Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto. Three words that caused quite the upstir in the last decade. As soon as the notorious video game series, often dubbed 'crime simulator', went 3D, it was the primary target of many anti-gaming advocates. Previous scapegoats of random teen violence such as comics, movies, metal music and Marilyn Manson were long forgotten as soon as games such as Doom, Carmageddon, and Duke Nukem 3D allegedly started poisoning the minds of the young. Video games were the latest red herring to the problems of modern society. And so it was that when Grand Theft Auto III came out in 2001 and did just about everything wrong in the eyes of social conservatives, it inadvertently provided the anti-video game movement with enough ammunition to rage on for years. Two sequels to the game, Vice City and San Andreas, only added fuel (and hot coffee) to the fire.

During this madness, many false claims were made regarding the content of the games. It was said that players earned points by killing prostitutes, oblivious to the fact that the games did not have a point system, nor was it in any way mandatory to interact with women of dubious morals. The fact that the vast majority of what happened in this game came down to the behaviour and choices of the player himself seemed remarkably ironic upon analysing the wild claims of the criticasters. More importantly, all the debates about what you could do in GTA diverted attention away from what you had to do. Because at the core of every GTA installment lay a compelling storyline that was clad by subtle, sarcastic criticism on modern society. In fact, Grand Theft Auto wasn't so much a 'crime simulator' as a parody on our own lives. And maybe that's the real reason why the people who helped shape this world hated it so much.

Time to get up and ruin some lives.

Curiously, criticism on American society is the main focus of Grand Theft Auto IV, the first current gen installment of the series. However, the creators seemed to be fully aware of the series' social relevance this time around. The humor is not as random, not as over-the-top, and overall just not as intelligent as it was in the previous installments of the series. As a result, the criticism on American society seems a whole lot less believable than it was in previous efforts, which is sadly ironic for the first game that actively tries to cover the subject.

The setting for Grand Theft Auto IV is once again Liberty City, the corrupt, crime-infested parody on New York City that first appeared in GTA III. It's also the first GTA game since III that is set in the present day. While Vice City and San Andreas took us back to the mid-eighties and the early nineties respectively, IV returns to the present, undoubtedly because it allowed the game to comment on current social issues.

In this sense, it is perhaps not very surprising that the protagonist of this installment is an immigrant. The story kicks off as the Eastern-European Niko Bellic arrives in the harbour of Liberty City, ready to claim his slice of the pie that is called the American Dream. He is enthousiastically received by his cousin Roman, who lured him to the States with stories about his success there. It quickly turns out that Roman's stories were actually just stories, and he's in fact living a rough life as the owner of a taxi company who frequently gets in trouble with the local hoodlums.

Liberty City is home to some of this planet's worst criminals, such as indifferent bar maids...

From there on, Niko Bellic gradually gets in touch with the local underworld, and it is only a matter of time before he starts being a part of it, and, perhaps unintentionally, starts working his way up the Liberty City crime ladder. The story is filled with references to his obscure past as a soldier in the Balkan, and frequently deals with the differences between the illusions of the American Dream and the reality of a rough, unfair city.

It is in this context that the player takes control of Niko Bellic and, in good GTA tradition, guides him through the depths of the local underworld. One thing the player will quickly notice is that, fortunately, the developers didn't just approach the story aspect more maturely: the gameplay received a much-needed overhaul since the last major GTA installment, the 2004 hit San Andreas. The result is that this rendition of Liberty City is by far the most vivid and convincing city of any GTA game to date. The people move, react, and behave more naturally than ever. It's just amazing to see how much detail went into the design of these essentially meaningless NPCs. You can overhear phonecalls and conversations, see them walk with groceries, and even witness how they engage in some more unconventional but therefore no less realistic activities such as preaching the armageddon on the streets or getting arrested. It actually feels like you're walking around in a big, dirty Western city.

...manic street preachers...

This aim for realism also manifests itself more concretely. The driving mechanics, for example, are more realistic and polished than they ever were, and even if they take some getting used to, they're definitely more rewarding and satisfactory than before, if only because this time around you can actually drive for 5 minutes without totalling your car. The same goes for the gunfights. The cover system, while not perfect, provides for more control over combat situations, and even if the AI of the enemies is still not in any way remarkable, it's certainly an improvement over the previous games.

These elements alone make the missions more fun than they ever were. Fighting large amounts of enemies is a lot more manageable as the player now has a better ability to translate his intentions to the screen. Essentially this means there are far less random deaths and screw-ups, both due to the gunplay being more stable and the mission objectives being more clear. Unfortunately, much of the difficulty of the missions is generated purely by the trial and error element. While the majority of the missions is actually quite easy and can be completed on the first try, some of them can still be vague in terms of what the objective is. Adding to the discomfort, a silly mistake can still ruin an entire mission, which can lead to losing up to 15 minutes of gameplay. It would certainly have been better if the missions contained more genuine challenge and featured a checkpoint system. That would have made this game harder, but less frustrating. If the only challenge is derived from the player either not knowing what to do or making a silly mistake, that is frustration rather than challenge. The result is that a player is more inclined to think 'I'm sure glad that's over' rather than 'Yes, I finally beat it!' after finishing a difficult mission. It is still beyond question, though, that mission-wise Grand Theft Auto IV goes beyond anything the series has done before, and in that sense it's the best installment yet. The improved mechanics make car chases and firefights so much more enjoyable. Finally the action sequences in GTA feel like they would in a mature (though simple) third person shooter rather than a quirky arcade game.

