Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Rockstar Games
• Released on: 2008-04-29
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Dimensions: 2.00 pounds

Features

• Carry on the Grand Theft Auto tradition playing through the single player campaign as Niko Bellic
• Get cars and other modes of transportation anyway you can
• Interact with various colorful characters who give you various missions to engage in
• Engage in multiplayer challenges ranging from cover matches to shoot-outs
• Game Rated 'M' due to Intense Violence, Blood, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Partial Nudity, Use of Drugs and Alcohol

Amazon.com
What does the American Dream mean today?

For Niko Bellic, fresh off the boat from Europe, it is the hope he can escape his past. For his cousin, Roman, it is the vision that together they can find fortune in Liberty City, gateway to the land of opportunity. As they slip into debt and are dragged into a criminal underworld by a series of shysters, thieves and sociopaths, they discover that the reality is very different from the dream in a city that worships money and status, and is heaven for those who have them and a living nightmare for those who don’t.

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.

Return to Liberty City.

The dream as Niko expected it. View larger.

There's always a catch. View larger.

But some skills are international. 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 pa st and the persuasion of his cousin Roman have brought him to the fictional Liberty City. Unfortunately, Niko’s search for 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 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
Aside from the car jacking and a detailed city environment here are the new features for GTA IV:

• Improved combat system - Now you can use cover and also a target lock system, which allows you to take out targets with greater ease and accuracy. Plus, you can engage in some hand-to-hand combat if you can't get your hands on a piece quick enough.
• Cell phone - Not just for basic phone calls anymore. Use your in-game cell phone to receive missions via SMS, snap photos, and ZiT (tag) songs that can be downloaded exclusively on Amazon.com/mp3.
• Free time - In between missions you can take advantage of "me" time. There are gentleman's clubs, comedy clubs, bowling alleys, and bars, which all house unique activities.
• Take a break from the storyline - A variety of side missions allow you to help run a car service, "borrow" cop cars, assassinate targets, help solve problems for those on the street, or take to the air with stunt jumps that are scattered all over the city.
• Control your own fate - Throughout the game choice moments will arrive causing you to make a decision that will affect relationships and money.

Multiplayer
Give Niko a rest and create your own multiplayer "hero." GTA has added multiplayer modes allowing you to take your creation out to play online in competitive, co-op, and free form modes. Competitive mode has you fighting against the cops, jacking cars, or racing to finish odd jobs. Co-op challenges you and your friends with various tasks including Hangman's NOOSE where you are responsible for escorting a wanted kingpin to a safe extraction point. Freeform lets you and 15 others lose on Liberty City. Use this mode to hit up the bar and play virtual darts versus each other or head out to the streets and set up your own drag races. If you can dream it, you can do it in Freeform mode.

ZiT: We'll Spot The Song For You
When playing Grand Theft Auto IV, if you hear a song that you are interested in buying as an MP3, all you have to do is dial ZiT-555-0100 on your in-game mobile phone and a text message will be sent to you with the name of the artist and the title of the track. The next time you log in at the Rockstar Games Social Club, you will find 30-second previews of all the songs you have ZiT'ed while playing the game. You can add them to your basket there and click to purchase at Amazon MP3, or you can find them all at www.amazon.com/gtamusic.

Customer Reviews

The best video game than I have played in my life.
No game has never given as much freedom you. Better than all the previous ones.

Rockstar's Not So Grand Opus
There's no need to discuss the hype behind this game or its commercial success. We all know it was well received by the public, got great reviews and made Rockstar even richer.

So how does it play? Was it worth the wait? Should it have waited even longer? Maybe and absolutely.

The game does an admirable job of representing what is basically New York and having a sympathetic lead who kills, steals and double-crosses to survive. He doesn't like what he does, wishes he didn't have to do it, but in order to fulfill his objective, he has to do these things. (Note that the vast majority of people he kills, steals from and double-crosses aren't even worthy of being called scum.) The game also forces the player to make some hard choices which have long-lasting consequences. And of course, true to form for a GTA game, there's weapons, explosions, sex, car chases, gun fights and profanities aplenty.

Which leads me to the first of many letdowns for this game. The missions are so repetitive, so tedious, so monotonous, and so boring that it is literally impossible to truly differentiate one mission from the next. A good 50% of the game, probably more involves shooting endless waves of enemies, many of whom pop up in completely illogical places. It is very easy for one enemy to kill you in a matter of seconds after having done so well up to that point.

