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Grand Theft Auto IV
From Rockstar Games
Price: $59.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
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Average customer review:
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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #2 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
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Editorial Reviews
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 past 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
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.
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Customer Reviews
GTA Letdown Again
Well I was eagerly anticipating Grand Theft Auto 4 ever since it was announced. I have been playing GTA since the very first game and nearly every game has been better than I could have imagined, however, GTA San Andreas came out and that was just a ghetto clone of GTA Vice City. And now we have the same game as San Andreas with better graphics and cut scenes but with the same horrible camera angles and camera control. So thank you Rockstar Games for making an awesome game with a piece of junk camera that makes the game worthless. I think I will just wait for the game to come out for on PC, if it ever does, so i can play GTA the way it was meant to be played, with a mouse and keyboard.
Adds Little to the Franchise
Short Review
Gameplay 6/10 - in essence a glorified GTA III with almost all the same features, some new minigames and side quests, but realism kills a lot of the fun
City 9/10 - incredibly well thought out and realistic city, massive, detailed, has everything that a metropolitan city should have
Vehicles 4/10 - very unimaginative, horrendous driving capability, many cars will roll on turns and will skid on dry pavement, only two special vehicles (helicopter and speedboat)
Controls 5/10 - sloppy, unintuitive, running and walking are nearly useless, weapon cycling is difficult in a firefight
Graphics 6/10 - great visuals on the city, very realistic / cars and other moving object look ok / people and clothes look slightly better than old xbox games rough facial features
Story 8/10 - very good story, considerably different from previous games, a lot of thought put in here
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Critical Review
Grand Theft Auto IV is a game that was years in the making. However for such a highly touted title as this I really expected more. GTA IV follows the story of an eastern European immigrant to Liberty City named Nico Bellic. He and his cousin Roman start off with small time crime and then Nico moves to more serious stuff such as grand theft auto, arson and murder. All the previous mainstays from the original GTA III are present here, massive city, immersive story, a good amount of weapons and tons of cars.
Gameplay 6/10
There is not a whole lot different in GTA IV from previous GTA games in essential terms. You can jump in any car, truck, motorcycle or van and steal it. You can: run over anyone you want, run into anything, beat up anyone and do all of these things with little virtual and no real consequences (well most of the time). However there are a considerable amount of minigames within GTA IV. You can go to cabaret shows, play darts, play pool, go to strip clubs, go bowling and even use the internet in cafes.
Also you are given a cell phone which helps you keep track of your contacts, text messages and allows you to call people up to get jobs or just to hangout. The phone also serves as the cheat interface. This is one of my favorite features. Instead of having to drive to the person's house or wondering if you were supposed to talk to them, you can just call them up on speed dial. They will also occasionally call you to see if you'd like to do things. It is akin to The Sims ® in this respect, because you'll get a thumbs up or down based on how the date or whatever went. Also, you are able to meet women whether on the internet or through other friends.
There are a ton of missions. From what I can tell you just work your way up through small mobs up to larger ones. This is what happened verbatim in the previous GTA games. There is more story here though and I'll get into that in the story section.
Overall the gameplay I felt was good, but nothing new or revolutionary. I've played other games with minigames such as these and I played GTA III when it first came out. The sad thing is that Rockstar managed to set the bar so high with GTA III that it would be difficult to top it. I was expecting this really over the top GTA IV that would just have so much stuff to do that I wouldn't be able to quit playing. Instead they ended up on the other side. In my opinion the gameplay is bare bones and in terms of pure fun it really falls short. Another thing that is very apparent after playing for a few hours is they wanted to create as realistic of a game as possible. In the process they made the game so realistic it has many of things that suck about real life. When I play games, I want to escape
City 9/10
I must applaud the attention to detail and realism the game designers took to create Liberty City. From the slums to the high rises, you really feel like you're in a metropolis. Graffiti, misshapen fences, partially lit up buildings at night, dirty old carnivals, trash and variety of buildings are just some of things that add to the masterpiece of the city. You'll actually run into traffic on the tollway bridge. People will talk to you as you pass them by. There are four areas and you are only able to get to the other parts once you have completed certain missions. It is referred to as a terrorist threat in the game.
I think what makes the game truly realistic is the minigames and side quests or activities. The ability to get on the internet in a web cafe and go to something like 40 websites is astounding. The time to create the content for this must have taken weeks to come up with. Even the police vehicles have a database where you can look up people and the most wanted in the city. In terms of realism, this city is by far the best recreation of a city and by extension the closest thing to virtual reality. The only problem I have is that you can't get to the other parts of the city until later in the game (without immediately becoming public enemy no. 1).
Cars / Vehicles 4/10
I'm sure plenty of people will have a problem with my take on this, but I really feel this is a weak point in the game. Granted there are tons of vehicles-something like 200 in total. My problem is not with the variety, it is purely with the controls and drive of almost all of the cars in particular. It seems as if all but 10% of them are is severe disrepair or are in need of maintenance. I've never seen so many sloppy turning vehicles in a video game. There is so much body roll in many of the vehicles that you can go around a reasonably normal curve and easily flip a sedan. This harkens back to the realism.
Unfortunately, they developers based few of these on actual physics and attempted to show that normal cars can't take a turn at 75 mph. They can however take them at 45 mph without flipping. Oh and yeah there was an invention a couple of decades ago called ABS. I had some rather high end cars skidding for half a block. If you don't believe me try it for yourself in the game and you'll find it to be true. My qualm with the cars is directly related to the fact that they are obvious replicas of some very common cars. If the cars resemble the real thing, they should drive like the real thing.
