Grand Theft Auto IV

Review by ExplosiveSam

Story

The story is about Niko Bellic an Illegal immigrant who was tricked into coming to Liberty by his cousin Roman Bellic, which claimed to be living the American dream. When Niko arrives in Liberty City he quickly finds out that Roman was lying to him about the mansion, the cars and the money and that Romeo has a lot of debt with the local mob bosses. Niko in need of work helps out Roman with his problems.

We later find out that Niko came to Liberty City to Revenge the betrayal of one of the men who was in his old army unit. During Nikos journey to find the man who betrayed him, Niko finds Dimitri a Russian who is working with a man who wants to kill Niko because he thinks he stole money from him when he was in the army.

Need the end of the game you are giving some government agents bring the man that Niko was looking for to Liberty City and you are giving the choice to kill him or to let him live. The game has two different endings, which has you ever take revenge on Dimitri or make a deal with him and earn a large amount of money.

Good news is that the story will have some of the loop holes filled in February 2009 with the Xbox 360 Exclusive downloadable content.

Gameplay

The Gameplay is a lot different to other Grand Theft Auto games like Vice City and San Andreas. Rockstar have decided to make the Grand Theft Auto Gameplay realistic but of course also keeping the Grand Theft Auto feel to the game.

Rockstar have made the game realistic by making the driving and the combat system realistic. Which are the biggest parts of the game, but was it worth making them realistic?

They have made the driving realistic by making it so you cant drive round a corner flat out, instead you must break when going round corners or else you will crash. They also made it when you crash when driving you normally go flying out the windscreen, which normally results in you losing most of your health.

The combat system has been made more realistic by making an enemy take a realistic amount of bullets which makes killing a lot easier, but they have also done the same for you which means you can not last as long. They have also made the hand to hand combat realistic by giving you more punch's and kick's and the ability to block the opponents moves.

So has this realistic take on Grand Theft Auto been good? Well I have to say the Gameplay on this game has a next generation feel to it and I am glad they did it as the new Gameplay actually makes you feel like your more in the game.

The game of course still keeps the Grand Theft Auto Gameplay that we all love, which is the sand box style 3rd person shooter that has you running around stealing cars, shooting everything in sight and doing missions for the toughest gangsters around!

Graphics and Sound

If you were to compare the graphics from Vice City and San Andreas you would not notice any changes, but if you were to compare them with IV, there is a different story. This time round Rockstar have raised the bar for video game graphics using their latest game engine, the Rage engine, to make the most realistic graphics yet, with real looking buildings, cars and even weather effects!

With Great graphics comes great sounds! Well on Grand Theft Auto IV it does, from the endless gunfire, to the massive explosions and if that wasn't enough they have a great selection of music ranging from Rap all the way to heavy metal to keep you listening for hours.

How long will it last?

When asking how long Grand Theft Auto IV will last, there is only one thing I can say which is think Oblivion. The main story on its own will take Whooping 30 hours and when you start adding other things like pigeon hunting, car thefts, races, stunts, side missions and Multiplayer your on over 100 hours with out even doing the Best thing on Grand Theft Auto Games, which is causing Havoc!

So if you want a game to last a few months then look this way as you will never get tired of this game, and if you do get bored you can just buy The Lost and Dammed DLC to give you more mind blowing hours on this game!

Map

After having such a great map on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas everybody was hoping for a map which would be similar and that would have a lot of open space, but it is nothing like that.

Grand Theft Auto IV takes place in liberty city yet again, but the only connections between the Liberty city from other GTA games is the name. The new Liberty city consists of four main islands, Broker, Dukes, Bohan and Algonquin which are all based on places in New York City. The game of course being based on New York City has a few things which make it feel like New York like the statue of happiness, the empire state building, the central park and more.

The game being based on New York City means that there will be hardly any open space which to me was a bad thing to do as that meant there was too much traffic and not enough space for doing car tricks. Apart from that little problem with the map I found the new Liberty City one of the best Grand Theft Auto Cities, with only a few let downs.

Multiplayer

This is the first Grand Theft Auto game to include multiplayer because last generation online gaming was not a large thing. Now online gaming now is very popular Rockstar have added some online modes, but how good are they?

The multiplayer has over 15 different game types ranging from normal game types like single and team death matches, races and all the way to the new and bizarre Co op games like Hangman Noose and Deal breaker.

I overall enjoyed the multiplayer on Grand Theft auto IV just because it wasn't like Call of Duty or Halo multiplayer, where everybody takes everything serious and people actually just play the multiplayer for a laugh.

Conclusion

It has been nearly 4 years since Rockstar last released a Grand Theft Auto game on a games console, and with similar games like Saints Row in competition with Grand Theft Auto, have Rockstar managed to keep Grand Theft Auto at the top?

Even though the game has changed a lot from the last series I still think Grand Theft Auto IV is a game you will have to pick up to matter what, due to fact this game has so much in it, and it will have something everybody will like. It caters for people who like driving games, shooting games, multiplayer games and people that like single player games.

This game may not have a lot of the things in it from the previous games, like the tanks, planes and Go karts but no matter what this game will always be a must buy.

So all I can say is if you don't buy this you're missing out on the game of the year!