Which brings me to my next point: Mission failures. The system Rockstar put in place is by far the worst system in any AAA video game, and budget titles would do well to stay far from this as well. If you fail a mission, you must restart the mission entirely. From the beginning. Every single time. It doesn't matter if the mission is a single chase, a single shootout or if there is more than one part to it. (The final mission has five parts to it.) If something goes wrong, you start back at the beginning and you have to redo the entire thing all over again. There are no mid-mission checkpoints. This is completely inexcusable. Operation Flashpoint came out in 2001, so video games have had checkpoints in them for at least seven years now and probably longer than that. Please don't put in a comment about how I forgot about how X game had them in 199X. I am not interested, I am only using that particular game as an example. That's it. End of discussion.

And yet, when you do restart, you still lose EVERYTHING you used in the mission. Why is that? Why should I have to replenish everything I lost on something that didn't actually happen? I can't think of any game that does this, and I probably wouldn't want to play such a game, mainly because I prefer games that are fun. Is having to restock ammo and armor on a mission that didn't actually just happen fun? No. That's downtime, and downtime isn't fun, especially when it's needless downtime. And Rockstar isn't based in someone's garage. This is a very large company with a huge budget, so these amateurish design decisions are even more inexcusable.

Speaking of inexcusable design decisions that were antiquated long, long ago, let's discuss another aspect of gun fights. For some reason, when Niko is being shot at, his default speed, running or walking is the exact same speed as when nothing is going on. SWAT 3 came out almost NINE YEARS AGO, and that game had a dynamic speed change. In other words, if shots were fired, everyone sped up. Not Niko. No, he'll just wander around unless you actually hit the run button. Which also makes him run just as fast as though nothing is going on. Wouldn't someone who is trying to find cover so they don't get shot move faster than if they aren't in danger? If you'd like a more recent example of what Rockstar should have done, take a look at Mass Effect.

The driving mechanics also have a much higher learning curve than what it needs to be, especially with motorcycles and helicopters. Why Rockstar didn't take more time honing the controls and making them easier to pick up is anyone's guess. Same with ladders. I have a friend who will tap the Y button until his thumb is ready to break and even still Niko will not climb the ladder that is right in front of him. This is usually after swimming a ridiculous distance to it since the game doesn't allow the player to just suicide and spawn at the nearest hospital. No instead we have to swim ridiculously long distances. Talk about fun huh?

Which is about the same as can be said for multiplayer. You just walk or drive around the city. There is nothing to do. Nothing. No activities, no places to go, nothing. There are some missions that can be done but if you just want to free roam with a friend in multiplayer, that's ALL you get to do. A drop-in, drop-out co-op in the story mode would've been much, much better.

Oh, yeah, the story. Well what little there is isn't too bad, when the game actually allows you to see it. Most of the time it's too busy bogging you down with those same repetitive missions I talked about earlier where it always goes the exact same way - a deal that shouldn't have any problems where Niko is just there "as insurance" turns into a battle ground with lots and lots of enemies, then just they're all dead, more spawn in the area that was just cleared, then the fight leads to a car/motorcycle chase which leads to a police chase, lather, rinse, repeat. Almost all of the missions have this exact same format. The only things that change are the goons' clothing and the SET of lines Niko yells out as he kills them (not the actual lines themselves.) So don't worry kids, if you heard him say something in a mission, he will say it again! And again....and again....and again.

And lastly, for some reason even though games have been doing this for years, GTA IV still allows objects that obstruct your view of the player to remain opaque. Every other high quality title I have ever seen that operates in 3rd person forces such obstructions to go transparent.

The characters Niko takes missions from and/or befriends are your stock cardboard cutouts but let's face it, no one plays a GTA game for the character study. That's why we have those....um....what're those things called, libraries have them....oh well. Anyway, the dialogue is at times rather humorous, especially when Niko is hanging around Brucie. I think we've all known a Brucie at some point in our lives, so to see Niko indirectly poke fun at these guys is a treat. And as usual, GTA IV satirizes many aspects of society and pop-culture that are just begging for it. Celebrities, radio-talk show hosts, gossip magazines, plenty of entertainment venues and the masses that support them all get the healthy shot of parody that has been coming to them for years.

With a whole lot more polish, mid-mission checkpoints and far less repetition, GTA IV would deserve the accolades and commercial success it has enjoyed as of late. As it stands, however, it is yet another proof that hype, a big name label and commercial success do not always mean a great game. It is a good game, but nothing more.

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