Grand Theft Auto IV Preview - Welcome Back to Liberty City
Grand Theft Auto IV previewWelcome back to Liberty City…
The final countdown…
The latest addition to the ever-popular Grand Theft Auto series will be hurtling into shops in a couple of months. It’s set to take the familar GTA action, humour, terrible driving and tabloid-baiting controversy to a whole new level and will be the first time the franchise has landed on next-generation consoles.
Virgin Media was treated to a sneak preview of Grand Theft Auto IV, and we were blown away by how impressive it’s shaping up to be. Here’s why…
Fans speculated for years on where GTA IV would be set. Japan? Europe? Somewhere we hadn’t thought of? In fact, it’s back to basics, for the action takes place in Liberty City, setting for the original overhead-view GTA games as well as Grand Theft Auto III. But Liberty City has never been quite like this before.
Whereas previous versions of Liberty City paid the odd homage to New York, this time around the place is closely modelled on the Big Apple, with five familiar regions making up the gameplay area. There’s the main island of Algonquin (bearing many a resemblance to Manhattan), Alderney (to the west, where New Jersey should be), Dukes (instead of Queens), Broker (sound a bit like Brooklyn?) and Bohan (the Bronx). Best of all, historic NY suburb Brighton Beach becomes Hove Beach.
Into these mean streets steps our new hero, Nikolai “Niko” Bellic. Let’s meet him…
Nikolai “Niko” Bellic (on the right here) has come to Liberty City from somewhere in Eastern Europe, persuaded by his cousin Roman to come over and join him in experiencing all the fabulous trappings of the American dream, complete with hot tubs and girls in bikinis. As it turns out, Roman is in fact running a cab firm in a dingy part of town, so Niko is going to have to make his own way.
As the game’s trailer reveals, Niko has a somewhat shady past. “I’ve killed people, smuggled people, sold people.” Before long, he’s drawn into more criminal goings on, running errands for local crooks and building up status and wealth in the Liberty City underworld.
The basic gameplay mechanics stick with the series’ tried-and-trusted formula. Your main means of getting around town are walking / running and driving. All vehicles are there to be pinched; you can haul unfortunate drivers out of their seats or hot-wire a parked car.
If you’d rather stay the right side of the law, you can also hail a cab and let someone else do the driving.
Vehicle physics feel much improved since the last GTA outing, and you have a greater choice of camera views as you tear up the road. One cool new addition is the ability to cycle through the cinematic cameras by holding down a button on the keypad. Turn up the music on the in-game radio and let the game pick out dramatic camera angles, and you’ll feel even more like you’re part of an epic crime movie.
As with previous games, you’ll spend lots of time fleeing from the police, who will have every reason to take you into custody. There’s now a superb new mechanism involved when it comes to dodging the boys in blue. As soon as your latest criminal act is detected by the cops, your radar on the bottom-left of the screen pops up a circle to represent the distance they can detect you; sneak out of the circle and you’re in the clear.
Evading capture is also more scientific, based now on lines of sight. If the police lose sight of you, they can’t catch you, so sneak down an alleyway as patrol cars go by and you will be free to continue your crime rampage undisturbed.
The souped-up radar is handy also for simply navigating the streets. Whereas previous games just gave you dots to drive towards, GTA IV actually suggests routes to drive along, and if the car you’ve comandeered is a posh one, there’ll be a sat-nav to tell you where to turn right.
We all know that next-gen consoles are a real cut above when it comes to graphics, but GTA IV looks even better than you’ll have hoped.
Graphical realism is far higher than what we saw in 2004’s GTA: San Andreas, both during the game and in the regular cut-scene animations. There are neat extra touches like breath coming out of Niko’s mouth and chimneys churning out realistic smoke. Water - of which there is lots - is convincingly rendered and splatters onto the “camera” when you’re captaining a boat at speed.
Weather effects like burning orange sunsets and downpours of rain make the city look even more striking and help ensure that you’ll never get bored of looking at Liberty City. Without much doubt, GTA IV will be as easy on the eye as any other game this year.
In previous GTA outings, the fun often came more from the driving escapades than the on-foot battles, but the balance has now shifted. Gunfights are now far more fluid, realistic, exciting and bloody. You’re still helped out by a lock-on targetting system but that doesn’t make it too easy.
We were shown a couple of massive gunfights that were more akin to the blistering street firefights of the film Heat than the sometimes-underwhelming shootouts of earlier games. You can crouch behind scenery and blind-fire, Gears of War-style, or go all out and attack with an even more devastating set of weaponry then before. Explosions are as big, loud and damaging as they should be.
With greater realism and even more violence and blood than we’re used to, GTA IV should logically be a much darker affair than its predecessors - but we didn’t see much evidence of that. In fact, it’s packed with even more hilarious moments than other GTA games.
The in-game radio stations continue to be a source of constant laughs, cut-scenes are full of humour and throwaway gags don’t let up. The character of Little Jacob is a one-man comedy show himself; this Jamaican gunrunner sports the thickest patois you’ve ever hear and, thanks to the giant spliff he carries, generates an entire cloud of marijuana smoke whenever he gets into your car.
Grand Theft Auto IV has more than it’s fair share of humour. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll shoot people in the face.
Powering GTA IV is the spanking new euphoria game animation engine, which adds a new dimension to gameplay.
It’s hard to over-state just how exciting a development euphoria could be for the gaming world. It generates animations on-the-fly, and character movements and reactions are different every time, depending on their position and the events going on around them rather than being pre-canned animations..
