Grand Theft Auto IV review (X360)

I'm not taking too much of a risk when I say that Grand Theft Auto is the best game you'll play in 2008. GTA is a joyous celebration of excess, success, madness and Newtonian physics that will leave you wanting to tell your friends stories about what happened to you today in Liberty City in excited tones.

But you won't need to. Your friends will have been there when you jumped off a 100 metre bridge into the sea after bowling and getting very drunk. They will be there when you play chicken with buses. They were there with you in the pick-up when you made the three cop cars explode. They were there when you crashed the chopper into the facsimile of the Chrysler Building.

So much fun one little shiny disk. Hard to comprehend isn't it?

The final game isn't much different from the build I played a few months ago at Rockstar. Though the frame rate seems more solid in the retail release. So there's no sense in repeating myself. If you want to know...if you didn't already...about many of the changes in this new GTA then it's worth checking out my hands-on preview (and Andy's first impressions).

Read those? Good, let's talk about the good and bad then instead of waffling on about the mechanics, I've not got time to write one of those one-handed 10,000 word reviews you see elsewhere.

Meet Niko

One of the things I like most about GTA IV is Niko Bellic. His understated character is perfect for a lead, surrounded as he is by larger than life characters such as his cousin Roman. Niko is a reluctant gangster, a man who has seen too much death and destruction. And while his reminiscences of "the war" can come across a little pat at times, there's depth in the writing and that role that goes beyond what we've seen from most videogames.

Some of the writing is superb. An early scene between Niko and a gangster wife is remarkably moving as the wife talks about what a good man her husband was and her regret over the changes in him. Her pleading with Niko to not give up on his own troubled soul because "God is more complicated than that" is a beautiful moment.

But then you come up against odd moments. Such as the recovery of a character from a serious injury way too quickly in the story. Too convenient and rather jarring. That's GTA all over really. Mostly it's amazing stuff, but there's too many little things that stop the game receiving our top score.

Moral Choices

For a game that is all about immorality one might argue that the theme for this game is morality itself. Niko and the player have the opportunity to make moral choices. Let the loan shark go? No one will know if he's not dead? Will another cold-blooded murder send Niko down the path from which he can never return?

While death comes easy in the sandbox that is Liberty City you'll be surprised to know how many friends of mine are trying to play the game "clean". It seems the enhanced graphical fidelity we enjoy in this console generation is making some of us squeamish, either that or we're getting old.

I've only picked up a hooker once in the game on the behest of my wife who wanted to see what happens. I felt pretty dirty about it, as did Niko. His disgust at the world tends to rub off on the player. That's the quality of the writing.

Content Explosion

The other star of the game is Liberty City itself (James Hamer-Morton hates this cliche, but it's true James). It's beautiful, it's shabby, it's a real living and breathing place. People live out there lives, answer phones, read papers, eat hot dogs, get hit by cars, have shoot outs with the cops – they live. It's fascinating just walking the streets and watching the world go by.

Liberty isn't as big as San Andreas and thank goodness for that. There was an awful lot of fat on that title and with that trimmed away GTAIV feels a lot lighter, trimmer and fitter. Little space is wasted, it's a packed city of of cars and people. There's so much detail to admire, such as seeing garbage trucks routinely roam the streets in the early hours or even smaller things like the design of the umbrella on the hot-dog stands.

If we had to reward just one part of the team behind the game it would be those that built this world. It is a work of art.

Rankles

There's plenty of things that don't quite work for me though. And in talking to my colleagues here at Boomtown we've tended to be annoyed by some of the same problems.

Physical combat doesn't feel that great. It's not satisfying in the way that you might hope and as soon as you've got your hands on some more advanced weaponry it's unlikely you'll want to go hand to hand again.

The driving is a little off too. Oversteer is your constant companion thanks to the soft suspension of the US cars and the Euphoria physics engine. There's just a little too much bounce in the cars, not much, but enough to make the driving a bind at times. Again one of those elements that's almost perfect but isn't quite right.

Restarting missions has been vastly improved via the use of Niko's mobile phone. However long drives are still apart of restarts and there's definite room for improvement in the next game. I want to restart a mission at the target, not miles away. Mid mission saves would be welcome Rockstar.

Multiplayer

Who would have thought that the first GTA with proper multiplayer could hit the nail on the head at first try. The multiplayer over Xbox Live is brilliant. That's before you even begin to explore the many game modes.

Just going on a free ride for while will have you laughing out loud. James (Hamer-Morton, Boomtown colleague) and I spent a while last night messing around in Liberty City. We stole some cars, messed around with the cops, started shooting at each other then decided to race buses around. Silly, childish and wonderful fun.

More structured play is on offer too – co-op missions, deathmatches, cops & robbers modes and the like. It's all beautifully organised, easy to host, top notch fun.

Sight & Sound

I suppose it wouldn't have mattered too much if GTA IV hadn't been that pretty. But the fact that it's a beautiful game is a real bonus. Those looking for visual thrills on a par with linear shooters may get your knickers in a twist, but for me GTA is the most beautiful game I've played.

There's something about the quality of the light, the way distant buildings are rendered, the sunshine, the gloom in the rain – that really impresses. The artwork and content is of a very high standard, as are the models, but it's the atmosphere that really does it for me in this game.

And the sound is part of that. Liberty City is a noisy place, it bustles, it beeps, it shouts, it swears, it's alive. And yes the soundtrack isn't as killer as Vice City (or San Andreas for that matter) and the surround sound mix is a little off (hard to hear character voices at times) but again GTA is mostly fantastic in sonic terms.

Criminally Good

What Rockstar has achieved with GTA IV is to take many of the things that gamers didn't like about previous games in the series and improve them greatly. Take for example the new cover mechanic. It isn't revolutionary, it isn't even as good as Rainbow Six Vegas, but it's what the game needed.

Everything from San Andreas is improved. It had to. The gaming world has moved on and GTA has had to evolve to compete. And while the driving isn't quite to my taste it's clearly improved. You can't have everything – the slightly off sound mix, difficulty in reading mobile phone text, restarting mission issues – these are all things that you do notice. But they don't stop you having a silly amount of fun with Grand Theft Auto IV.

But before we get too carried away there's nothing particularly ground breaking about GTA IV. This is a mechanic we've been playing for years polished to a shine we've not seen before. But the old mechanic of cutscene, drive, kill, evade is still there. There's no revolution here. Grand Theft Auto IV is brilliant, but it's not the original Gran Turismo, Mario 64 or Half-Life 2. And while there's a huge story here most players won't see most of it, the problem with GTA games has never been how much of it there is, but how much of it you want to see.

GTA IV is the best game in the series. It's a triumph – especially in terms of design and character performance. A PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 owner's library is incomplete without it. But in four months time we'll remember it as a superb game, rather than a new epoch in videogaming.