Grand Theft Auto IV
PlayStation 3
Nostalgia Factor:
I have so many great, nostalgic memories of Grand Theft Auto IV, that I feel like I might be writing this segment for a long time. This game is one of the reasons I bought a PlayStation 3 to begin with. I was freshly single and had moved in to my own apartment. I had some money burning a hole in my pocket. Someone suggested to me - hey you should get a PS3 so you can play Grand Theft Auto IV online with other people.
So I went out and bought a PS3. GTA IV was one of my first games - along with The Darkness - a game I only bought because it was cheap. But it was GTA IV that stole my heart. Not only was the single player mode a complete revolution - molding GTA into a more "realistic" style, the online mode was a thing of beauty. I'm a natural born troublemaker. Rather than play online seriously, I quickly turned into an obnoxious troll whose only goal in life was to make people miserable. And I relished every second of it.
The only online mode I played seriously to win was race mode. Even though I'm not a big racing fan, there was just something magical about the competitive and chaotic races. Some games had as many as 12 participants. It was wild, especially at the start of the race when everyone is bunched up. It was like a battle royale. If you could survive the opening scrum intact, the rest of the race was an intense affair. I remember sitting on the edge of my seat night after night after night playing online race mode and mastering it. When I was racing poorly, I'd go backwards on the race track in an attempt to mess everyone else up. I always found a way to have fun with this game.
I can easily say I've spent more time playing this game online than any other game out there. Multiplayer games never really appealed to me - and they still don't. But GTA IV was an exception. I was obsessed with this online world. Despite my trollish ways, I made a ton of friends in the GTA community - some of which I'm still in touch with today.
I'd probably spent a hundred hours in the game's various multiplayer modes before I even finished the single player story mode. I did beat it eventually. I revisited it again a few months after the fact because I didn't remember anything about what had happened. I was drunk a lot back then. When I think back on my dark, drunken years where I would get black out drunk on a nightly basis, it lines up with when I was playing GTA IV. I'd come home from work, and immediately proceed to get trashed and log into this game - playing it until I passed out on the couch. And this was a phase of a few years. Definitely a dangerous time in my life.
That was back in, say, 2008 into 2009. It wasn't until 2010 or so that my interest in GTA IV finally began to wane. It was a good run, but I was cleaning my life up. I was meeting my future wife, and we'd end up moving in together. I'd get a new job, with new hours. I'd start playing other games. Despite being an enormous gaming obsession that sucked up nearly 3 years of my life, I put GTA IV in my rearview mirror, and I haven't played it again until now: 2023.
Being generous, let's say 12 years have passed. That's still a long freaking time. At one point in my life I likely would have considered GTA IV my favorite video game of all time. How would I feel about it today?
I am so ready to dive in.
You play as Niko Bellic, a battle-weary man who is a freshly arrived immigrant to the United States. It doesn't specifically say what country he is coming from, but he sounds Russian. He hooks up with his cousin Roman, who has been boasting all about how great America is and how he has been living the American dream. You quickly find out that Roman is full of bologna, and he is buried in debts and troubles, living in a crappy apartment with a crappy job. All of his associates are shady people like gangsters and drug dealers.
Niko does what he has to do in order to survive in this new world. Runs protection rings, works as a cab driver, beats people up, steals cars. Eventually his path leads to murder. Roman's world falls apart around Niko, and the two cousins find themselves on their own against the world.
While all this is going on, it is revealed that Niko has come to the United States to find a man named Volgin. He comes from, uh, the country that Niko comes from. He committed some really heinous war crimes, which Niko's friends were victims of. Niko has revenge on his mind.
So this is one of the deeper GTA storylines. Not only is it your typical "bottom-feeder rising to power" story, it adds a revenge element to the mix as well. This is also the first GTA game with relationships, as you can date people, or take friends out to the bar, or do little side missions to improve your relationships with some characters. It makes everything feel so much more realistic, as this game takes a step back from the usual comedic, almost overdone parody of American culture that you found in Vice City and San Andreas.
I'll start with the driving, since this is the part of the game that got me hooked to begin with. I'll be honest: when I first started playing this I was terrible at the driving. I kept slip-sliding off the road. I couldn't turn corners. The game didn't handle like previous GTA games, where slamming on the brakes brings your vehicle to a perfect slow down and eventual stop. Real physics apply here. Momentum carries you, your tires skid across the pavement during sharp turns. You have to drive very cautiously in this game. You can't just drive like a maniac as in past GTA games and expect to keep control of your vehicle.
