Games have come a long way. I remember playing GTA 2 on a computer in our schools library. The game was a guilty pleasure. Never before could you run over people and deliver drugs in a game (at least I hadn't played it yet). GTA 3 changed the way games were looked at. Instead of being something children played, people finally started to see that grown ups liked to get their game on as well. Now with GTA 4 getting so much hype it is time to get an idea of it from the view point of someone that has nothing to gain from it. My black ass.
GTA 4 is the sequel to one of the most popular games of all time. GTA3 and their sequels gave people an open world in which to do (almost) anything they wanted. That included killing hookers. GTA 4 bumped up the visuals made a world even more believable and gives you one of the better stories ever in a video game.
You play Niko Bellic. An immigrant fresh off the boat looking to make a better life for himself. He does have a cousin in Liberty City (GTA 4's version of N.Y.C) that has been lying to him about how he has been living it up. Niko then begins doing what he does best. Kill people and be a bad ass. You get your missions through lovely, detailed cinematics that show off the detail of each character in the game. You drive around town in a variety of cars (stolen or otherwise) completing missions and causing havoc.
The world of GTA 4 is alive. Day or night there is always something going on and I think this is the biggest improvment in the game. In the middle of the day you will have people walking down the street talking to each other engaging in a number of activities. Even the illegal kind. Once I was walking down the street minding my business when a cop started running towards me. I was about to shoot when I noticed that he was running after another guy. That was cool. Niko also has a cell phone and you can call a variety of numbers. I called 911 just to see what would happened and I got a cop to show up to my location. They also have a bunch of radio stations that play music or even talk shows. I like completing a mission and then getting in a car to hear about my destruction on the newswire.
There are a number of things to do in this game. You can of course complete the game. Or if you are tired of killing people you can play bowling, pool, darts, or just go out on a date with one of the ladies you meet and try to get "lucky". This game will keep you busy for awhile.
Now the problems. People talk about the story as if it is akin to the Godfather or something. It is basically the same story about a bad guy doing bad things for maybe the right reason that you have seen and heard before. What makes it different is that it is well written and that doesn't happen much in a video game.
There is also a problem with the framerate dipping when a lot of stuff is going on on screen at once. It is hard to say this game is a technical acheivement when they could not keep the framerate at at least 30 frames a second.
With that being said it is already being said this is the game of the year. And I don't see why not
Riley score-9.5
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