Ask anybody which game they are looking forward to the most this year and the answer will probably be Grand Theft Auto 4. Already delayed by six months due to PS3 compatibility issues, the question on everybody’s lips is will it be worth the wait?
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3
Released: 29th April 2008
Players: 1 (2-16 online)
Price: £34.99 (Amazon.co.uk)
Genre: Action, Shooter
For those of you who don’t know, GTA 4 will be the 9th instalment in the Grand Theft Auto series and the first on the 7th generation consoles. The original GTA was released some 10 years ago and was one of first games to allow players such freedom and brutality. GTA III took the series to a whole new level with the step up to 3D, while Vice City and San Andreas impressed with ever increasing size and new features. Liberty City Stories on the PSP felt like something more than just a port, yet by the time Vice City Stories came round it would be fair to say things started getting a little old.
The real question is will GTA IV just be another bigger, better looking same-old story instalment, or will it be another groundbreaking title that really pushes the PS3 and Xbox 360 to their limits?
The game is set modern day in the fictional city of Liberty City (based on New York). Liberty City has featured strongly in the history of GTA, most notably Grand Theft Auto III and GTA: Liberty City Stories – however this time around the developers have promised a complete rebuild for what will be Liberty’s 5th appearance overall.
The city itself has been confirmed by developers Rockstar to be the largest city featured in any of the previous instalments; however the total map size will be smaller than San Andreas but far more detailed. Many of the buildings will also be accessible to the player opening up a great deal of potential for missions. A big sigh of relief for potential players is that much of the barren, feature less landscapes that plagued areas of San Andreas should be long gone. Such is the level of detail that every street will have a name with many missions requiring the player to go to a specific address.
Talking of the player, the latest instalment sees you playing as an Eastern European named Nikolai Bellic who has gone to Liberty City in search of the American Dream. It would be far to say things don’t go as planned…
Gameplay is naturally where most of the differences should be.
For starters, players will now encounter much more open ended missions and the ability to carry out several missions at once. The story will be far less linear than any of the previous games and all the side missions are linked to the main plots. Ignoring phone calls will also affect your relationship with certain characters, potentially shutting off certain story routes.
Missions are primarily done via the use of an in game mobile phone where the player will not only be able to access mission objectives and statistics, but also phone characters requesting meetings and assistance in similar fashion to that of the “buddies” system in Saint’s Row.
Combat has been revamped, adopting an over-the-shoulder fire system similar to Gears of War and Mass Effect, allowing players to blind-fire and cover where necessary, which should add to the overall feel and avoid some of those auto-lock niggles that were so frequent in last few titles. The in game physics are also completely reworked; players are now able go flying through windscreens in high speed car accidents and generally move a lot more freely with a distinctly less clunky feel to it.
Another major upgrade has been to the A.I. Pedestrians will now go about there daily business with far more variation and diversity, with pedestrians visibly reporting crimes. The wanted level system and police behaviour has also been changed. Instead of traditional wanted star level featured in all of the previous games, Rockstar have created a system similar to that of Driver, whereby the police search a particular area for you and thus you have to avoid. As your wanted level increases, so does the search area.
With the new consoles hammering home the issue of multiplayer, what can GTA 4 bring to the party? It has been recently revealed that the game will support up to 16 players online with over 15 different game types. Exact details are sketchy, but so far confirmed games include racing, death match, assassination (eliminate a specific player), co-op and a rather exciting sounding “Cops ‘N’ Crooks”, a team based game where one team must prevent the other from escaping. I would be very surprised if there wasn’t the token capture the flag and territories crammed in.
What of the future? Interestingly Rockstar has already announced exclusive downloadable content for the Xbox 360 version via Xbox Live. The content will be in the form of mission packs, and are expected to add at least 10 hours of additional gameplay. No cost has been confirmed as of yet.
Last but by no means least, there is also the small matter of the music and radio stations that provided such memorable moments in the previous games. Again, exact details are unknown, but a talk radio station has been confirmed, along with international funk and an Eastern European dance radio station. An interesting side note on the talk radio station, a good proportion of the voices and opinions aired will be from the general public – with Rockstar inviting people to phone in and discuss current issues with the best being used in the game. Music from The O’Jays, Liquid Liquid and Airbourne has also been confirmed.
All in all Grand Theft Auto 4 looks set to one of, if not the biggest game of year.
All the foundations are there for this to be something really special and while keeping with the GTA theme it can still offer something new and original to the series.
I’m no GTA fanboy, but this one certainly tops my most wanted list right now.
By Chris Savoury