When I was new to the game, I turned to race mode online to help me get a hang of the game's driving mechanics. I already talked about my online addiction to this game. But it really helped me as a driver. Keeping your car steady, avoiding traffic, strategically tapping the brakes. Once you get the hang of it, it never really leaves you. Even though I haven't played the game in 12 years, I was able to jump right back into the driving. There were so many single player missions I completed with great ease. I couldn't help but think how much easier the game is when you are an ace driver.
Combat is absolutely nothing special. You hold the aim button to lock onto your character, and then the fire button to shoot at them. There is a duck and cover feature in this game, which I guess is nice. My main strategy consisted of running and weaving and locking onto an enemy for a split second to shoot him and knock him off balance, and then release my lock and find another enemy to shoot while the other one was reeling. I could take down big groups of enemies like this with relative ease.
The game's missions seem a bit lackluster in comparison to previous GTA games. I suppose they're going for more realism with this title. Missions tend to be more grounded, like find a car and steal it or go to an enemy hideout and shoot all the bad guys or find the drug dealer in the picture and shoot him or chase a fleeing enemy until they crash, etc. Missions are very mundane and almost fetch quest-like in their simplicity. Gone is the creativity of titles like San Andreas and Vice City. You won't be blowing up construction sites with RC controlled helicopters. You won't be visiting Area 51. Nothing crazy like that.
When you aren't taking missions, you can do activities with your friends. In fact, they are always blowing up your phone. Want to go bowling with Roman? Take Michelle out on a date? Little Jacob wants to hang out now. Want to go to the strip club with Brucie? The first time I played this game, back in the day, I always answered the phone and did these activities. At the time, this wrinkle to the gameplay was revolutionary and something I'd never seen in a game before. I was completely blown away at the game's commitment to creating a living and breathing world around Niko.
Now when I play the game, I never pick up the phone and I always pass on the chance to do an activity if I'm forced to answer the call. The reward you get doing these things is next to nothing, and they are so plentiful and time-consuming that I really felt they distracted from the main story.
I applaud GTA IV for its commitment to telling a more realistic story, set in a more realistic world. While I may prefer the more cartoonish, satirical world of other games in the series, the realism of this title really gives it its own identity and sets it apart from the others. That being said, I found the single player mode to be pretty boring. I mean, the game is well-made. It's not that. It just feels like the quests are very repetitive in nature. Drive here, shoot these people, get in the car, and drive here. That's most missions. And the game's map is so big, driving from point A to point B started to get stale fast. I found myself taking taxi cabs literally everywhere to fast travel - which I never did in previous playthroughs.
By the time I was even 50% done with the game's single player mode, I was nearly checked out mentally. It just wasn't doing much for me anymore. I eventually beat the game, yeah, but I was never overly ecstatic to fire this one up when I'd turn it on at night.
Luckily, the game's multiplayer mode is still up and running. Not that anyone is really on there anymore. I logged into race mode to see if there was any good competition out there, and if I still "had it" after all these years. My very first game I joined, there were about 5 or 6 people in it, and it was a really fun race. I remember being surprised at how there were still so many people playing online. Right after the race ended, the host of the session moved the game to free mode, and everyone immediately disbanded.
In the two or three ensuing weeks, I was never able to find a game with more than three racers (including myself) in it at a time. It was really pathetic. I guess I just got lucky that very first game back. The only player I found myself consistently connecting with was noejectseat, who was in race mode almost every night I logged in. He was a level 9 and really stiff competition in some of the races. I was a level 0 because I'd for some reason lost all my online level progress after not playing the game for 12 years. He probably wondered where this random level 0 player showed up and started kicking his butt in the races. Well, if you're reading this, now you have your answer. I used to be an ace at this game about 12 years ago, and I just got back into playing it now. There you go.
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Graphics:
I used to look at this game and think "wow, video game graphics can't get any better than this!" In retrospect, this is a laughable statement. The whole game is lacking in color and has that "dull" look to it, where everything is muddled in grey or brown. I associate that look with the PS3 era of gaming.
Background draw-in is noticeable at times. The game slows down at inopportune moments. Road surfaces can be glitchy. Traffic tends to just materialize out of thin air. Entire landscapes can get fuzzy and blurry - an example being what happens when you cross over a bridge at night time. It's like you're playing a PS2 game. Characters look okay, but they definitely aren't as expressive as characters you'd see in modern day games.
