A new game came out this week, you may have heard of it.

As the biggest installment in the GTA series, Grand Theft Auto IV has garnered quite a bit of attention, even more given its reception of many perfect-score reviews. Given the sheer importance of a title like GTA4, and my love for virtual carjacking, I couldn’t resist but putting together some quick thoughts on the game. By no means is this a thorough review, I'm no where near done with the game yet, but it’s simply a collection of my thoughts on the title.

Graphics

Grand Theft Auto is one of those games that you don't expect to actually look good, mostly because it never actually looked good. It's not a Gears of War, Assassin's Creed or even Halo, it's a game where you sacrifice visual appeal for gameplay. Grand Theft Auto 4 however restores the balance a bit and actually surprised me with how good it looked. Again, it's not as good looking of a game as Gears, but it's pretty damn good for a GTA.

The cutscenes look pretty good, but in-game graphics aren't nearly this detailed

The graphics of GTA4 fall short in two areas: draw distance and animation. The draw distance issues are pretty annoying; while the game looks great in close quarters, look off into the distance and you're met with a sea of blurry. It's like the cameraman just discovered depth of field and went nuts with it. I get that there are technical limitations that mean we can't have infinite draw distance, I just want to point it out the blemish.

Here's a crop from the picture above it

My second complaint is about animation, and it's not one that's GTA4 specific but really applies to all modern day games. To understand this complaint I must first talk about telling a story in a video game.

It's rare that when a game is praised for having a great story, that it actually has a great story. We must be very careful about how we throw around phrases like "great story" because you might accidentally give someone the wrong impression that the Halo franchise could somehow have a story that is on par with the Godfather. There are some games that, in my opinion, actually come close to having a decent story (read: Mass Effect) but even those pale in comparison to the best stories in movies.

Just as a good story in a movie can be ruined by bad acting, a good story in a game can be ruined by poor, or un-lifelike animation. The problem is that we're not quite at a stage in both the CPU and GPU space, where we can apply lifelike animations to many highly detailed characters, in complex worlds, in real time. GTA4 comes closer to reality than any other previous GTA, but we still have a long way to go. Facial expressions, body movements, environmental interactions, etc... are all no where near lifelike, and it's simply tough to believe in a well written story if it's acted out in a choppy fashion.

These two don't look very convincing, I'm sorry

The story in GTA4 isn't bad by any means, but I'll reserve complete praise for when we've got the processing power to tell it in a way that can truly rival a movie (and this is why we'll continue to need faster CPUs and faster GPUs, we're no where near done folks).

The Ugly is in the Controls

Grand Theft Auto is one of those games where it is more fun to talk about what you did in the game, than to actually do it. Let me give you an example:

Early on in the game, I was trying to steal someone's car, the driver got out and we got into a fist fight. The cops arrived and what's the first thing they did? Shot the driver of the car I was stealing in the face. I took the opportunity to hop in the car and drive away.

That's one of those stories that wouldn't exactly be funny in real life, but it's hilarious in the game itself ("hey! I was committing a crime and then the cops shot the victim in the face, woohoo!"). Unfortunately, my example omits struggling with camera, controls and the actual pace of the game itself.

The controls in GTA4 seem sluggish, even moreso than in San Andreas. They do take some time to acclimate, but even after that point they are just not all that great. You can easily play the game with the controls, but your movements always feel slow, almost to the point of frustration. Many have praised the cover system as being very Gears-like; now I liked the cover system in Gears, and the cover system in GTA4 is nothing like it. Conceptually the two are identical, but it's simply much more awkward in GTA4.

The default camera tends to follow you pretty well, so fumbling with the right thumbstick isn't as critical as in a first person shooter (which is one of the things you'll have to "unlearn" when first playing GTA4). But moving around and fighting both feel like the slowest parts of the game.

