Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Rockstar Games
• Released on: 2008-04-29
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: PLAYSTATION 3
• Format: Playstation
• 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

Unbelievable detail
You can drive for hours and not see the same street twice; and never under the same lighting/weather conditions...in a Ferrari... just amazing. Some missions can be frustrating when the bad guys get away, but overall a great game. There are very few 1 player games that I have ever put so many hours into.

a videogaming achievement
i'm a mature gamer who bought a dozen or so videogames with a new xbox just to see how the technology had evolved. (the digital animations in many recent films had piqued my interest.) some few important flaws aside, grand theft auto is in my view exactly where the medium is headed, and is head and shoulders the best game available today ... and i say that as a great admirer of half life 2, portal, assassin's creed, bioshock and crackdown. the point here is total, seamless, deep immersion in a world. not just an environment, not just a point of view or mission or skill set, but all the redolent layers of culture: people, infrastructure, authority, television, radio, internet, dating, sex, weapons, power, money, recreational activities, jobs, vengeance, justice -- and not just culture but a world where hydrants erupt when you drive over them, jetliners blink their slow trace across the night sky, the city breathes with distant sounds of traffic, disorder, and heavy objects, the light changes almost second to second with the time of day or the weather or the illumination of interior spaces, and your vision blurs and your driving becomes erratic if you have too much to drink. against this rich background of sardonic humor and social commentary in the guise of "urban landscape", the splendid graphical rendering and gritty art design, the two big flaws are the waxy and unconvincing computer animation in cutscenes, and the still less than lifelike animation of the wireframe action figures (those strip club dancers are not very enticing). but the depth of detail here is remarkable -- the way different weapons handle, the way different cars drive (carjack an ambulance or stretch limo, for example), the completely unique content on different car radio stations, the internet parodies, the cellphone text messages, and the sheer variety of characters in the mix -- all of it designed with unbelievable detail and dramatic interest. despite the segmentation of the game into separate missions, the narrative has a compelling overall architecture. as one example, i had early on tried to cross to the largest of the four islands of the city (blocked by a plot motivated police action), and had been shot or arrested every time. so as i worked the missions, one of the fortunate recipients of my gangster skills asked me to drive him home: and home was on the inaccessible island. crossing over the bridge, the light of late afternoon streaming into the car, the music on the radio playing a vatic beat, it was an emotionally rousing moment. i say "me" but of course it's really niko bellic, an eastern european thug on a quest that only gradually becomes clear as the plot unfolds; and it's a third flaw of the game that this quest, as important as it is to niko, does not seem very important in his unstructured and varied choices of dating, driving and drilling bad guys with high calibre. but that's because the richness of the storytelling has made all the conventional story lines of videogames obsolete. the essential point is that this videogame has i think crossed the milestone of creating a digital, full length feature film, with much more depth and detail than any feature film has ever had to come up with, and a film that is potentially open ended, multilayered and even life changing. (i've learned that the addictive effect of videogaming is considerable, which means there is power there to affect "plotted" change of all kinds in videogamers.) videogames can now be anything: the story of an individual's search for the meaning of life, non stop sex with a harem, fighting the revolution and constitutional wrangles of a new republic, solving a deep scientific mystery, getting married and starting a family, building a career in a corporation ... anything and everything, but computed in real time and with an open ended architecture. videogames can do these things with the compelling visual realism and depth of any major studio film with digital special effects, and with the possibility of a collaboratively constructed reality through network game play. the painting of light and visual objects is i think a trivial problem: the obstacles now are in managing the narrative complexity and event interactions, in building new narrative conventions or genres, and in the animation of life forms, in particular a speaking mouth and an exerting figure (for example, a figure that actually runs *on the ground*). the fourth and last flaw of this game is the gangster mentality of all the characters, which is not really a flaw so much as a genre convention (as in for example film noir or chandler novels). this gangster ethos actually reduces the impact of the violence, which i think motivates too much of the game. but grand theft auto prototypes a new cultural modality, the digital fantasy domain, which as fantasy can come very close to reality and as game can stimulate any perplexity of emotion. it's an achievement.

My favorite among the GTA series
Pretty deep, especially for a videogame.

I don't want to tell any spoilers, so here's the gist. You play as Niko Bellic, a veteran soldier from the genocidal war in Kosovo. While fighting in the war, Niko, his cousin, and their platoon mates are betrayed by one of their members, leaving only four soldiers alive. Niko's cousin Roman goes to the US to seek a better life following the war, but ends up becoming a cokehead with a lot of gambling debts. He entices Niko to come to the US with tales of the American Dream, but when Niko arrives, he discovers the truth about his cousin's activities.

Niko has only two reasons to come to the states... to start over, and to find the remaining two soldiers from his platoon: Darko and Florian. There are no riches or comfortable accommodations for Niko, only the hunt for the betrayer.

Niko rampages through the streets earning money for himself and his brother. All the while, he meets a few characters along the way and tries to cope with his past.

In GTA3, you were a nobody. In GTA Vice, you were a tool. In GTA San Andreas, you are caught up in the worst storyline ever. In GTA LCS, you were Tony C. In GTA IV, you are a real, original character.

Not only is your character genuine, he is also one hard-boiled mofo. His soldier background is present in the gunplay of the game. Niko can duck behind walls, blindfire, take cover, dive across gaps for cover, the whole shabang. Aiming is much improved from past GTA games. You can screw people up pretty badly if you want. Grenade tossing is spot on. The AI isn't too dumb either.

Perhaps the most notable upgrade is with driving. You have a little GPS locater in your car and you can set your own waypoints. You can also take taxis to all marked locations and waypoints, very nice. The radio stations are brilliant as always. Car selection is sweet. Just be careful while driving...lots of terrible crap can happen to you. Sudden stops will send you sailing out of the windshield, and if your car begins billowing even a little bit of smoke, it will blow up eventually with wear. Lucky for us players, cars in GTA4 take a pretty long time to blow up once they catch fire. Just dive out of the car if it does.

Finally, the graphics. The game is beautiful. The Liberty City skyline has never looked so alive. Take some time out to look around from a high perch or while driving across a bridge. You will be pleased with what you see. I was actually able to use this to demonstrate the next generation of urban environmental modeling. Yeah it looks great.

I would have liked to see the same variety of available vehicles that was present in GTA San Andreas. This was the one downgrade that bothered me about the game. But the improvements in gameplay more than repaid for that change.