I know the PS3 can do better. I've seen games released for this system that I'd classify as gorgeous or beautiful, To be fair, GTA IV was released in the console's early years. If this had been released a few years later, I'm sure it would have looked much better.
The game does nail the "city" aspect perfectly, though. All the New York City landscapes are there. One of my good friends from NYC says he can spend hours just driving around and seeing all these real life landmarks peppered throughout the map. I've never been to New York, but I can definitely feel the big city vibe as I play this game. That vibe is hard to put into words. I've been to Chicago many times, and often as I was playing and walking or driving through a neighborhood - I'd think how they really nailed that big city "feel". Again, it is hard to describe. If you know what I mean, you know what I mean.
Sound:
I haven't really scoured the internet to see what other people are thinking, but in my opinion this is one of the weakest GTA games when it comes to music. There are really only two radio station worth listening to: The Vibe and Liberty Rock Radio. All the other stations are cluttered with talk show junk or songs that I just have no interest in listening to. Do we really need a techno, a jazz, and a reggae station? I'd rather jam along to some real life hits.
It may have just been bad luck on my behalf, but I almost never got to hear some of my favorite songs. I must have dedicated at least 30 hours to this game between single and multiplayer - and I heard Edge of Seventeen a whopping one freaking time. I almost forgot that 1979 from Smashing Pumpkins was even in the game until I heard it for the first time right at the end of the game. And I had the radio almost exclusively set to the rock station. What the heck?
Luckily The Vibe picked up some slack. Gotta love Pony, Bump 'n Grind, Golden, I Want You, and Footsteps in the Dark (which I must have heard about 30 times). Almost every song on this station is good in some way. I tried to invest some time in other stations outside of The Vibe and Liberty Rock, but couldn't find a single other station worth lingering on. The parody right wing talk show was occasionally funny, and really reflects how times haven't changed between 2008 and 2023. They're still whining and complaining about the same crap.
Voice acting is good. I like Niko's accent. All the characters are well-acted and have some depth behind their performances. This is probably the only GTA game where I gave a crap about the story, and I think the voice acting has a lot to do with it.
Overall:
If I had reviewed this game back in 2008, it would have easily gotten an A+. Time to pump the brakes on that, however. Multiplayer mode, which was a big reason why I loved this game so much, is virtually dead. In five more years it will probably be gone forever. So it leaves no real lasting legacy. People playing this game in 2035 will only have the single player mode to go on, and unfortunately the single player mode is not impressive.
I'll give the game its dues. It was incredibly ahead of its time when it was released. The giant world of the game, the recreation of New York City, the story, the realism, the way your car takes damage, the way you interact with NPCs. All of this was groundbreaking stuff. You can go on dates, go to shows, go bowling, play darts, get a job as a taxi driver, a bounty hunter, etc. Previous GTA games consisted of just going from mission to mission until you completed the game. This game offers so, so much more than that.
Where I struggled was locating where it was that I was supposed to be having fun. Just because there is a lot to do does not automatically make things fun. The missions are mundane, repetitive, and lack the creative flair of past GTA titles. It feels like you spend the whole game driving to a check mark on the map, shooting a bunch of people, and then running away until you lose the police that are chasing after you. And then you do it again. Sure not every mission is as cut and dry. There are boat missions, helicopter missions, races, and other things that come into play. But they don't offer enough variety to the gameplay. Everything feels sooooo same-y after a while. Like I said before, I wasn't even 50% of the way through the game's main story when I started to check out mentally.
I had this problem with other games too, such as Red Dead Redemption. Driving from point to point on a map for 90% of the game is not fun to me. I needed more variety, more craziness. More of what was embraced in games like Vice City and San Andreas. It just feels like all the fun was sucked right out of this game. Maybe it was done intentionally because the whole story beat of the failed American dream is depressing and dark. But I can't lie, this game did begin to feel like a chore FAST. In the past, I compensated by spending time causing chaos and having a blast in multiplayer mode. Couldn't do that much this time around, unfortunately.
My 2008 rating for this game would have been an A+. My 2023 rating would be somewhere in the areas of a C. But I can't in good conscience give the a game a score in the C range, given all the good times I've had with it and how it is such a big cornerstone of my identity as a gamer. Some of the best times I've ever had gaming have come with this game. But I also can't deny that if you take multiplayer away, it can be quite dull to play through.
I'll compromise and give it a score somewhere in between a C and an A+. I can't in good conscience give it anything higher than this, though.
THE GRADE:
B-
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