all previous GTA games. The phone is very useful, and it's one of the coolest features in the entire game. It's a huge improvment from a gameplay perspective, over GTA: San Andreas.
The GPS is basically this little line on your map that tells you where to do. It makes navagating the huge city actually possible this time around. You can just point to somewhere on the pause menu map and you'll get a line showing you the shortest route there. Fantastic.
The cool touches in the game lie mostly in the in game entertainment, like strip clubs, Internet, Television broadcasts, bars(you can get drunk), bowling alleys, and comedy clubs. There was a ton of dialogue and programming that went into bringing these interactive fun spots to life. Saying much more would be spoiling, but suffice it to say that only a game on a budget this high could bring you this level of sheer greatness in the side areas that you visit, which help to fully immerse you in the experience.
What you don't wanna hear
At later points in the game, the frusteration from the old franchise releases rears its ugly head. Unfortunately that perfect balance isn't reached as several missions that are required to move on, are overly difficult. Though I will admit, these missions are some of the most rewarding to the gamer both in and out of game upon completion. You'll still be trucking(or in my case taxi-ing) to the ammo store to get a new vest every mission in hopes of survival.
The problem lies in the revamped and greatly improved mission restart system. It simply wasn't revamped enough. You see, what broke most of the old games single player enjoyment, besides the clunky gameplay, was the difficulty and repetition involved in the missions. Everytime you inevitably failed one, you would have to drive back, from the hospital or police station, to where the mission started, which of course makes you never want to play the game again. Then, if your a masachist, you would drive all the way back, to then drive to the required spot for the mission and reattempt it.
Apparently a common theme of GTAIV is: "Hey, we want you to play the single player game, for once. We're trying art here and you just playing the freakin' overworld sucks, so we're gonna make you enjoy the single player game like you never could in the past."
So, in keeping with that concept, you can now restart the missions after you've died. The problem is, you still have to drive from the mission start to where the mission actually takes place. Unfortunately for us, Liberty City is so huge, that can sometimes take ten plus minutes of real time, so you'll be taking cabs a whole lot. Once you get there, however, you can be unluckily gunned down in seconds, only to have to do the drive again from where the mission starts to the ammo shop then back to where the mission actually takes place, or worse, you can complete another 15 minutes of gameplay at the actual site, only to get killed at the end by a stray bullet or two and have to start the 30 to 40 minute cycle all over again.
What would have fixed this, is a checkpoint system. Apparently, this was left out of the game to add an element of punishement for dying. When will developers learn that you should never punish the players with repetition for failing to do difficult objectives.
You'll often find yourself revisiting content in GTAIV in a virtual Groundhog's Day, sans Bill Murry, and might even quit the game entirely if your luck is bad, or tolerance for frusteration is low.
Luckily, the game is still very well, if not perfectly balanced and the story is strong enough to drag you through some of these weak points.
Cabs are now not only a major, but necessary part of gameplay. You can skip the rides, fyi. If you never used cabs, you can easily tack on another 10 hours of gameplay from simply having to drive yourself everywhere.
Loading is infrequent, but does rear its ugly head at the start of every mission and during cab rides. It serves to break the pace of the game up just enough to be noticable, but this is really a nitpick.
This game is linear. I've heard tell of how non-linear decisions made in this game are "awesome" on these forums. They really don't matter. The storyline is linear, and one decision here and there isn't gamechanging and doesn't change the overall storyline in the least. There is one section where you choose "which person to kill" between two choices and then you can hang out with the other guy, and you get money or another reward which I'll leave out because it could be considered a spoiler.
More to the point. This game isn't anything that couldn't have been done on the PS2 with worse draw distances and graphics. There is no wide angling story arc, or no billion enemies on the screen. The helicopter missions are amazing, however, and the graphics do really help engulf you in the world if your willing to allow yourself to be engulfed.
The escort missions. Yes, they are here, but they are made less tedious by being story-driven. Seriously, who wrote this dialogue, it's great, which I can say for a very few games in existance.
The mini-games are what they always are. There are just a lot of them, and most of them are pointless fun. Can't way the bowling actually blew me away on your first date, so I tended to avoid like plague any non-necessary minigames.
The Story
Let me start off by saying the word "Wow" should be reserved for hookers trying to bleed their Johns for extra change, like this was XBL and they were Bill Gates, so I'll find a better word.
Superb.
