Playing GTA IV

So, I’ve been playing GTA IV for a little more than a week now, and it’s as fun as I hoped it would be and more.

Doobie got us a Playstation 3 as a thank you gift for letting him stay with us while he found an apartment. Obviously, that wasn’t necessary, but it was very cool of him, and I was so stoked to come home from Germany and find the apartment cleaned from top to bottom and to see a new Playstation 3 still boxed up in the TV cabinet.

GTA IV deserves the hype it’s been getting. Niko Bellic is a badass. The textures and the lighting are amazing. The interactivity of the world has to be experience to be fully appreciated. The story is compelling and better than most movies. And above all, the gameplay — physics, combat, driving, shooting, missions, etc. — is just brilliant.

Beyond the regular GTA awesomeness, just a few “Wow!” moments so far:

• Building up and maintaining relationships with other characters. Some are girls Niko dates. One girl has all new furniture with the tags still on, and she asks a lot of weird questions. One night while I’m playing, Rebecca is in the other room and suddenly yells, “Michelle’s a cop!”
• Escaping from the cops, hauling ass in a fast car along Middle Park, fleeing on foot through alleyways and inside buildings, desperate to get outside the cops’ zone of pursuit, whatever the cost, finally losing them and completing the job.
• Using the in-game web and e-mail. Including reading emotional emails between Niko and his mother, setting up a job interview to do an assasination, and reading about Niko’s exploits in the paper.
• Listening to the radio. I especially love the DJs on Radio Broker, the hipster station. “Somebody caught you smiling and it wasn’t ironic.”
• Playing with other real people in multiplayer. So fun to play a game with other real people, running around the airport, armed only with rocket launchers, trying to annihilate each other.

This game is amazing. I’m a total GTA “fanboy” like millions of other people. If you have GTA IV on Playstation 3, hook it up online and call me (in game). My PSN ID is bionicbrian.

Posted May 12, 2008 | ∞ | File under: gtaiv, video games