Our first outing in the land of the free and the home of the impulsively violent can be remembered at best as clunky. GTA 3's controls were less than solid and more than annoying. I explicitly remember trying to shoot a man who was shooting me and killing EVERY SINGLE OTHER PERSON on the street before the auto-targeting locked on to him. Yes, it was groundbreaking and revolutionary, but I think people have a tendency to glorify the game a bit.
Rockstar has spared no expenditure of time or money for our second date with one Liberty City. Sure, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories could be counted as a second date, but I like to think of it as one of those group dates where our relationship never really advanced much. Grand Theft Auto 4 is, to put it simply, AWESOME!
Everything good about the past GTA games is there minus some fluff (who really needs a jetpack anyway?). There are cars, guns, missions, pedestrians, cops, helicopters, bikes, clothes, and even hookers!
One thing that GTA 4 has that has been sadly absent from other entries in the series is a deep and compelling protagonist. All the way back to the infancy of the series in the original Grand Theft Auto the protagonist has been little more than a faceless murder-machine. Rockstar seemed to try to remedy this a bit in San Andreas, but fell a bit short. As I am sure you have heard from innumerable sources, Niko Bellic is a the kind of guy you wouldn't mind hanging out with.
Niko has emotions! From the first murder you commit in Liberty City Niko expresses resentment of his actions. "I told myself I wouldn't kill anyone here." He says, as he watches a stabbed a bloodied drug dealer fall off a pier. These morals, as useless as they may seem to the majority of people who bought this game, do not impede the play process though. You can still massacre people to your heart's content.
It is hard to say anything about the game that hasn't already been said by IGN, Gamespot, or 1up. The game is great. If you have a 360 or a PS3 the odds are you already have it or plan on getting it soon. I recommend this course of action. You will likely be ostracized if you hold any sort of association with gamers and do not have this game. Take this as a warning!
Play the game. NOW
~Mike
_\\//
Rockstar has spared no expenditure of time or money for our second date with one Liberty City. Sure, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories could be counted as a second date, but I like to think of it as one of those group dates where our relationship never really advanced much. Grand Theft Auto 4 is, to put it simply, AWESOME!
Everything good about the past GTA games is there minus some fluff (who really needs a jetpack anyway?). There are cars, guns, missions, pedestrians, cops, helicopters, bikes, clothes, and even hookers!
One thing that GTA 4 has that has been sadly absent from other entries in the series is a deep and compelling protagonist. All the way back to the infancy of the series in the original Grand Theft Auto the protagonist has been little more than a faceless murder-machine. Rockstar seemed to try to remedy this a bit in San Andreas, but fell a bit short. As I am sure you have heard from innumerable sources, Niko Bellic is a the kind of guy you wouldn't mind hanging out with.
Niko has emotions! From the first murder you commit in Liberty City Niko expresses resentment of his actions. "I told myself I wouldn't kill anyone here." He says, as he watches a stabbed a bloodied drug dealer fall off a pier. These morals, as useless as they may seem to the majority of people who bought this game, do not impede the play process though. You can still massacre people to your heart's content.
It is hard to say anything about the game that hasn't already been said by IGN, Gamespot, or 1up. The game is great. If you have a 360 or a PS3 the odds are you already have it or plan on getting it soon. I recommend this course of action. You will likely be ostracized if you hold any sort of association with gamers and do not have this game. Take this as a warning!
Play the game. NOW
~Mike
_\\//
