 The roads are paved with blood. Niko Bellic made his way to America in hopes of a better life with his cousin. He quickly finds out that the "easy life" is harder to obtain than possible. Now he has to go back into his past profession as a hitman to try and make some real cash. It's hard out there for an immigrant.
1. Gameplay
The Grand Theft Auto series is one of the most infamous game series ever created. It is known for its drug and organized crime-based storylines, its rampant prostitution and sexuality, and blatantly anti-law enforcement missions, characters, and situations. It gives the player vast amounts of freedom in a fairly realistic environment. But even with its extremely negative reputation, GTA IV has seriously toned down its overall image, especially compared to its predecessors.  Things are a little more serious now. Players will take control of Niko Bellic, an illegal immigrant from Serbia who was convinced by his cousin to try and stake his claim in the American dream. Unfortunately for Niko, life in America isn’t the “roads paved with gold” image he had been expecting. Instead of sports cars, mansions, and busty women, Niko has to stay with his cousin in a seedy apartment building with posters of women taped to the walls.  Roman, this isn't a mansion. That theme continues on throughout the rest of the game. “The immigrant is the slave of America.” Years of hard labor for barely living wages gets them nowhere. The only way that an immigrant like Niko could ever possibly make it in America is by working for organized crime or getting into the drug trade.  ...or both. In Serbia, Niko was a hitman. He brought that trade over with him to America and uses it to make his way up the ladder to “the good life”. The problem is, there doesn’t seem to be any real goal. Other than obtaining cash and fulfilling the requests of your various clients, Niko never really has any motivation.  Drive here, drive there. Meh. Despite a select few interesting missions (especially the bank robbery one), the rest of the game was surprisingly boring. Too many missions involving the player driving to a location and doing some simple, menial task for nothing else than a small stack of near-useless cash and the potential approval of a boss who you were inevitably going to have to kill before (or after) he stabbed you in the back. Some of the characters were hilarious (Brucie, the steroid-riddled uberman was by far the best), but most of them were the same basic design that has been included in the past 3 GTA games.  That wasn't very smart, Brucie. GTA IV has tried to step back from the realm of satirical absurdity into the realm of realism by using a political statement as an overriding theme, but in the process it makes itself way too bland. I did enjoy myself and the experience as a whole was unbelievably smooth, but there just wasn’t anything that would make me recommend this game over others like it.
I completed the campaign in around 25 hours. While this isn’t as long as previous Grand Theft Auto games have been, I chose to ignore most of the minigames. If the player goes through and tries to get 100% completion while maintaining the relationships with his friends and girlfriends, the game could easily take 40 to 50 hours to complete. There are also multiplayer modes that still have gamers. While the size of the online community has certainly diminished, I managed to get a dozen people into a team deathmatch server. It wasn’t enough fun to keep me interested, but I did finish the 30-minute long match. It was a seriously long match, but I can see how people would have fun playing together.
There were only a few minor issues that I found annoying. First, the game includes an excellent autosave system that saves the game automatically after every mission. This means that if you crash or quit while going from mission to mission, you won’t have to worry about redoing everything from your previous save. It’s a serious improvement from the previous GTA games, which required the player to find a safehouse after every mission. Unfortunately there are no checkpoints during missions. That means that if you fail or die right before the mission ends (like I did on one occasion), you have to redo the entire mission. This includes the pointless driving from location to location that happens at the beginning of every mission. The open-world aspect of the game also makes it difficult sometimes because health and ammunition are only found in specific locations on the map. This means that during missions the player will have to rely on conveniently placed med-packs or body armor (assuming they’re there). There were a number of missions that I had to finish with almost zero health.  This was a rare and welcome sight. Manually traveling from location to location between missions got a bit boring too. Fortunately, after a while the player gets enough money so that he can pay taxis to move him automatically from location to location. The only complicated part about that is some missions require him to have a car. In these cases, it’s relatively easy to steal a car close to the location, but it usually isn’t fast or strong enough to be preferable.  I'm sorry, I took a taxi here. 2. Parental Notices
Violence has toned down significantly from the previous games in this series. The player can use a small variety of firearms to kill enemies when necessary. Shots will result in some blood and that blood will sometimes show up on nearby walls or floors, but there is never any gore.  Pop pop. There are some weapons that will have a slightly more violent effect, but these are fairly rare. For example, enemies can catch fire if they are hit by a Molotov (which I never used during my gameplay) or if they’re standing too close to something that is already on fire (i.e. a destroyed vehicle). Instances of this are very rare though.  Who wants toast?! Some cutscenes will include significantly more blood. For example, there’s one scene where Niko executes an enemy at short range. There is a resulting fountain-like spray of blood.  Dude. Not cool. Even hitting people with the car will not result in gore. The vehicle will have blood on it, but the enemy, player, or unfortunate bystander will be thrown off his feet. Most of the early missions will involve very little violence. The player will more often be driving to a location than in actual combat. That changes later in the game when violence becomes much more common, but even then the player will usually be firing at such a distance that it’s difficult to see the blood.
