"GTA sells out."

I am really confused. I listen to podcasts, go on online gaming forums, and occasionally browse the video game magazines in my local newsagent, and it seems like everyone is losing their head over how great GTA IV is. "O there are so many nice little details." "O it's like a REAL city!" "The story is so amazing." "I love the biting satire." I've heard these things over and over again, but my personal impression of GTA IV has been underwhelming, tinged with boredom and frustration, and ultimately, disappointing.

First I should explain, I was a HUGE GTA geek. I got 100% on GTA 3, and on Vice City, and probably clocked up more hours on San Andreas than any other game in my life. GTA was always my staple diet when I owned a PS2. But it's like a great band, that were kinda messy, and the singer couldn't sing very well, but were still great, who finally got a top name producer, cleaned their sound up, made an album of catchy songs, and now they play them on the radio, have a song in the top 10, and everyone loves them, but the soul of the band has pretty much disappeared. The earlier stuff was better, but people just didn't listen before.

"There's so much to do! It's like a real city!

GTA is still great fun, the mechanic couldn't be messed up even if Rockstar tried, but GTA IV adds the least to the series. Instead, GTA IV is more of a refinement to what had already been done in GTA. Shooting out of cars is a bit better, the cars handle more realistically, the physics, the cover and shoot mechanic, all these things are touted as big improvements, but that's all they are, the game still plays much like any other GTA, and my overall impression is that the huge advances have taken place under the bonnet, where you can't really see them. Sure, when you hit a pedestrian, the physics makes it look very real, but you're still just hitting a pedestrian. The cover mechanic is a little more refined than the simple run and gun before, but it's still a clunky and unresponsive way of shooting.

On paper, the idea of quality over quantity, of realism over simple, mindless fun seems fantastic. But it leads to my GREATEST FLAW with the game. The single player is extremely repetitive. In IV, the only things you can really do, are shoot, and drive. And the 90+ missions are almost exact replicas of each other. I heard someone on a podcast say this criticism was as silly as criticising a shooter for only letting you walk, and shoot, but to prove my point, look at these examples from some missions in San Andreas:

A mission where you are dropped in the river, have to swim to a naval carrier, stealth-kill (another feature missing from IV) your way to the harrier jump jet, steal it, battle the harriers than chase you, and deliver it.

A mission where you have to ride a motorbike towards a speeding plane as it takes off and crates are thrown out of the back to hinder you, before going up the exit ramp, fighting your way to the front of the plane, killing the bad guy, then parachuting to safety as the plane crashes.

A mission where you have to drive a remote controlled car under an enemy truck, before detonating the explosive, destroying the truck.

None of these are possible in IV. Of course, it's not just that IV doesn't have as many features, IV also exhibits some really very unoriginal mission design. Of the 90+ missions there are perhaps 2 or 3 very big shootouts which are fun, and about 10 comedy-effect missions (such as clinging to the back of a truck, or escaping the police in a trashmaster). The rest are very dull and simple fetch or assassinate missions. It's not too much to ask that there be more original missions in a game with so much possibility, or just less of the filler.

"The story and characters are so amazing! I'm so moved!"

Why the hell are people talking about GTA IV like it's a Tolstoy novel?! It's the SAME STORY that every GTA has had. A guy comes to a city, and finds that things are bad. For the first 5% of the story he has few friends, and things are crap, then for the other 90% he is an errand boy, for a bunch of characters who are all reiterations of characters already done in GTA (the mafia lackey, mafia boss, drug-dealing gangsta pimp, crooked cop, guy in a suit who's secretive and has 'connections', comedy effect character - San Andreas had OG LOC, the wannabe rapper, IV has Brucie, the wannabe pick-up artist), then, for the final 5%, the story is picked up again and resolved. Of course, the humour and satire in IV that's evident in the radio, tv, and surroundings is still good, but it's nothing mind-blowingly new.

GTA 4 LIFE

When GTA 3 came out, it defined it's own genre. Not only did it create a whole city to explore, with vehicles that were varied, it also added tons of details, extras, and features. Vice City took that premise, stylised it, made it look and sound totally different, with a ton more humour, and gave us something new. San Andreas turned the city into a whole state, added rpg and periphery elements that were hit and miss, but added so much depth to an already gigantic game, and couple it with some genuine creativity in the missions. IV takes the engine in huge leaps forwards, but basically presents us with nothing new to explore, nothing new to be amazed at, to immerse ourselves in the single player, and ultimately, this is why I am disappointed.

If IV is your first GTA, then I understand totally why you're amazed, although I don't understand why you never played SA (I think it obvious a lot of people didn't like it for it's 'thug life' theme, but that's another argument). If you have played previous GTA's and you still hold that this is the greatest game ever, then please tell me why, I have yet to understand how better physics and graphics beat better mission design, more to explore, and more variety.

GTA 4 LIVE

It might be that Rockstar had their eyes on the prize. Great single player games are lauded, but ultimately set aside eg, Bioshock or Mass Effect, but the games that are talked about and played years later no matter how short or banal the single player, are the great multiplayer ones. Rockstar have obviously put a lot into multiplayer, it runs very smoothly, and there are a ton of online modes and games.

Without a doubt, the multiplayer is fun. It's new and different. But for some reason, it also feels a little dated and shallow. Play with friends and you can entertain yourself for a good few hours, but play it as a competitive game online with strangers, and you soon realise that there isn't much to engage with.

Deathmatch is basically GTA trying to be a third person shooter, which it obviously can't pull off as well as something like GOW, Cops and Crooks is open to so many cheap tactics (here's one, when you're crooks, get an rpg and wait for the cops to come, inevitably in a car, one shot, and you're done). Hangman's noose and Bomb da Base are nice co-op missions that you will finish on hard, with only two people, by your second or third go, and don't really offer variety once done. And Free Mode with strangers basically enables the idiots of the world to get their kicks killing people who aren't playing deathmatch.

A 7 out of 10, because this game is still great, and if it was the first ever GTA, it would be a 10, but I've played this game before, I've done these missions before, and I've hit these walls before, the graphics and physics are pure next-gen, but the game itself is so dated it's virtually a backwards step for the series I used to love. Plus, and this is the final nail in the coffin, the soundtrack sucks.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/14/08

Game Release: Grand Theft Auto IV (EU, 04/29/08)