Video Games : Grand Theft Auto IV

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from: Rockstar Games

List Price: $49.99

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Amazon Maximum Age: 20 years
Amazon Minimum Age: 204 months
Binding: Computer Game
Brand: Rockstar Games
EAN: 0710425315107
ESRB Age Rating: Mature
Format: CD-ROM
Label: Rockstar Games
Manufacturer: Rockstar Games
Model: 31510
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Release Date: December 02, 2008
Sales Rank: 349
Studio: Rockstar Games

Features:

Detailed area maps for each borough of Liberty City are charted to detail every square mile.
In-depth virtual showroom of every available vehicle plus listing of equipment.
Extensive coverage of all collectibles and where to find them
Niko Bellic is the main character and is described by Rockstar as tough. His home was in Eastern Europe, and he likely may never have traveled to Liberty City if it wasn't for his cousin Roman who is described as a friendly buffoon by Rockstar. Life wasn't going well, and Bellic turns up in Liberty City because he's been receiving e-mails from Roman that are full of lies about how great he is doing in America. Roman is actually in trouble. You and your Windows PC are going to have a wild time

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
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.

Amazon.com Product Description:
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.
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There's always a catch.
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But some skills are international.
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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 pa st 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
Aside from the car jacking and a detailed city environment here are the new features for GTA IV:

Improved combat system - Now you can use cover and also a target lock system, which allows you to take out targets with greater ease and accuracy. Plus, you can engage in some hand-to-hand combat if you can't get your hands on a piece quick enough.
Cell phone - Not just for basic phone calls anymore. Use your in-game cell phone to receive missions via SMS, snap photos, and ZiT (tag) songs that can be downloaded exclusively on Amazon.com/mp3.
Free time - In between missions you can take advantage of "me" time. There are gentleman's clubs, comedy clubs, bowling alleys, and bars, which all house unique activities.
Take a break from the storyline - A variety of side missions allow you to help run a car service, "borrow" cop cars, assassinate targets, help solve problems for those on the street, or take to the air with stunt jumps that are scattered all over the city.
Control your own fate - Throughout the game choice moments will arrive causing you to make a decision that will affect relationships and money.

Multiplayer
Give Niko a rest and create your own multiplayer "hero." GTA has added multiplayer modes allowing you to take your creation out to play online in competitive, co-op, and free form modes. Competitive mode has you fighting against the cops, jacking cars, or racing to finish odd jobs. Co-op challenges you and your friends with various tasks including Hangman's NOOSE where you are responsible for escorting a wanted kingpin to a safe extraction point. Freeform lets you and 15 others lose on Liberty City. Use this mode to hit up the bar and play virtual darts versus each other or head out to the streets and set up your own drag races. If you can dream it, you can do it in Freeform mode.

ZiT: We'll Spot The Song For You
When playing Grand Theft Auto IV, if you hear a song that you are interested in buying as an MP3, all you have to do is dial ZiT-555-0100 on your in-game mobile phone and a text message will be sent to you with the name of the artist and the title of the track. The next time you log in at the Rockstar Games Social Club, you will find 30-second previews of all the songs you have ZiT'ed while playing the game. You can add them to your basket there and click to purchase at Amazon MP3, or you can find them all at www.amazon.com/gtamusic.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- It's still GTA
Despite all the poor reviews for the PC version, and the fact that it was not the most succesful port from console to PC (this is Rockstar's first GTA game that was not made originally for PC), it's still a fun game to play, especially if you do not have/like console gaming. I stick purely to PC gaming, and have not been dissapointed by this game. The graphics are great (even on a non-hardcore-gaming machine), and the feel is as Grand Theft Auto as it gets. Here's to hoping that the next one will be coded for PC specifically.

Rating:

- Immersive on the surface, hollow underneath.
I will leave out the obvious comments on how buggy this game was. I will, however, address how annoying the Rockstar Social Club is. Ok, not the club itself, but the login. I don't like having to login to play a game. I just want to click the icon and go. I don't want to have to enter my password every time, wait for the Social Club launch screen to load, and then be able to click play. I'm sure there's a hack out there to skip it, I just haven't bothered to find it yet so I'm still annoyed.

As to the subject line of this review, it's fairly simple. I found myself enamored of the GTA IV world at first. While not nearly as large as the GTA III: SA world, it appeared to be close simply due to how compact the city is. My disappointment settled in when I realized how little interactivity there was. Now, maybe I've just glorified the last full release in the series, but I feel like I could pop in to any corner of the San Andreas map and would find not only something weird, but something to do. At the top of the mountain, there's a parachute. Jump off. Or a mountain bike, ride down. Etc, etc. I just don't feel this at all in GTA IV. As soon as I could, I made my way to the Statue of Liberty island... There was nothing to do there. I couldn't even go to the top of the statue.

Storywise, it is of course great. I'm also enjoying the "girlfriend" feature a bit more, though the "can I come inside" part is a bit over the top. The car handling is much better than in previous releases. I don't know how I feel about the "flying through the windshield" feature yet. Sure, it's a bit truer to life, but how many times does Niko have to fly through a windshield to belt up?

Rating:

- GTA 4 PC
Well this was a very expected game worldwide, and as far as I'm concerned the game was not fully optimized for pc use, even with a 8500GT card and running the game in the lowest specs, sometimes I get low fps.
As for the story I can tell you it was very nice and sometimes you get things you don't expect, but missions are not so hard.(yes, there were some missions I had to repeat, but most I did them at first)
Joypad support is very poor, so far I can only play with keyboard because joypads have a camera bug

Rating:

- Bad Copy Protection
I have bought all of the GTAs thus far and in this case have been sorely disappointed that I can not even play the game because of the "must have account" restrictions. It is simple I bought the game, I have the key and disk for the game and I should be able to play the game.

Rating:

- Fun...but...windows Live & rockstar Social Club are annoying
I bought this game through the Steam System and I found it fun. Single player is nice. The shadows are horrible and you can't turn them completely off (they are grainy in a horrible way, but only during the daytime). I had to use some console commands to circumvent the game from locking me out of setting video options how I like them. It's a "memory limiter" and no it doesn't realize that a upper-mid-range computer can run this game full out without a problem. Anti-aliasing is not allowed in the game. Even trying to set FSAA to "forced" or "driver controlled" won't make GTA4 use FSAA. It was like this with another recent game, Mass Effect. I am prone to motion sickness, but don't tend to get it with games, but GTA 4 camera controls are maybe a bit too "snappy". I wish they were more similar to the World of Warcraft or Mass Effect camera controls, but I adjusted and stopped doing things fast which made the camera "snap" around so much (like changing aim targets a lot and unaminging).

The really bad thing that I didn't like was that Windows Live and to a much lesser extent Rockstar Social Club are required to run during the game. I was able to shut off the Rockstar SC software with the task manager after I started the game, but when I did the same to the Windows Live, the game forced my character to run and/or drive forward and not be able to stop and also swerved me around a lot. That was annoying. Windows Live causes the game to crash when I use my trainer (most of the time). I find this odd because I'm in a single player game. I don't even care about multilayer on GTA4. So now, I'm playing the game with my trainer, hoping that the Win Live software doesn't "see" the trainer in my single player game and crash my game out. If it does, it's not fun.

I hate Windows Live. It's a bad attempt to copy Valve's Steam and VAC system I guess.

GTA 4 would be great without absolutely REQUIRING Windows Live TO RUN AT ALL and a bit better if the Social Club wasn't required.

Did I mention that I hate Windows Live?


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