In just an hour or so late last night running around the new game, I can already tell it's the game of the year. It's amazingly rich in every aspect - detail, scope, flexibility, features, storytelling - and answered *all* of the dreamlist items I've had for every other GTA game. I'm going to get right to the bullet points, since I know you hate reading long sentences (and google does, too) but first, here's the front page of the Rockstar Games GTA4 site, which I think sets the tone nicely:
First off, let's talk about the great features the GTA franchise has been boasting for awhile now:
- Big map. The San Andreas map truly felt like 3 separate counties, and somehow they've managed it without any "loading map" transition zones. GTA4's new Liberty City map might as well be the real New York City, as it feels that massive.
- Flexibility. You really can do whatever you want. Yes, there are missions to walk you through the game, unlocking new areas and abilities. But they have no specific deadlines and, once there are a few of them waiting for you, no specific order they need to be completed it. You really can just stop at any time throughout the game for something tangential.
- Great weapons. Not just powerful (rocket launchers), potentially tricky (grenades) or plentiful, but also funny (golf clubs in Vice City) and challenging enough to use well that you can become a clear master of them but not so much that it's tedious.
- Great driving. You're a car thief - although you have other talents - so it's important that the driving be fun, and it always is. Again, this isn't Gran Turismo, so you don't need 2 weeks at Bondurant to be the city's foremost wheelman, but it's not MarioKart, either. All of the games have a very movie-stuntman quality to the driving, so that fast corners are a blur of four-wheel-drift and squealing tires, jumps are enveloped in a bubble of low gravity and even the clumsiest of driving daredevils almost always lands back on four wheels. Of any game where you're behind the wheel, GTA (since 3) has always been the closest to how most of us envision our driving looking when we daydream.
- Comedy. The radio stations are hilarious and irreverent. The billboards mock real products, the cars mock real cars, the cities mock real cities, the characters mock real characters... are you seeing the pattern? It's a giant, navigable satire with new comedy easter eggs waiting to be found in every out-of-the-way place.
- Storytelling. The characters have a history, a personality and complex motives. Even though I'm sure the relationships you'll have with them are scripted and unchangeable, it never feels that way, as decisions to help, hurt, ignore or befriend them seem yours to make and only early in the game or at the occasional key point does the storyline halt until you make the "right" choice.
- Visually rich. The scenery is movie-like, with sweeping panoramas, long shadows, dramatic closeups, and a sweeping camera angle that would make John Woo take notice. While up close many of the buildings often lack detail, much like hollywood sets they are designed to look real as backdrops and set the scene for your mayhem.
With all this going for the GTA games in the past, what could they possibly add to GTA4 to improve? They're using the Liberty City map again, from GTA3, and our new lead (Niko) starts out driving for a cab service, basically the same gig as Claude's taxi driver job in 2001. Is it the same game, now with a Russian accent? Hardly. Previous GTA games were excellent in their own right but left players yearning for more, and this is where GTA4 has delivered.
- Online multiplayer. It's hard to believe a game could have survived this long without it, as the online experience has quickly become more important than the solo gameplay, but that's a testament to how strong the GTA games have been. GTA3 San Andreas had sold 21 million copies as of March 08, making it the number-one-selling video game in America, and without any online capabilities at all. GTA4 has blown that limitation away, matching up to 16 players online in a dozen types of matchups, without losing any of the game's magical flexibility. I can't describe how thrilling it was for Clint and I to discover online last night that we could create an online game with 14 other friends (handpicked or automatically matched based on rank) and be dropped into the giant map, an assortment of weapons littering the sidewalks and hundreds of cars, bikes, boats, helicopters and pedestrians moving around us like a true, living city. There are modes without time or score limits and where friends can join and drop seamlessly without starting a new game, making the experience like a virtual world that exists online. Unlike any other online game I've played, once I invited Clint to my game there he was, walking down the sidewalk, but there was no "loading game" screen, no specific race course we were limited to or specific mission we had to achieve. We could roam the giant city together - or against each other - using nearly all the resources of the city to accomplish whatever mayhem we dreamed up. It's such a powerful aspect of the game and is so perfectly implemented I predict it will change how gamers think about online play, and it's exactly what we've all been dreaming would come to the GTA franchise.