Decidedly GTA

After reading all of the perfect-score reviews, I sort of expected GTA4 to be a revolutionary take on the franchise. Grand Theft Auto IV is instead more of an evolutionary successor to San Andreas, the gameplay is very similar and the types of things you do are decidedly GTA.

If you were put off by the "drive here, rob this guy and drive back" missions of previous GTAs, then GTA4 does have more of the same. Granted there is a good deal of variation within the missions, but if you fundamentally didn't like the previous games, then there's a good chance that GTA4 will be no different.

At least you can take a cab to your missions, it costs money but you can always murder the driver when you get there and even make money on the trip.

To me, the majority of missions in any given GTA title were never that good, but what kept me coming back was to fill in the gaps in the story or the handful of missions that were unbelievably fun. It's a lot like a season of 24 or The Office, you get a little taste of what you want in each episode which keep you coming back for the whole season. You could even take it one step further and say that GTA4 promotes a healthy outlook on life: if you live for the 1% of the time things work out perfectly, it makes the remaining 99% not so bad. That may be a stretch, but the likelihood of that even being entertained by the mainstream media is next to nothing; they'll be too busy blaming the latest installment in the GTA franchise for some horrible event.

It’s an Evolution Baby

I mentioned that GTA4 failed to revolutionize the series, but instead was another evolutionary step in the franchise; that’s not a bad thing. If you loved previous GTAs then new additions like being thrown through the windshield of your car during a particularly violent accident are nice touches (ok, that sounds a little sociopathic).

The physics in GTA4 are quite possibly the biggest change from earlier games, they are far more realistic - in some cases this is a good thing, in others its a bit annoying. People react more realistically when you hit them with cars or shoot them in the legs, but it also takes longer for you to do things like run up a flight of stairs (also contributing to the game’s slow-control).

Niko, our loving GTA4 protagonist, now has a cell phone that he can use to communicate with other characters in the game. It’s a nice touch, but it’d be even nicer if he had an Internet-enabled smartphone so you wouldn’t have to drive to the nearest Internet cafe to check your email. I guess in GTA5 the main character will rock an iPhone.

You also get use of a GPS, which can give you turn by turn instructions on how to get to your destination. Unfortunately, if the route isn’t plotted automatically by the mission, it’s a bit of a pain to get it started; you have to pause the game, go to the map menu and click on your destination. You’d lose part of the realism but it’d be nice to be able to plot your route directly from the cellphone, since that’s how you receive a lot of instructions on where to head next.

The loading screens are definitely annoying in GTA4, although no where near as frustrating as San Andreas. I’m told that the Playstation 3 version gets around this problem by installing the game to the hard drive, but with everyone I know purchasing the Xbox 360 version I had no choice. Thankfully the loading screen is pretty much limited to before and after cutscenes in the single-player game, its presence in the multiplayer modes is far more frustrating the more I think about it. Actual gameplay is never interrupted by loading in single-player but it’s annoying nonetheless; it contributes to the overall slow/sluggish feeling I get from GTA’s gameplay.

Grand Theft Auto 4 is one of those games where you can, over time, adjust to its pace and controls. The problem is that switching between it and any one of the many faster paced games on the market will throw you off.

Multiplayer

I used to love the multiplayer in the old top-down GTAs and admittedly haven't clocked enough hours in the GTA4 multiplayer modes to provide a full analysis but what I will say is this:

1) My complaints about controls are amplified when you get to multiplayer. The games are much more fast paced and thus sluggish controls are even more frustrating.

2) The load times between respawns are frustrating. While the actual loading itself may not be any longer than a respawn in Halo 3, you're left looking at a black screen with the word "Loading" in the corner - making it feel much longer.

3) There's a party system, yay. The party system isn't a carbon copy of what Bungie did for Halo 2/3, boo. At some point I'm hoping Xbox 360 game developers will start taking Halo's party/matchmaking system seriously, because it makes a huge difference when playing with friends. I liked Gears of War, but the lack of a Halo-esque party/matchmaking system meant that once Halo 3 came out, my friends and I dropped it entirely.