Unlike other GTA games, the story here is actually quite good. The things that makes it great is the absolutely excellent script and dedication to comic relief. San Andreas tried its hand at comic relief and failed miserably. It's quite odd that GTAIV is such a monumental success.
Very few games have stories that can actually carry a game past frusterating gameplay. The best stories in gaming belong to Metal Gear Solids, Odin Spheres, Final Fantasies, and Phoenix Wrights. You'll find that level of compelling story and dialogue in GTAIV and it deserves to be on that list just as much as any of those other games I just mentioned.
The game will give you a great first impression, and the story starts off feeling very fresh and interesting, and it really never lets up. There is a lull on the second island, but even the lull points in the story are quite excellent and emotionally gripping yet funny at the same time. You'll be literally in love with Niko Bellic.
That said, nobody under the age of 21 should ever play this game. It is a step down from violence porn, and without naming names, that includes most of the fanboys on this website.
A final note, in the previous GTA games, the missions felt empty after you complete them. You would have a great story setup to go kill a guy, kill him, and you are immediately put back into the overworld with no closure. Now, however, you always call your mission presenter via cell phone and get a nice snazzy conversation about how the mission went. Great design.
The Sound - "...and the academy award goes too...."
Ah, the sound. The licensed soundtracks, the sidewalk folk, the Voice Actors for the story, the comedians, the hookers, the ambient noise in downtown Liberty City. This game has one of the best sound designs in videogames. If this is any sort of comparison to you, this game has a better soundtrack than Brawl. It's amazing that two of the best sounding games have been released in the same year in the US, virtually within months of each other, and it is doubtful in my mind, that they will ever be dethroned.
The Multiplayer - "If a tree falls in the woods."
I wouldn't dare punish myself by playing online from my crappy Hughesnet internet. I skipped this portion, as I do in most games for multiple reasons, most of which is I hate online gaming, which is ironic considering I traded my World of Warcraft account for a Playstation 3. People who will find this review helpful are people who share similar tastes in games as I do. They, like me, wouldn't play the multiplayer in this if you paid them. Unless, of course, you are into that sort of thing. More power too you. Either way, in my overall review score to be fair, I'll go ahead and assume that the multiplayer in this game is just as good as the single player. I'll equate this to the mercenary missions in RE4, which I feel made the game complete and excellent beyond what was achievable without them.
Synaposis
Still reading? This is not the best game ever. However, this is a great, fun game despite its flaws. Even some of the worst points of the game I've mentioned, are nitpicks. It's not a revolutionary game that uses "next gen" hardware in innovative ways. It's simply a number of small, large, and meaningful upgrades over San Andreas, with an excellent story. If you like GTA, you're gonna love this. If you hate it, you'll actually start off loving it as well, but when the missions start getting harder, the frusteration will set in again, and you still might find yourself in the same boat as last time. "I never wanna play this game, ever again." However, that probably won't happen.
This game is much, much better than any other GTA game ever released.
That's the final word.
I was torn. Should I give this game a 9, because afterall, it is just as much of a rehash as any Madden, Zelda, or Mario game has ever been, but it just happens to be an exceptionally well done rehash, or should I give it a 9.5, because of how well the game could and does stand up by itself? Had this been the first game in the GTA series, there is no doubt that I would be much more open to some reviewers calling it "The best game since Ocarina of Time." However, we've seen most, if not all of this formula before, recently on the PS2, though admittedly in a much worse and more boringly frusterating package.
Zenfoldor scores:
Resident Evil 4: 9.5
Super Mario Galaxy: 9.5
Ocarina of Time: 10
GTAIV: 9.5
This is the best game on the 360 or PS3, and the first good reason to actually own an HD-Console. Gratz Rockstar. You made a believer out of me, when I hated your guts.
That said, Wii owners who don't like GTAIV, don't worry. You're not missing out on "the best game of all time" and this game is not worth buying a PS3 nor an Xbox 360 for, just yet. However when enough games accumulate that you simply must own one of those systems, I recommend this game.
As a Wii fanboy and avid gamer, however, I can still tell you, if Wii owners need to purchase a PS3 to play GTAIV, then PS3 fanboys need to purchase a Wii to play Galaxy, because Galaxy is every bit as good, if not slightly better than GTAIV.
Thanks for reading.
Before you comment, I'll ask that you read the entire article, or simply ignore this post.
I don't need your console war.
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor.
You're power hungry, spinnin' stories, and bein' graphics whores.
I don't need your console war.
NO NO, NO NO NO.
