What I (Dis)Liked Last Week (GTA4)

As you can imagine, my free time last week was almost completely dominated by Grand Theft Auto IV, balancing my time between the excellent single-player and the almost-as-excellent multiplayer. I'm assuming it doesn't count time spent playing multiplayer in the states, so going by what it's saying on the stats section I'm reaching the 16 hours mark with a completion rating of 33%. Reading Jeff Gerstmann's latest post on Giant Bomb revealed he had finished the main story with about a 61% so I guess I'm at the halfway mark, and I really don't want it to end. Hopefully it won't take them very long to get the promised DLC out the door and it will be something substantial, rumors flew around about there being new cities (Vice City and San Andreas were technically considered "expansions" because they fell under the "Grand Theft Auto III" name, but that's a stretch.), but I would be perfectly happy and gladly put my money down if they were 10-20 hour mission packs set within Liberty City, because the playing area is already interesting enough, diverse and mind-bogglingly huge.

If you haven't been able to get your hands on it yet, it is everything San Andreas was except turned to 11 (or 12, because I thought San Andreas was really awesome.) The basics from last few games are there, but both the driving model and combat have seen significant changes. The cars are a little harder to handle, they feel like they have some real weight to them, you can't just go powersliding around corners like you used to. You can also free-aim a handgun or submachine gun out the driver's window, though steering and shooting at the same time is a little tricky, like a murderous take on patting your head and rubbing your stomach. The addition of a cover system has made the combat, usually a sore spot in the GTA games, much more entertaining. If it's tall enough to crouch or stand behind, you can almost always take cover behind it, anywhere in the game. You can even roll up to a firefight, spin your car sideways, get out and take cover behind that. They don't explode after taking a few bullets like they used to, either, but conventional explosives still get the job done, and even one popped tire means you're going to have a lot of trouble getting away. But being able to get a handle on the situation, pop out and fire a few rounds and take cover again helps keep the game from being frustrating and means that if you play smart, you can take out an entire gang of biker drug dealers with barely a scratch. Also blindfiring an RPG is awesome.

The multiplayer, for the most part, is a lot of fun. I'm not a big fan of racing, even when guns and explosives are involved, so the two race modes will probably go largely unplayed. But excluding those there are still six other competitive modes, three co-op missions and Free Roam. I admire what Rockstar has done here, being able to bring the entire city to an online format without sacrificing anything, and I haven't really had many issues with lag, but with only a 16 player max cap regular Deathmatch can suffer if the host doesn't configure things properly. You can limit the action to one of the three large islands, the two smaller ones, or even small sections like the docks, airport or prison, but if the host just gives free range to everyone and sets the "respawn distance" to far it means you'll probably spend most of your time trying to track someone down to kill for only a minute or two of action. Team Deathmatch isn't as problematic because the game tries to keep the teams as close as possible when respawning. When configured properly, though, it is a lot of fun. I've been giving the Crooks N' Cops mode the most play, a team mode with one team as the crooks, either collectively or escorting their boss, attempting to get to a getaway vehicle and the cops out to catch them before they escape. Playing as a cop, starting in a squad car with three other players, is a blast when you have a good driver, and coming upon a car load of crooks and hailing them with submachine gun fire. The co-op missions are fun, but there's only three, and even though the open world allows for a little latitude, chances are they'll get old within a month or two. Anyway, my review at this point is that it's an incredible game that I would've gladly paid double for.

Thanks to a heads-up from Theron, I've also been playing The Last Stand 2 (A misleading title) as well as the original. We'll call these two games my Play This Now for the last two weeks. I'd like to see another sequel where you have to also secure the buildings you search.

I just had lunch, now I'm going to go concentrate on not falling asleep.

-K.