Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3)

GTA4 is easily the most anticipated game of 2008, but is it worthy of the hype? The answer is that most people don’t really care, as long as it delivers what they expect from a GTA title – great characters, crass humour, clever incidental moments and, of course, plenty of violence. Personally I’m more concerned with whether it’s a decent game or not, but more of that later.

GTA fans will be more than happy as Rockstar once again delivers a host of foul-mouthed caricatures spouting machismo monosylabics through to quirky, albeit humourous, nonsense with a plot that’s an enjoyable mish-mash of clichéd themes and over-the-top dramatics. The real highlights of the script are delivered by the bit-part players - the satirical ramblings of the radio DJs, the lampooning advertisements for ridiculous products and the everyday back-chat from passers by, taxi drivers etc.

However, such entertainment is marred by the low-brow nature of the humour on display – every single piece of word-play is either a sexual double-entendre or a toilet-related innuendo. In small doses (for instance a bill board for a haulage company called “R S Haul – We’ll dump your load”) its quite amusing but when its so prevalent and often unnecessary (in the case of the internet café called T.W.@ - the hilarious joke being that it’s a “rude” word! That’s it!) it really begins to feel juvenile and grating.

I wouldn’t want to be accused of not seeing the wood for the trees, as no amount of cosmetic annoyances can take away from the achievement that is Liberty City itself. The busy streets, the traffic systems, the feel to the different boroughs – the sheer amount of things happening at once really makes it a compelling environment to explore and experience and a real technical accomplishment. The scale of it all and the seamless transition from area to area more than makes up for the aesthetically (but certainly not technically) underwhelming nature of the graphics.

So what does it play like then? Well they’ve refined the aiming and made the driving more fun but basically it’s the same old GTA – “Great!”, scream the converted but I for one am not so sure.

The number one fall-down of the previous games, the shooting/aiming, has been given an overhaul with the addition of a functional cover system and semi-manual aiming but whereas this improves the feel of gunplay it still isn’t as good as it should be. There’s never that real excitement to the gun battles with the poor AI simply meaning the enemies play pop-up target and present no challenge other than their increasing numbers as the game progresses. At that stage gunning them all down becomes an attritional chore.

Another chore, the long haul drives from A to B, have been improved with the addition of public transport. Just hail a cab or get on the subway and you can be at your goal is seconds! This is a genuine progression for the series and is much welcomed.

An aspect that is still sorely in need of such forward thinking is the save/checkpoint system. You may be able to get a cab to take the sting out of transport but if you hit one of the many difficulty spikes (another bugbear) you could be getting that same cab over and over again thanks to a checkpoint system that throws you back to the beginning of even the longest of missions. And by beginning I don’t mean when the action starts, I mean the drive over to the mission! Worst of all any cash/bullets/armour you expended on the last run aren’t refunded upon restart!

The nature of the missions is also a source of disappointment both in their variety and deficiency of innovation. Very few deviate from the pre-established and most are merely re-hashed from previous games. There’s also a distinct lack of freedom or choice within missions which (coupled with the dull shooting) can see the player slip into auto-pilot merely following the prompts at the bottom of the screen.

The whole choices/consequences dynamic was readily touted by Rockstar before release but bar a few contrived scenarios this is never really in evidence. Any hopes for a subtle and ubiquitous system of decisions and outcomes are long forgotten when after hearing a reasonable plea for mercy from a target only to be followed by the prompt to “Kill Him” at the bottom of the screen.

The proposed levels of interaction are also a lot less than expected. The reactions of most random objects are fine but there just isn’t enough of a variety to make things interesting. A few cardboard boxes and rubbish bins here and there but nothing to really spark the imagination. Its hard to believe the bar set by Deus Ex in 2000 has rarely been met. The amount of shops and buildings in general that can be entered is extremely limited and really takes away from the immersion or “sandbox” feel. The lacklustre mini-games (bowling, darts etc) are atrocious, playing worse than a homemade flash game.

Overall there isn’t a true next-gen feel to the game with some of the aforementioned flaws (gunplay, checkpoints, mission structure etc) beginning to seem antiquated. I can’t help thinking this isn’t much more than a PS2 game with better graphics and a few bells and whistles thrown in.

Having said all that its still a good game, containing a lot of the entertainment value and addictiveness you’d come to expect, it just hasn’t evolved to keep up with some modern standards and is thus a disappointment.

In my opinion Rockstar have come to the place Capcom were with Resident Evil before they evolved the game to something fresh and new but yet true to the originals. Its tempting to keep giving their hordes of fans more of the same but there’s only so long before clunky control systems and archaic game mechanics begin to feel their age. Next time around we can only hope for the gameplay that can match the experience.