phenorbitalBlog of a graduate working in banking IT in London.

Grand Theft Auto IVFiled Under: Gaming

After months of hype, people complaining about violent games and stories in the national press about it; last week saw the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. Of course, as with most game franchises with numbers in the title, this isn’t actually the fourth in the series but the sixth - and the first not to be a Playstation exclusive upon launch (not including any portable formats).

The hype around the launch, including articles about it heading towards the fastest selling game ever (eclipsing last year’s new record breaker - Halo 3) lead to a lot of people pre-ordering, queues to get the game at midnight and people suggesting that there’d be no chance in hell of getting hold of a copy without a pre-order. Of course, this was all nonsense as I happily walked into a shop at lunchtime on Tuesday and picked up a copy with no problems whatsoever.

Eventually I arrived home and threw the disc into the Xbox, and away I went to Liberty City. For those who aren’t aware, Liberty City is modelled on New York; in a not-very-loose way. The names have been changed, but there’s no mistaking the Statue of Happiness for the Statue of Liberty, or Star Junction for Times Square (especially with the replica of one of the offices at work on it). This resemblance makes the game very interesting, especially having only visited New York within the past couple of months.

So far I haven’t managed to explore too much within the single player, as work has got in the way of playing, but what I have encountered has been good fun. Compared to Vice City, the last GTA game I played, the vehicle handling is much better, and the AI is also very good (with people getting out of their cars and running away if you point a gun at them). Another great new feature is the mobile phone, allowing you to call up your contacts to arrange things, prank call the police, and most crucially - get to the multiplayer.

GTA IV is the first of the GTA games to support multiplayer natively, although previous versions have seen the Multi Theft Auto mods add this to it, and despite it being a new venture for them it seems to work remarkably well. There are a number of different game modes, with different ones being suited to different numbers of players, and my only criticism would be that at times the areas seem a little too large when playing with 8 people.

All in all, GTA IV is one of the best games I’ve played, and with the mass of achievements available and stats being tracked left right and centre, I’m sure that I’ll be playing it for a while yet.

Tags: games, grand theft auto, gta, multiplayer, xbox