The multiplayer itself can be a lot of fun, especially with friends. Even though the various multiplayer modes are very objective oriented, you can still wreak havoc in Liberty City just as well - the difference being that you can do it with friends. That being said, I'm not sure how long the multiplayer will be enjoyable, but for now it's entertaining.

Controversy: I Has It

The GTA series has always done a good job of poking fun at, well, everything. One thing that I did appreciate in GTA4 is that the game does do a good job of providing loud, but non-confrontational commentary on a lot of social and political issues. Everything from gun control to race relations, and my personal favorite: criticism of our mainstream media.

The use of satire in GTA4 is quite possibly the single most impressive thing about the game; it is done so pervasively that if half the people that GTA4 makes fun of realized what was going on, we might find ourselves in the midst of a civil war. It feels strange to say this, but despite how in-your-face the satirical commentary is, it’s all so subtle since there is so much more going on in the game. I was driving down a road headed to a mission when I heard the first commercial for Weazel News, it left me with a smile on my face.

The commentary isn't the focus of the game, but keep a few of the talk radio stations on or pay attention to more than just the story and you'll easily pick up on it. While I wouldn't compare the "acting" in GTA4 to a movie, the writers have clearly put in enough social dialogue to rival, if not best, Hollywood.

That's just plain funny

I was blown away by how much negative coverage Mass Effect got in the non-gaming press and I'm curious to see how, and when, GTA4 will ruffle feathers. I hope for Rockstar's sake, GTA4 doesn't become the punching bag that San Andreas or Mass Effect were, but I somehow don't believe we've gotten beyond all of that yet.

Final Words

Recommending GTA4 is pretty easy: if you liked the previous games, you'll like this one - and if you didn't, chances are that nothing has changed. If you've never played a Grand Theft Auto game then it's worth giving a shot, simply because it's one of those games, like Oblivion, that is open ended enough to have something for just about everyone.

The scale of GTA4 is tremendous, the streets are individually named, the populace is genuinely diverse (although you will still see the same character model dressed in different clothes) and Rockstar has done a tremendous job of making you feel like a single person living in a very big city. For some, the scale and attention to detail are enough to keep you occupied in GTA4, but be warned, despite all of the relationship-management you can do in game, this is not a clone of the Sims.

The scale of GTA4 is without a doubt impressive.

One of these is not like the others

The main story is good enough for those who need a story to enjoy a game. You have to take a divide and conquer approach to completing the missions, which after you get started really come at you from multiple sources at the same time, but if you enjoy a game with a purpose GTA4 can fulfill that need.

Then there are the side missions, achievements and random acts of violence. There are enough things for you to do, unrelated to the main story, to please the havoc-seekers. In this sense I don't believe GTA4 succeeds nearly as well as a game like Oblivion (you could call me an obsessive fruit-stealer), but it's definitely got more to offer here than 90% of the titles out.

The social commentary is honestly my favorite part of the game, not because it somehow adds more enjoyment to the game, but because Rockstar managed to express some pretty un-PC viewpoints in a form that will reach millions. GTA4 is expected to sell over 10 million copies this year alone and to be able to say some of the things that are said in GTA4, and still reach that many people, is impressive.

And I can't help but ask, where's the PC version? I get that consoles are far better sales platforms these days, but if we view the creators of a game like GTA4 as artists, then they should want their art on the best possible canvas. The draw distance and graphics issues could be alleviated (although probably not solved completely) on a PC; sure it would take a very high end PC to deliver the perfect experience, but with new and more powerful GPUs coming out every 6 - 12 months, the chances for making GTA4 look beautiful on a PC are pretty good.

In short, Grand Theft Auto 4 is an addicting game, fans of the series won't be disappointed but there's little chance that someone who hated the previous games will fall in love with this one. It's not what I would call perfect, but it's a decent evolutionary installment of an already good franchise.