Sexuality is a factor in certain areas, but within those areas it can be found in very high concentrations. For example, the opening cutscene of the game features a man being whipped by a woman. Both are in underwear, with the man wearing some sort of collar. The scene didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but almost certainly has something to do with the ending of the game. I didn’t see the connection.  Not sure what was the purpose of this. As with the previous Grand Theft Auto games, the player can hire prostitutes and have sex with them in order to restore health. Unlike the previous games, where “having sex” constituted both characters sitting still in their seat while the car rocked, GTA 4 features three different animations depending on how much the player decided to pay. $20 will get the prostitute to give the player a handjob, $50 for a blowjob, and $70 for sex. Each of these acts is animated, but none of them have any nudity.  At least you can't get an STD like in some games. The game makes it so that the prostitutes aren’t easily found everywhere. They can only be located in certain places at night (which is different from the previous games when they could be found pretty much anywhere at any time). The amount of health that the player receives from performing sexual acts with them is surprisingly low and, for those simply looking for healing services, makes buying food much more cost efficient. $70 to a prostitute will heal around ¾ of the player’s health, while a $1 burger will refill the health bar entirely. This means that unless the player is purposefully going out to find and have sex with a prostitute (something the game doesn’t explicitly tell the player how to do), there’s very little reason to engage in this activity.  I'll leave you to figure out where her head is. There are two different strip clubs that the player can patronize. There isn’t a whole lot to do in these, though. The player can walk in and watch women with very little clothing dance around. If he feels like paying $50, he can get a private show in a back room. This basically consists of a private lap dance. None of these serve any purpose in terms of lasting benefit to the player.  I don't even understand this in real life. The player will have at least two girlfriends over the course of the game. Both are required by the story (since both play important parts in forwarding the story). The player will have the opportunity to keep these women happy. It isn’t vital to the story (the game can be accomplished even if the player ignores them) but the game constantly encourages the player to go out on dates with them. At the end of each date, the player can “try his luck” at having sex with the women. While I had no problems getting the first girl to invite me up to her apartment, the second girl will never have sex with the player no matter how happy he makes her.  Oh Niko, I like you so much! Sex with a girlfriend is overly simplified. It consists of the girl inviting the player to her apartment, then a camera shows the outside of the building. The woman can be heard shouting random phrases that may or may not have anything to do with sex. On multiple occasions I think she said “Niko, tell me more!” which didn’t make much sense with what was implied to be occurring.  Want to come upstairs and read to me? The player can keep multiple girlfriends, but the mechanics of “dating” discourages this. The player will have to maintain an overall happiness rating with both his friends and girlfriends. If his friends and/or girlfriends are becoming unhappy with their relationship (meaning the player isn’t seeing them often enough), they will call the player and ask to go out and do something. If the player declines, he will lose points and be less likely to receive benefits from the relationship (including sex with girlfriends). In addition to this, one of the girlfriends will stalk the player occasionally. If she catches the player going out on a date with another woman, she will break up with the player. The Grand Theft Auto games have always had an odd view of homosexuality. While Bernie, a flamboyantly gay character featured in GTA IV, is certainly not the first homosexual character to be depicted in a GTA game, he makes me question whether or not the developers of GTA have actually met someone of the homosexual persuasion. In GTA IV, there are only two types of gay men. They’re all either so flamboyant to the point that, if they were standing in rush hour New York foot traffic, they would literally blind everyone with a rainbow of homosexuality or they’re so closeted that they’re actually a politician vehemently fighting for “family values” while hoping to leave his spouse and children for his gay lover (who is of the first type).  Oh, hi Bernie. But it’s not enough that Bernie is so flamingly gay that his afghan is constantly liable to spontaneously combust. Bernie’s apartment is decorated with an unbelievable amount of homosexual artwork. I don’t mean “the art was made by a homosexual”, I mean the art consists of pieces like “Buff police officer with chest showing beneath an unbuttoned uniform” or Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Man” modified so that instead of touching God, Adam is reaching out to touch a man’s whitey-tighty covered crotch. Some of the advertisements can imply sexual acts. These can be found all over the city. Compared to the strip clubs and prostitutes, however, these are pretty mild.  Just use your imagination.
