First Impressions: GTA IV

I had not originally planned to pick up Grand Theft Auto 4 anytime soon, but when your wife asks you to go out and buy GTA any hesitation would be a grievous offense. We got it for the 360 because we don’t own a PS3, and also because achievements are our console gaming lifeblood. Now I hadn’t actually been following any pre-release information for this game, aside from viewing one of the trailers about 6 months ago which made me laugh because of the “GetaLife” building and other parodies of famous New York landmarks. So essentially, this was as clean a slate going into a game as you can get these days and when you consider that this is the fourth in a series and the follow-up to such a wildly popular game.

The game starts up with a beautiful in-game cinematic intro that feels so much like a movie that you begin to wonder if you bought the wrong thing, this could be entirely due to the fact that they’ve skillfully placed credits into the beginning of the game, I assume this is to make things easier for the lawyers. The beginning pretty quickly introduces you to the main character and the overall feel of the game, both visually and through the excellent audio, and addresses one of my main gripes with the game’s predecessor. In GTA3 I felt that there was very little prompting to actually get involved in the plot, of the hours and hours of time I spent in that game, almost none were spent advancing the in game plot because I simply had more fun running around and playing with the world that was there. With GTA4, you are hit smack in the face with the plot, which I imagine will be a gripe for many people as they are forced to sit through at least 15-20 minutes of initial set up plot to get to where they can run around and go crazy. However, it’s not nearly as bad as Assassin’s Creed, you’re not forced to sit there through 30 minutes of expose in an entirely different time period from the world in which you really want to play, it seemed like a reasonably short amount of time until you were in a car and crashing through the city.

The first thing I noticed about the game was the level of realism, it has been raised so much from what we’ve seen. You no longer simply open a parked car’s door and jump into the seat, now you’re smashing in the window (which shatters wonderfully) and sometimes hot-wiring the car before you can drive off. Naturally this makes a lot of noise, and the people nearby definitely take notice, thankfully it’s still a very quick process despite all the added realism and you are off and driving in no time! The next example of realism hit us smack in the face, literally, as we discovered driving a car at full speed into a low barrier will not only crush the front end of your car in, but it also sends you flying through the front windshield and skidding across the asphalt with a loud scream (should have remembered to put on his seatbelt). We should probably feel bad for laughing hysterically when it happened, but I’d say it was more a reaction to how unexpected it was.

We haven’t yet gotten a chance to try out any of the multiplayer options, co-op, or even advance through the single player very far. What we have played so far is very compelling and extremely fun, with a variety of things happening almost concurrently but still effectively acting as a linear storyline. The controls take a little getting used to, especially when driving a car, but none of it seems to be a deal breaker. The environment is extremely detailed and lovingly crafted, as are the characters to the point when you zoom in on your character’s face you can see his eyes shifting back and forth waiting for the cops to show up at any moment.

Speaking of the police, the AI has definitely advanced since the last game, there will be no more running to the roof of the parking garage as an easy getaway. Indeed, it doesn’t seem like there is ANY easy getaway, as we discovered when my wife jumped into the water and started swimming with the assumption that she was now safe, only to soon find herself being gunned down by police boats, helicopters, and officers on foot along the shore.

All-in-all, as a general first impression from playing a few hours of the game, it seems to be a top notch game that looks to promise hours and hours of entertainment. If the co-op and multiplayer live up to everything else, then I don’t know if I’ll be playing any other games anytime soon.  If you’ve been thinking about buying it (and amazingly haven’t yet), I highly recommend it but still can’t speak to the long-term playability of the game.  If you’re a rent-then-buy kind of person, get out and rent this as fast as you can!