The engine sounds are ok. The V8 engines don't sound bad, but the 6 cylinders have very little variance between cars. The cars also seem very slow, even if they aren't. The Comet and Turismo are a couple of the top end cars which very closely resemble some German and Italian carmakers. The only difference is acceleration can be felt between a car and a dump truck. You can always go back to the argument that they are just artificial and this is a moot point. I don't remember how the car's drove in previous GTA games, but I know they were somewhat easier to drive and much faster. It makes it considerably more difficult to run from the cops when you have a dog of a car that has a high chance of rollover, can't turn properly at over 15 mph and will slide on DRY pavement.
By far the worst part is that there are only a few special vehicles (as far as I know). There is a speed boat and the Annihilator - some sort of military helicopter. The only thing I can think of here is marketing. Rockstar planned on selling better vehicles (and weapons) on Xbox Live in the near future. It is brilliant, but I'm one of those crazy people that think for $60 you should get a good amount of extras built-in.
Controls 5/10
I'm not really sure what they were going for here. Controls are clumsy, slow and hardly intuitive. The jump button is X? Your character actually leans when you turn while walking or running. I don't know many people that do this. The part I like the least is that Niko does everything so incredibly slow. He walks as if someone laced his drink with Ketamine. Running is not mush faster. Going along with that, if you happen to get thrown off your bike or out of your car while chasing someone you lose at least 10 seconds getting back into the car. In essence there is absolutely no point to walking if you don't have to. Controls for the cars are not bad. The triggers are the accelerator and the brake.
Weapons control is ok. You can lock on to people with guns, but you also have to lock on to people with a grenade. How exactly does a grenade lock on? It takes a great deal of time to cycle through weapons if you have more than two. The helicopter is a joke. To speed up you hold the trigger and you'll simultaneously raise altitude while moving forward. You need to push the nose down to get it to go faster. This is all well and good until you try to land it. It is nearly impossible to land as you can't get the thing to stay in one position for any length of time. I almost always trash the blades. There is hardly anything different from previous GTA games. Controls are mediocre at best.
Graphics 6/10
The city graphics are really breathtaking. They are very detailed and quite well done. Everything looks very crisp and believable. The water especially has amazing reflective qualities. The cars look decent for the current gaming generation. There was obviously a good amount of time spent here. More importantly it is hard to fault the designers on the visuals of the vehicles because there are just so many of them. I was considerably impressed with the movement of the vehicles on the suspension.
Character detail is average at best, maybe even poor. Even the main character has a very unrealistic graphic quality to it. The faces remind me of Halo 2 from the original xbox which was about four years back. The clothes look really lame. It appears as if the people are wearing construction paper. Everything in general on the people leaves a lot to be desired. They look polygonal and don't have much human quality. Despite this, the animation as always is very smooth and realistic, which I don't understand. If you are going to spend that much time on the animation mapping, why not spend more time on the people's faces.
Story 8/10
I was pretty impressed with the story from GTA IV. It has the makings of a good criminal story. Niko-a former Russian (or eastern European) sailor with an infamous past comes to Liberty city to get a new start and for revenge. Without giving away too much information: Niko plays the role of saboteur, hit man, hired gun, lackey, car theft extraordinaire and just all around criminal. The story follows him and his cousin Roman who owns at cab service. Along the way you'll meet new people who will have various "jobs" to do and some of the story will overlap with other parts of the game.
Each mission has a rather lengthy movie attached to it; probably about five minutes on average. This was the only downside I could find to the story. Other than that, the movies are very informative and give you an insight into the character's personalities and life. The writing was very well done and a lot of the movies had hilarious jokes in them. I will admit I skipped a few however.
Conclusion
Am I happy with my purchase with Grand Theft Auto IV? No, but I was kind of expecting this. With the current trend in games moving towards ultra realism Rockstar was following suit. They are catering to an older crowd which demands more of a top notch entertainment experience instead of swing a remote at a TV. However, I'm a pure gamer and to me any of the previous GTA games is better in relation to exhilaration, which I just don't get with GTA IV. The first day I played the game I became bored very quickly after realizing there just wasn't much to do if you don't play the mission.
Unfortunately there seems to be a divide between these ultra realistic games and one that are purely for fun. GTA San Andreas I felt had a great mixture of both. Sure you can still steal any car, run over people, shoot people, beat them up, but the game just falls flat on its face when it comes to heritage. Where are the insane vehicles, where is the innovation? This game is not revolutionary in any way in my opinion. In fact, when you put this up against current games on this system it is quite inferior in most ways except for playing time. But if you're bored while you're playing who cares how long the game is? Grand Theft Auto III was. It is an ok game, plain and simple and I'd give it a 6 out of 10 overall.
A fun game, but far from revolutionary
Many people are calling GTA IV revolutionary. Yes, the level of detail in this game is impressive, but other than that, it is not much different from the previous GTA games.
The new storyline is interesting, but not exactly an edge of your seat thriller. I personally like the GTA Vice City story best.
While there are aspects of the game that are annoying (ie toll booths and driving on a sheet of ice), any game has its flaws.
In my opinion, the biggest disappointment in this game is the language, which took a big turn for the worse in GTA IV. While GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas all had their share of foul language and sexual content, GTA IV takes it to a new level- perhaps in an attempt to outdo Saints Row, which I feel raised the profanity bar above GTA San Andreas. I feel like this game could have done with a few less f-bombs. Perhaps I notice the language more than before since I have graduated college, gotten married and had a baby girl since the last game came out.
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