GTA IV: The SGM Half-Assed Review

Being a broke-ass motherfucker I don't have a current generation console (I'm stuck with the regular XBox). Fortunately my brother-in-law has a 360, so I spent most of the last three days playing Grand Theft Auto IV. Here are some general thoughts, maybe some exposition on those thoughts, and some bitching.

With two years since announcement that the next full GTA would be released on the 360 and PS3, this game has gotten more hype than anything ever. The release of GTA IV was so big it was considered a possible cause of lower opening revenue for the movie "Iron Man" and the game's initial release and preorder was so large that the game essentially shipped having sold 500,000 copies. The hype was so intense that this would have been a bad time for even Jesus to make his return. Early previews indicated that this game would live up to the hype.

Let's get this out of the way first: the map itself is awesome. It is very much New York City (with out Staten Island) and the top part of New Jersey. They're reconfigured and shoehorned a bit, but it is, from what I recall, a very accurate recreation. The streets are dirty and littered, bums are ranting at the air, assholes with cellphones are bumping into you. Times Square is fucking luminous at night and the night skyline of Manhattan is beautiful. All the major landmarks are where they should be. Liberty City in the game is just as overwhelmingly fantastic as NYC is in real life.

The downside is that the streets are often narrow and most corners are ninety-degree angles, which makes for some very precarious and almost impossible driving when you're in a hurry. And true to life, other drivers are retarded, so you aren't getting across a bridge without being cutoff at least twice unless it's 3AM and the streets are barren. Another annoyance: as in GTA San Andreas, you will spend a lot of time driving from mission point to mission point as a result of the sheer size of the map. It is a smaller map, so it isn't as bad as San Andreas. Fortunately you can hail and call for cabs to drastically shorten travel time.

The problems I have with the game stem from three things: sloppy, imprecise controls on foot; sloppy, almost uncontrollable driving mechanics and physics; and very poorly thought-out missions. And the problems are exacerbated by the fact that they're the same problems I had with GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas. Rockstar Games has had three years to work on this game, so these should not be issues. Rockstar says that over 1000 people worked on this game; the effort they put into recreating NYC went so far as to use time-lapse cameras to show what the lighting looked like in certain areas at different times of the day and looking at automobile sales figures to determine what types of vehicles would be found in each neighborhood. Yet no one said "hey, let's fix these movement issues from the original games" or "hey, we created Midnight Club, which is a pretty awesome racing game, driving in GTA shouldn't feel like herding spastic children across an iced-over lake" or "hey, trying to gun someone down from a motorcycle that you're navigating through narrow alleys filled with trashcans and dumpsters is fucking asinine."

Maintaining relationships with allies and girlfriends is hassle because of the ground you have to cover to go out to a bar, a show, or dinner. Sure, it's fun to go play darts or pool when you first start up, but after a few hours of gameplay it's a distraction and a waste of time. And the "drunk driving" aspect that has MADD in a furor is just dumb: you're drunk, not having a seizure. I've ridden with many a drunk driver and it was never an epic trek of violent, uncontrolled and irrational swerving. It's mainly an issue of passing out and veering into oncoming traffic or mistiming a turn and plowing through someone's living room. Or you keep your head straight and drive like normal.

Don't get me wrong, GTA IV isn't all bad by any means. It's still GTA; shooting and driving and killing and insanity and when it's fun, and it often is, it's a lot of fun. The cover system is a great improvement and makes gun battles considerably more manageable and less of a struggle than earlier games. Evading police pursuit is more structured and less random, although cops are more aggressive and it's not as easy to initiate chaos and mayhem just to let some steam off after a failed mission. And GTA IV shines in the life-within-the-game department: the television programs you can watch in your safehouses are a hilarious satire of American culture, politics, celebrity worship, sickeningly unbridled wealth, ignorance of history, and advertising.

But when GTA IV is frustrating or even bad, it is really bad. Some of the missions are absolutely maddening; a bank robbery turns the streets into a warzone pitting you and two accomplices against what seems like the entire LCPD. More terrible motorcycle-chase shoot-em-ups where you can't control your motorcycle and aim at the same time. Having your target escape a foot chase because you keep hanging on doorways and staircases because of terrible camera angles.

If you can play long enough without being overwhelmed by the negative aspects, GTA IV is well worth your time, but sometimes it doesn't take long for the annoyances to outweigh the enjoyment. This game has gotten the big blowjob from a lot of fans and critics and a lot of that seems to be loyalty to the franchise or deferring to style over substance. As a fan of the GTA series from way back in the 2D overhead days, it pains me to say that GTA IV is kind of a disappointment. Too many negatives in a game that really shouldn't have any. If you're a fan of the franchise, it's worth a purchase. If you're on the fence, give it a rental.