Grand Theft Auto IV
A man walks down the street wearing a brown tracksuit and old running shoes. He has the face of Eastern Europe, and his features speak of a long and difficult life. He pushes his way past a homeless drunk, who loudly announces his displeasure but soon returns to locating a nearby gutter. The tracksuit man begins crossing the road, but stops halfway and seems to survey his surroundings. Traffic begins to back up. A woman in a family sedan leans on her horn and yells expletives at the man in brown standing in the street. He moves beside her car and opens the door. Pointing a stolen handgun at her temple, he forces her out and assumes control of the vehicle. A police car travelling down a side street has noticed the commotion and flips on its siren.
The man in the sedan glances sideways at the sound before speeding off. A chase is conducted at high speed, the lead car frantically weaving in and out of heavy afternoon traffic. Unable to lose his new friend, the driver smashes the car window with a free elbow and leans out with loaded gun ready. Glancing back to fire pot shots at the police car, he failsto see that a blue convertible - its driver busy on his mobile - has trundled onto the next intersection. As the cars collide, the man in the brown tracksuit is propelled through the sedan’s windscreen and into the air. His broken body rolls onto the footpath and is stopped dead by the outer wall of an Italian restaurant. His lifeless body is left buried in a pile of garbage as the world turns grey.
Good thing the medical care in Liberty City is world-class.
If I had to describe Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar - PS3, Xbox 360, PC) in one word, it would probably be ‘ugly’. Nico Bellic is an unattractive man in a messy situation who has come to a dirty city because of his slimy cousin and some filthy Russians. The end result of all this ugliness, paradoxically, is a work of great beauty.
GTA IV focuses on Nico’s story from the moment he steps off the boat as an illegal immigrant in the middle of the night and sets foot on American SoilTM. His cousin Roman has regaled him with stories of his fantastic life in the good old U.S. of A, and promised him a piece of the pie. However, in the grand tradition of GTA characters being shown the knob end of life, on arrival this is quickly exposed as a creative reimagining of reality - Roman works as a taxi driver, lives in an apartment so dirty even dirt wouldn’t live there, and owes dangerously large debts to murderous people. So you lead Nico on a series of adventures which are less about climbing the criminal ladder - as in previous instalments - and more about not falling off.
The core gameplay - i.e. driving things and shooting stuff - in GTA IV is a slice of heaven (slice of heaven), especially when compared with previous games in the series. All the cars drive just realistically enough without sucking all the fun out of the experience. While the driving physics are a lot less arcade-styled than other GTA games - making things a lot more difficult before you adjust - the frustration of constant crashes is tempered by the fact that the next armed hijacking is only a few steps away. A good variety of vehicles is available - from hummers to scooters - and they all drive as you think they would in your head. Bizzarely, the best feature added to the new version is the ability for people in head on crashes to fly through their windscreen and splatter on the pavement - whether this is great because it adds realism or because I’m a sadistic madman is a moot point.
Anyone who has played any Grand Theft Auto will remember that gunplay, while fun, was never the mechanical strong point of the series. Gunfights have generally boiled down to screaming mother-themed insults at the screen as your thumbs epileptically strafed the controller. Luckily, improvements have been made, with an auto-aiming system 
which lets you switch between enemies with a flick of the stick, and the ability to aim at specific body parts (usually the head). There is also a cover system which lets Nico butt up against the nearest piece of whatever by pressing a button, making gunfights pretty exciting and tactical instead of a horrible sidetrack to car chases.
The missions, as always, are many and varied, with your standard “go here to do this but then oh god it has all gone wrong shoot your way out and chase this guy” fare mixed in with escort missions, assassinations, races and the occasional same sex dating experience. Some of them are quite epic in scope, and will have you traipsing all over the city to get things done. One potential sadness is that while the missions are always interesting and well thought out, there is less of the flair and madness than previous games. It fits perfectly with the more subdued and realistic tone of the game and story not to be able to parachute jump from a jumbo jet, but it cuts out some of the wacky fun factor.
Some would argue that the real meaty centre of a GTA game has always been the time-wasting shit you can do on the side. There’s been a lot of divided opinion on this, while they have pared down the amount of useless crap you can do to kill time in the game, what is left has been expanded and more fully realised. There are no longer a huge selection of vehicular emergency challenges, there’s no sign of any hidden packages (although you can hunt down all the flying rats in the city), and you can’t go to the gym to oil your pectorals. On the flipside, you can ring up anyone you know on your in-game cellphone and have them come out with you for a game of pool, a drink, or a trip to the local strip club. This sort of thing all contributes to the game world feeling incredibly alive - although the constant bothering from your cousin wanting to go bowling while you’re trying to eliminate bitches or surf porn can be grating. Any of the aformentioned activities can also be done alone of course - drinking, getting lap dances, watching TV, going to a comedy club to watch a motion-captured Ricky Gervais insult foreigners, and propositioning dockyard prostitutes, to name but a few. Sadly, there was no function to write an in-game blog, or poop, so here I am back in the real world.
What makes all of this more than just an enjoyable distraction, though, are the characters and the atmosphere. Nico is one of the most fully realised characters I have seen in any form of entertainment. The struggle to overcome his unpalatable past (the details of which are kept artfully vague) and make a new life for himself in America is moving, and when he fails due to circumstance or the actions of others, we feel for his plight and share his delight in exacting revenge and mayhem. The cast of characters which surround him are fantastic as well, more rounded and flawed than you can find in a boxload of blockbuster films. A personal favourite is Brucie - a fitness nut with a hyperactive personality and a CAN-DO-MOTHER-FUCKER attitude. But he’s not gay, man. Brucie doesn’t do that sort of thing. It would disappoint the ladies.
The graphics look beautiful, even on a regular television, with just enough stylised touches to maintain the hyper-real GTA feeling. The voice work is also impressive, with each face given an appropriate vocal, and much of the humour and characterisation in the game coming from the verbal exchanges.
But the real star is Liberty City, the filthy whore has my heart. It’s pretty, sure. But the city in the game is a real presence, to the point where you could easily call it a character in and of itself. Where in previous open world games the city is relegated to a (sometimes pretty) bystander, a place for things to happen, Liberty feels like a place which happens whether you are around or not. People bustle to and fro, heading to work or their house in the suburbs, or to rob the corner store. Dirt and leaves blow across the streets and disrupt piles of trash. Clouds roll in and pelt the streets with rain. Minor car accidents draw crowds and police as you run by. The attention to detail is much appreciated and sets a new standard for immersion - it’s interesting to have the urge to sit and watch a digital sunset on an imaginary rooftop.
Hell, there are a billion other things I’ve failed to mention. The dozen or so quality radio stations, all with a heap of tracks to keep you humming or talkback to tickle your laughing stick. Helicopter tours of the city. Decking yourself out in a 1970s vintage black suit and furry Russian hat. Online multiplayer mayhem through the city streets. Punching hobos.
Rockstar should be congratulated for creating a game that can more accurately described as an experience. Switching on the console feels like stepping right off that rusty boat and into a new world. So do whatever the fuck you want!