Many characters in the game will drink or smoke. The game takes place around the same time that the smoking ban in New York City was being implemented for the first time, so there are one or two discussions around the event. That being said, at least one of the characters ignores the law completely and continues to smoke in his favorite bar (until he gets killed soon afterward).  Eh that's not so bad. The player can go drinking with his friends or girlfriends as a “date” activity. When he does this, both the player and the friend / girlfriend (with one exception) will be drunk. Being drunk consists of the complete inability to walk normally. There are some drunk people I’ve seen who have been so plastered on some occasions that they have had trouble walking, but GTA makes this happen every time the player goes out to drink.  The look on her face sums it up. The problem I have with this isn’t the player getting plastered. It’s a bit comical to try and control the player while he’s almost completely unable to stand. I have a problem when the player has to get the friend home. He’s got one of three choices. He can walk the player home (which would take hours considering their drunkenness), he can hail a taxi and pay to have the friend driven back (the safest of choices, but also the most expensive), or he can drive them home himself.  Decisions, decisions. “Drunk driving” in GTA isn’t “get in the car and you’re suddenly 100% sober”, it’s “you’re still drunk and trying to drive home”. The same inability to walk a straight line translates into the driving mechanic. What would normally be a leisurely drive down a large street suddenly turns into a horrible game of bumper cars. To make matters worse, the cops instantly know when you’re driving drunk and will actively try to pull you over.  Don't drive him home. The thing is, it actually turned into a bit of a game for me. Driving normally isn’t much of a challenge and neither is escaping the police, but when given the challenge of escaping the police while the game is trying to sabotage my driving abilities made things just difficult enough that I was actually entertained. While the difference between drunk driving in a video game and drunk driving in real life did register, this is definitely one of those gray areas that I wouldn’t want my kids running into before they understood the true dangers of drunk driving. It isn’t until you see how plastered your friends can get that you truly understand how dangerous it would be to have them trying to operate anything while drunk.  Just driving drunk, don't mind me. Many of the missions will involve drugs of some sort. Heroin does come up fairly regularly, but it’s never actually seen. The drug of choice for this GTA game is cocaine. A number of characters not only talk about using cocaine, but some can be seen actually snorting cocaine during cutscenes.  Is snorting cocaine a social activity? One of the characters, a Jamaican, constantly has a marijuana cigarette in his hands. He’s always smoking it. I can’t tell if he’s actually high though, since his attitude and voice never seems to change in any of the missions.  That's a lot of grass.
I never found any instances of gambling in this game. 3. Other Factors
Mods are significantly less of a factor in this GTA than in the previous games in the series. Most of the mods are either cheats or modifications to the vehicles found in the game. However, I didn’t find much reason to apply the mods. I made the attempt, but the anti-cheating software built into the game makes it so difficult to add in mods that it’s more work than it’s worth.  But if you can do it, it's pretty freakin' awesome. If a person decides that the black tape X’s over the boobs of the strippers is getting in the way of their “fun”, there are nudity mods that the player can find. If you look hard enough, there’s even a “hot coffee mod” that can be added into the game, enabling the player to see the sex going on between Niko and his girlfriend.  Seems a bit drafty. These can only be applied to the PC version though, so if your kid is on a console version there’s no need to panic.
Religion plays an extremely minor role in this game. The player will see a few people and participate in a few events that are clearly tied to organized religion, but they’re very brief and almost always have some sort of role in the campaign. For example, the player has to go to a funeral that is being held at a church.  A place of mourning. At the end of the campaign, the player goes to a wedding. The denomination of the church isn’t specifically mentioned, and the “religious” aspects of it are almost completely absent.  A place of joy. One of the “websites” that the player can find is a site designed to make fun of hardcore religious views on sexuality and family planning. There is a picture of a very confused, scared looking nun next to the article.  Uh, what?...