For the first few hours you play GTA IV, you’ll regularly lose concentration as you stop to marvel at euphoria in action, whether it’s a pedestrian cowering spontaneously from a speeding car, a hand-to-hand punch up in which the combatants dodge and respond to each other’s motion, or Niko clinging realistically to the back of a vehicle and being hurled around in ultra-realistic fashion.
When you stop consciously noticing it at work, euphoria adds an entire new level of realism to the game and means that even when you are annoyed to have to retry a mission, there’s every chance that it will feel completely fresh on each attempt.
The good people of Liberty City go about their business with a sense of purpose you won’t have seen before in the series. They don’t just shuffle aimlessly, but all seem to be doing something, whether it’s pausing for a smoke, sweeping the street, chatting on the phone, or loitering with intent in a shady alleyway. The city feels like a living, breathing place rather than being populated by zombie passers-by.
In 2004’s GTA: San Andreas, you could customise your character no end, and even make them fitter of fatter by sending them to fried chicken restaurants or the gym. It was amusing but rather pointless, and you won’t be wasting time supersizing Niko with greasy food or changing his attire.
You will, however, be getting him to interact with his friends and accomplices across Liberty City more elaborately and realistically than before. It’s handy having people on-side; using your mobile phone you can get cousin Roman to arrange you a cab to get around town faster, or call up a gunrunner to deliver you an arsenal of weapons as required.
But you’ll need to keep associates happy, not only by completing missions for them but by keeping appointments that you make and even socialising with them. You can call up a mate and suggest you go bowling, meet for a beer, even go to a strip joint. Cultivate those friendships, and you’ll be rewarded.
That mobile is one key device for running your life in the GTA IV world. Another is the police computer, accessible from any patrol car you nick, which is a useful database that you can tap into to track people down. You can also find out about what’s going on by tuning in to the police radio channels, and if you commit a big crime you might hear it reported on a radio news station.
GTA IV addresses some of the niggles that detracted from the experience in previous games. There’s an auto-save feature so you don’t any longer have to be in a safe-house to secure your progress.
When you fail a mission, you are sent a text message asking if you want to restart it straight away. That saves you having to get all the way back to the start point and repeat the introductory cut-scene.
Another annoyance that has been eliminated is loading time: there simply isn’t any. That means no let-ups in gameplay when Niko enters or exits a building.
We can say with some certainty that Grand Theft Auto IV is going to sell gazillions of copies. If you want to make sure you get your mits on it on the day of release.
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Product Details
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Grand Theft Auto IV
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| Price: | $59.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
Availability: Not yet released
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com
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Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #46 in Computer & Video Games
- Brand: Rockstar Games
- Released on: 2008-04-29
- ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
- Platform: PLAYSTATION 3
- Dimensions: 2.00 pounds
Features
- For Play on Your PlayStation 3
- Published by Rockstar
- Game Genre: Action/Adventure, Game Sub-Genre: Crime
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Beginning with the 1997 release of the original Grand Theft Auto, the GTA series has been one of the most prolific, controversial and down right entertaining franchises in video games history. This pedigree of success guarantees that the highly anticipated eleventh game in the series, Grand Theft Auto IV, will garner at least as much attention if not more.
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Niko’s American Dream. View larger. |
Get behind the wheel with Niko. View larger. |
Liberty City is your for the taking. View larger. |
The Plot
Grand Theft Auto IV is a brand new adventure in the GTA universe following the experiences of Nikolai “Niko” Bellic, a new immigrant from an undisclosed eastern European! country whose troubled past and the persuasion of his cousin Roman have brought him to the fictional Liberty City. Unfortunately, Niko’s search of the American Dream and a much needed fresh start hits an immediate snag when the rags to riches story Roman spun to pique Niko’s interest is exposed as not only a complete fabrication, but a ploy to enlist Niko’s well-known skills as a tough guy against the ample list of enemies clamoring for Roman’s debt-ridden blood.
Because Roman is the only person Niko knows in Liberty City he begrudgingly accepts his role as Roman’s protector despite the deception. But as time goes on Niko comes into his own, and his experience on the wrong side of the tracks proves more valuable than he could have ever imagined as he fights for survival and later supremacy on the crime ridden streets of Liberty City.
Game Environments
Based on several of the boroughs of New York City and parts of New Jersey, Liberty City, familiar to players of previous games in the series, has been entirely redesigned for GTA IV. Players can expect visible detail down to the weeds growing in the cracks in the sidewalk, cars and buildings of visibly different ages and a much greater level if verticality in the buildings and bridges that they are able to explore as Niko moves through the city streets. In addition, pedestrians in GTA IV are much more realistic. No longer simply moving cardboard cutouts, these NPCs are intelligent, modern, human representations that laugh, cry, eat, drink, use cell phones and ATMs, and talking amongst themselves regardless of Niko’s interaction with them.
Gameplay
Historically GTA games have focused heavily on mission-based play, requiring successful completion of fixed tasks in order for players to progress through the game, but this has changed in to a ! great extent in GTA IV. Players will experience an entirely new and exciting emphasis centered on the blending of on-mission and off-mission play, resulting not only in an increased sense of realism, but more interesting and unrestricted gameplay.
Features
Official features for GTA IV have yet to be released. Stay tuned for more information as the game’s release in early ‘08 draws nearer.
Customer Reviews