...and dangerous no-door drivers.

The same can not always be said of the activities outside the missions. The dating system from San Andreas is back, and this time you can also do a couple of activities (eating, drinking, seeing a show, bowling) with friends you make in the course of the game. This is a mixed blessing, because while these activities potentially provide you with a fun minigame (such as darts, pool, or the aforementioned bowling), your contacts will all too often call to invite you to do something with them. If you agree, you'll have to pick them up within an in-game hour (about 2 minutes), and not uncommonly are they so far away from your current position that you cannot possibly make it to their residence within that short timespan. If you decline their request, they will like you a bit less, which might eventually lead to them not wanting to see you anymore. This whole system wouldn't be such a problem if it weren't for the fact that you are usually called a few times during every in-game day. This can be a real nuisance if you're just trying to work your way through the missions. Luckily, maintaining your social life isn't the only thing you can do outside of the missions. You can visit a cabaret show, a comedian, do a helicopter tour, or participate in (ridiculously easy) street races. Even if these activities won't hold your attention for more than a few hours at best, they are a welome addition for when you are done with the storyline missions - or when you are temporarily sick of them.

In good GTA tradition, you can always listen to the radio when you enter a vehicle. There are about a dozen radio stations covering a broad variety of genres, but most of them aren't as interesting as the ones in previous installments. There are not many big name artists to be found, and it's not like they selected many 'hidden gem' type artists either. The radio DJs aren't as interesting as before either, even if they do contain some big names such as Iggy Pop and Daddy Yankee. They tend to present their shows as if they were real, leaving out a lot of the humorous commentary and wit that characterised many of the DJs of previous GTA games.

Unfortunately, the same goes for the talk radio stations. Their intent is still to be comedic, but this intent can often be heard. The healthcare debate on one of the talk radio stations is cringeworthingly unfunny, with every participant just blurting out very obvious hyperboles based on the opinions of each side of the real-life equivalent of this debate. This makes for a very unoriginal, unnatural kind of comedy that is often borderline embarassing, and in no way approaches the quality of the random wit of GTA III's Chatterbox FM. The other talk radio stations, WKTT and Integrity FM respectively, have actual funny sequences, but they suffer from a sheer lack of content as the same two shows are repeated throughout the whole game.

Times Square is beautiful. The catch? One-way traffic.

And this the inherent problem of GTA IV. It is very self-aware, and it shows. The creators try incredibly hard to make Niko Bellic come across as a likeable guy with a good heart, yet he spends half of the game killing people he barely knows for money. He is nowhere near the cold-hearted psychopath that both Tommy Vercetti (Vice City) and Claude (GTA III) were, but he's also far less of an innocent guy who gets caught up in shady businesses against his will than Carl Johnson from San Andreas. Due to Bellic's in-game behaviour being so radically different from how the developers try to portray him, his pseudo-philosophical rants and criticism on American society come across as far less believable than they could have been.

In the end, though, the story is not bad at all. Odds are you'll get addicted to doing missions just because you want to know what happens next, and some of the game's plot twist are genuinely surprising. The problem is that Rockstar tried too hard to make this game socially relevant, and at times, you can just notice their desperation. If there's any evidence that video games are a long way from becoming art, Grand Theft Auto IV provides it by showing that it's extremely hard and risky to provide a deep story and to cast social criticism without making considerable concessions in the gameplay department. It's no surprise that a lot of story-driven games this gen, such as Heavy Rain and Metal Gear Solid 4, have often been dubbed interactive movies - and that isn't always meant as a compliment.

Make no mistake, though: Grand Theft Auto IV might be the series' best game in some ways. It has the most interesting missions, the most stable gameplay, the best controls and the best AI, all of which help to make it the most compelling and immersive GTA-experience to date. To add to that, it's also the best-looking one. While previous 3D GTAs often had plain bad graphics by the standards of their respective release dates, GTA IV is one of the better-looking current gen games, especially on the PC. The draw distance issues that especially plagued San Andreas have been largely fixed as well, with only the occasional hiccup still being noticeable.

The good news is that traffic rules in GTA are subject to a certain relativity.

There can be no doubt that Rockstar has paved a solid way for the next generation of GTA games. At the same time, it has to watch its steps, seeing as the aim for realism could eventually ruin the series. Apart from the large amount of freedom, Grand Theft Auto's biggest merits have always been random humor and zany action, both of which helped spawn much of the controversy that made this series all the more interesting. These merits shouldn't be lost to a persistent will to criticise society, because criticism, in this case, is probably the most effective when it seems unintentional.

Jesse Dolman, NoobFeed.