With IV, Grand Theft Auto has, in many ways, grown up. The parody that too often ends up being potty humor is still present, but this is no longer a cartoon trying to be a gangster film, and Liberty City is no longer made up of rows of dollhouses with a couple dozen different types of dolls wandering around outside of them. It’s not a video game city like you’re used to; it feels like a real city. The environment is one of the main things that sets GTA IV apart from the crowd, and makes it feel like no game ever has.
Liberty City is dense and dirty; it’s built on top of hills and valleys, and every street and every building look different from the rest. There’s construction yards and garbage dragged to the curb, there are intersections full of dozens of cars and busying pedestrians, as well as lonely and strangely serene rooftops. Because of this, the game is just as much about the burnt orange sunset gleaming off a graffiti-covered, dilapidated, abandoned warehouse as it is about killing the mobsters inside of it.
It’s what makes GTA IV enjoyable no matter what rate you play it at. Taking a stroll to the hot dog vendor two blocks away or taking a ride in a taxi and watching the city go by from its backseat is just as engrossing as playing pool with your girlfriend or going out drinking with a friend and driving him home, and so is sniping at a drug deal gone wrong or throwing a grenade into a pile of police cars. Not everyone will get the same kind of pleasure from doing all of these things, but what doses you take them in is, of course, entirely up to you, and in their individual contexts, with their individual mechanics, they are equals.
It’s easy to miss, but you haven’t seen some of the best GTA IV has to offer until you’ve paid a bridge toll, read an email from your mother, watched some TV, gone bowling with a buddy, and cruised the freeway on a motorcycle with the radio turned off. The first time you get to Star Junction (the game’s Times Square) pull your car over, get out, and just watch it for a few minutes.
IV’s story in the end isn’t, as many reviews have called it, Oscar-worthy, but in conjunction with the top-tier voice acting, writing, and cut scene direction the series is known for, it’s more along the lines of a clever, modern British heist movie. It’s not about a lowlife gangster rising up from shacks and beaters to mansions and Ferraris like the three Grand Theft Autos last generation, it’s about redemption and the American Dream. Its player character, Niko Bellic, is a Serbian immigrant who took part in the Bosnian war almost two decades ago, within which he lost nearly everyone he loved. His attitude about his life before immigrating is nothing but negative (at one point he even admits that it “broke” him), and he’ll never be happy.
Unlike in III, Vice City and San Andreas, crime doesn’t pay, and neither does revenge. This is not glorified hyper-sexuality and ultra-violence. Niko is a different man at the end of the game than he was at the beginning, and he’s one of the easiest characters to sympathize with and live vicariously through in a video game ever. He gets confused and frustrated, feels guilt and sadness, and loves and lives. Many players will find themselves making in-game decisions as if they were him. Even the camera while driving isn’t located directly behind the car like every other game, it’s located behind Niko.
The impact NaturalMotions’ Euphoria software has on the game shouldn’t be understated either. Every object in the game feels like it has real weight, and they interact with each other in a way that feels significantly more real than ever before in a video game. The reactive character animations created in real-time are also sometimes even frighteningly realistic. These two innovations used in conjunction with each other make messing around in the game’s sandbox more entertaining and anecdote-worthy than ever before. It’s the rare kind of new technology that feels so right, every game released in the near future would be better with it.
Grand Theft Auto IV is what keeps us all playing, making, and reading and writing about video games. It is the new. There have been flashes of new in many games so far this generation, but this is the first that has it from beginning to end.
Much like III was, it’s more than just a game that’s so great its few misgivings are forgivable. We get a handful of games that are generally impressive like that every year, but it’s special in a way those aren’t. It transcends terms like “game of the year” and “masterpiece.” It is actually groundbreaking and generation-defining.
