Is this game EPIDEMIC or just an EPIC FAIL?

This game has so much content for $60 that as a reviewer I don’t even know where to begin, so I will just say what is important, and give you the run down. This does NOT have any spoilers or does NOT contain anything that you haven’t heard yet. (Please excuse any unprofessionalism since I am very excited to get back to playing) 

First of the graphics this is what anyone cares about in today’s market (majority) so I will get it out of the way first. GTA4 does look good, sometimes as you are blazing down the street in a Banshee (Viper) and see the world tunnel and you can see all the time Rockstar put into getting the motion blur, the lighting and polygons all working in an almost  a PERFECT synchronized way and you realize why it was delayed 2 times. This game does have a lot more than just graphics, in the visual department, the way your player moves and reacts to the world, the way his clothes move in the wind as he is riding a bike, or how he smashes the window and then shoots out of it. These are just a few of the visual things more will be said in the gameplay section.

GTA4 sounds as good as it looks, your weapon sounds like a gun and not like a toy, your rocket launcher sounds like it is going to ripe a whole in the space time continuum and when you run as fast as you can since you just heard a police radio. The sounds of the police and the chatter you hear as the police are planning on taking you down, or the DJ on the Radio talking about something that they shouldn’t be are just some of the ways the game immerses you. The best example of sound is when you are standing alone with you and your car and there is no one else around. No police around you since you have just escaped. All you hear is the radio in your car and the sound of screams and yells in the distance as you are sniping away at anyone who approaches, and then you are taking down by a rocket launcher and the last thing you see is a car door and a police man flying through the air.   

Grand Theft Auto has unbelievable physics, it could be due to the use of Euphoria, and other engines but this game has physics in mind, gone are the day of driving as fast you can to try to run over someone just to go through them. In GTA4 if you hit someone coming of a Freeway (Highway, Overpass, and turnabout), you will see them go flying or get run over and due the physics your car will slow down according to the person’s weight. GTA4 has a lot of cars and trucks and all cars handle differently, they all have their own top-heavy feel or low to the ground sticky feeling. The cars accelerate differently and drift differently, they take turns differently, have their own top speed, and even have different sounds. But the usual glitches are still there as you see the exact same car with the exact same color and rusting right next to each other, but that can easily but forgiven since you just saw a pedestrian get run over by a cop.

Lastly the gameplay, GTA4 has everything a gamer could ask for, if you are feeling casual hook up with your girlfriend (in the game) and go play pool, darts, or go bowling. If you are feeling like shooting something type in a cheat and fire away, or when you want to go flying down a city in a Lotus-Ferrari Spider mixed car you can. And when you feel like taking in the sites grab yourself a helicopter and go flying around, then land on a roof top turn off the Radar and HUD and sit back and relax. GTA has a lot of additions from the last (obviously) but I will name the ones worth noting. First of the new cover system a first for GTA franchise, the new cover system allows you take cover behind anything and everything, cars, boxes, lamppost, building, paper box , garbage, anything. By pressing LB you will hug up against an object, by pressing RT to blind fire, or press and hold LT to aim and press RT to turn out and fire for a more accurate shot. The next addition is the way you steal cars which are parked. First you will either smash the window with your elbow or with the gun you’re holding, once in your car you press LT and then RT to hotwire the car and then you’re of. When you are stealing a car from a person, you will punch the person and then throw them out but if you are holding a gun he will use it to persuade them out of the car. The new aim system is very use full for many things besides just being able to pop a guy in his gonads, you can point your reticule at someone and they will raise their hand and stay still for a little while, and then start running away. The second use is to make someone get out of a car even if you are running low on bullets you can just point and aim at someone and they will usually get out of the car or run you over. The last use, is the one I find most useful, to be able to shoot, but not just shoot to kill, the best use is the shoot to injure. You can usually just kill someone with one shot to the head but why do that when you can shoot him in the foot wait for him to get up and then watch him crawl away. The people at Rockstar put a lot of time into the realism aspect of the game, such as  when you shoot someone while they are driving, they will stop most of the time, but sometimes they will continue to have their foot on the gas and will crash into everything, which can be used for many things, to get police of your tail and for amusement. The story is very well done this game comes close to an Oscar winning performance in the voice acting department, you feel empathy for you character you care for him. I actually found myself looking both ways before crossing the street in order to not get hit by a car, which could easily be explained by low health, but also I don’t want to pay the expensive hospital bill. The game has a very good story line but it does get repetitive, all it basically consist of is a couple of story based killing and chase someone down for protection money, and kill another guy, take your girlfriend on a date, kill another guy, get money from someone for protection, then kill someone else. But you can always turn on cheats and go nuts. But most people will buy GTA 4 for the online, the online in GTA 4 is one of the best it does everything the single player does but with more people, up to 16 player can play online at once, or cause havoc in the streets. You can do the normal Team Death Math, but the GTA exclusive things like Cops and robbers which is where one team is the cops and the other team tries to evade them. There are also other modes like Mafiya Work which is basically assassination and Car Jack City which is where you go and grab a car which is located on your map and you take it back to a location, all these game modes can be done in teams or by yourself. Last but not least the Free Mode, which is the simplified single player but you can do it with friends. In this game mode you can roam the city and kill pedestrians or have a drive by with a few friends. You can do anything you want but with up 16 people. GTA 4 does have a few issues, the game does have serious frame rate issues as certain points and sometimes a whole building might pop up in front of you. And for you PS3 folk online is a killer since everyone is trying to go online at once which mean crashes and kicks. For the 360 owners the time I spent online it was fine but it may have been since it was the first day I bet by the time this Review releases the severs are being clogged up. But surprisingly I have not experienced any clipping issues or other low frame rate related glitches. Yet you will still get those moments where you see a very nice car, you chase it, it goes over a hill, and it’s gone only to find a crappy van.

GTA1 had done for open ended gaming that Star Craft did for RTS, they defined the open world genre and no one has been able to match their style and their addictive gameplay. Rockstar then released GTA3 and for the first time we got a glimpse of a game which allows you do anything, in third person. Vicecity and San Andreas were released and which just added more amazing gameplay and conditioned this franchise till it had power to do whatever it wanted, and we know what that power is. GTA4 and Rockstar do have power, how do I know this? Well even though they delayed this game 2 times, and have had issues with ESRB (and Jack Thomson), they have still sold so many copies that they will beat Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, and possibly never be beaten until GTA5. In my city all GTA4s were gone within the first day at ever EB Games, Futureshop, Bestbuy, and Blockbuster. This game has so much power over people that Rockstar could have said “we will wait a little longer to do something’s”, sure you would have been mad but you would have still put $90 down on the Collector’s Edition and waited in line for 4 hours at the midnight launch just to go home and play it, even for 2 minutes. Grand Theft Auto 4: Libercity is by far THE BEST GAME I HAVE PLAYED. You would be foolish to not even try it out.       

Score
Gameplay (SinglePlayer) 10
Gameplay (Multiplayer) 10
Story 10
Physics 10
Overall 100%