There are few games I have ever played that can match the level of unlawful activity as Grand Theft Auto IV. If the images shown elsewhere in this review still don’t convince you, there are plenty of other activities in which the player can (and in some cases will be forced to) participate.  It is called "Grand Theft Auto" after all. For example, there will be a number of missions where the player will have to find and transport narcotics. The drugs aren’t obvious by sight (they’re usually in cardboard boxes or something of that nature), but the opening cutscenes and mission objectives clearly identify the boxes as some sort of drug. There is one mission where the player will join a small group in a bank robbery. The robbery goes “well” initially (as well as a robbery of a major bank in broad daylight in the middle of a New York City look-alike can go), but a few costly mistakes result in a swarm of heavily armed and armored police officers. This forces the players and his allies to shoot their way out of the bank. Hundreds of rounds and dozens of dead police officers later and the player somehow miraculously manages to escape.  One man with light Kevlar vs all the special tactics officers in a major city. Yep. The bank robbery mission is not the only mission that will require the player to shoot cops in order to survive. There are a number of other missions in which the player will be jumped by police officers and must make a hasty exit. While most of the time the player can evade capture simply by driving quickly and staying out of the cops’ line-of-sight. However, there will be a number of times when it’s faster and easier to simply kill the cops, then attempt to make an escape.  No easy way out of this one. The game discourages rampant killing of police officers, though, via a 6-star wanted system. As the player performs blatantly violent actions, the player’s wanted level increases. A one-star wanted level (earned by hitting a police officer or injuring a civilian while a police officer is watching) is relatively easy to work off. However, anything above 4-stars gets extremely difficult to avoid. Law enforcement personnel at those levels are extremely aggressive and attack en masse.  Fast-roping SWAT-like personnel are especially difficult to fight.
I was surprised to find that there was an online community for this game. The game does include a number of multiplayer modes, but most of them are fairly empty. However, after playing a 30-minute long team deathmatch game, I found that I was in a room with a dozen different people from all over the world. It was actually a fairly impressive sight.  $1,046 into a $10,000 match. That being said, the online community has its ups and downs. For the most part everyone was very friendly, having the occasional conversation but mostly just having a good time. There were some accusations of hacking (of which I never found any evidence), but those were very brief and likely coming purely from frustration. The team deathmatch mode was pretty boring, but the community seems to make it work.
There are only two types of "extreme sports" in which the player can participate. The first comes in the stunt jumps that the player can perform across the city. There are certain ramps that go over gaps or bodies of water that will trigger a slow-motion sequence as the player goes over. These are extremely difficult to pull off, since it requires a good measure of speed, timing, and luck. These jumps aren’t required by the story, though.  Find the car. The second are the races in which the player can participate. One of these is included in a mission and the rest are optional. I only participated in the mission-related one.  I live my life a quarter-mile at a time. There are also supposedly a number of “urban skydiving” locations. However, I never found any of these during my playthrough. There is one mission where the player will engage in a high-speed motorcycle chase. The chase will go off-road at one point, eventually continuing through the underground subway system. It’s an extremely dangerous maneuver, but ultimately isn’t difficult to pull off.  CJ, look out! An oncoming train! At the end of the game, the player will have to make an absurd stunt jump. He will drive a motorcycle at full speed off a ramp over a river. While in mid-air he will abandon his motorcycle and grab onto the landing gear of an attack helicopter. It’s a crazy maneuver that no one should ever, ever consider performing.  Really.
Magic is not a factor in this game.
Kidnapping There is one mission where the player has to kidnap a woman and hold her for ransom. The ransom has to do with diamonds that were alluded to very early in the game. In order to kidnap her, the player has to feign an interest in her pink sports car, subdue her while driving, and then take her back to a safe house. It’s a multi-mission event that happens late in the game and is impossible to avoid.  Does one tell her to "say cheese"? There is also one mission where Niko’s cousin Roman gets kidnapped by the main antagonist. Niko will have to shoot through a warehouse of Russian mobsters in order to save his cousin.  Hey Roman, want to go bowling? Prostitution As was mentioned before in the “Sexuality” section, prostitution is present in this game. The player can find and hire prostitutes in multiple locations around the city. These women are never a part of the main story. Language
Language will be a significant factor in the majority of this game. While the main character usually keeps offending words to a minimum, the other characters he is around can throw around some interesting phrases. It’s not enough that it becomes a serious distraction since it makes sense with the different characters’ personalities, but it is common enough to be noticeable.
4 Comments
faggetboy
9/21/2013 11:03:53 am
You said Niko is Russian, while in fact he is Serbian 9/22/2013 02:17:36 pm
You're correct. I have updated the review to reflect that Niko is Serbian. Thanks.
Jimmy
2/2/2014 12:08:36 pm
Hey, ssg, thanks for not overblowing your reviews like common sense media. Its great not having everything overreacted about
LegendaryCarmine
7/1/2014 01:27:04 pm
Let your kids play on there 4th birthday Leave a Reply. |
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