- New physics and AI engines. Thanks to Euphoria, people's bodies move like never before, and with body language tied to their speech and attitudes - not just characters, every NPC. Nudge a guy on the subway platform and he'll cross his arms, put up his fists, and start trash-talking you. Drive onto the sidewalk and the swaggering prostitutes change their tune and their walk from a sultry "hey, baby!" to a shrieking "ah, man, I just had my nails done!" and you can tell which ones are wearing stilettos because they run differently. Niko can scale walls and jump over gaps, catching ledges in a very Lara Croft-way and pulling himself up. Street debris flutters by in the breeze from passing cars. Explosions rock anything not nailed down, sending trash cans and newspaper boxes tumbling. Hoods and door panels from an exploding car even have mass and realistic physics, tumbling into a crowd and knocking people over.
- More detail than ever, and not just in the graphics or missions or dialogue - in the gameplay and in your movement throughout the city, it's closer to real life than ever because of the small things that were thoughtfully included. Before you can steal a parked car, you need to smash the window and hotwire it - and dodge the cops if the alarm sounds. Crash into a lightpole when driving fast enough and Niko (and his passengers) might fly through the windshield - apparently criminals never wear seatbelts. Pedestrians with cellphones can report your crimes, so even a cop-free zone is under scrutiny. Radio stations are mixed dynamically (as in GTA3 San Andreas) with results of your gameplay affecting the news soundbites you'll hear. Falling affects your health, while being shot affects body armour strength. Shoot an enemy in the arm, and they'll clutch the wound and otherwise react to the specific damage. When Niko leaves the bar and he's stumbling drunk, the whole world spins and blurs. I've tried to drive home but Niko can't handle a vehicle in this state, lurching it through intersections and nicking other traffic, and eventually cops arrest him for drunk driving, so since then I've just laughed as he weaves into the street to hail a cab.
- Everything else got better. Liberty City is more beautiful than ever before - it makes the real New York look bland by comparison. There are more realistic cars, that drive faster and jump higher, that even more closely resemble the real-life cars they're mocking. The explosions are worthy of a summer blockbuster movie. The HUD and the interactive map are smoother, more automatic and easier to use. There's even a nav system, letting you mark waypoints and giving you turn-by-turn directions. In one of millions of clever details found throughout the game, the nav voice is different depending on what kind of vehicle you're driving, and luxury cars give you more full-featured directions. On the second mission your cousin gives you a cell phone, that automatically keeps numbers, messages, and reminders and controls the multiplayer aspects of the game, and you can operate it while driving or walking, without having to pause. Like so many aspects GTA4, it's made to feel more like real life, as though you really are Niko and less like a game.
- It really is gorgeous. The developers approached it like cinematographers, looking for every chance to create stunning visual and dramatic effects and using everything about the game - backdrops, weather, lighting, reflections, ambient noise, camera angles, motion blur, sound effects - to enhance the story, to depict the tone of a neighborhood or plot segment, or simply to plant an image in the player's mind. There are many, many times when you can forget it's a video game, especially when flying over faux-Manhattan in a helicopter or as you let the controls go slack in the slow-motion moments during a vehicular stunt. Every sunset is an incredible one, every surface is appropriately reflective or hazy or weathered, every new car sports a gleaming finish and the mirrored-chrome wheels on big SUVs catch the light as they turn. At so many points in the game I just want to stop and take a picture, because Liberty City is extremely photogenic.
I really haven't played enough to find the weaknesses yet. Everything I've tried to make Niko do, he's either done as I'd hoped, done in an even more realistic way than I'd hoped, or done in a way that degraded nicely in the context of the game (ie: he can scale walls, but not the highest ones, which makes sense). It's more real, more flexible, more addictive, more social and better looking than ever. And for the first time, it's available on Playstation (PS3) and Xbox (360) - a first for the Xbox platform and a more diverse (especially online) userbase for Rockstar. Granted, the number of PS2's out there still massively shadows both PS3 and Xbox consoles combined - 13 million PS3's and 19 million Xbox 360's, compared to 120 million PS2's - but this is exactly the kind of game that will sell next-gen consoles.
Based on what (admittedly little) I've seen so far, the state of console gaming right now, the history of this franchise and the improvements they've made, and the degree to which the developers seem to have both truly listened to the requests from their fans as well as played the games extensively themselves and seen the unrealized possibilities in previous installments, I have very high expectations for Grand Theft Auto IV. I'm calling it right now: Game of the Year. I'd even venture to speculate "Best-Selling Next-Gen Console Game" as I think this wraps the best of everything we've seen so far in Xbox 360 and PS3 capabilities, online interaction and unscripted, non-traditional gameplay into a package that makes every minute feel like you, the player, are the guy that puts the "rock star" in Rockstar Games. And even at $59.50, that feeling is going to sell a lot of games.
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