Grand Theft Auto IV: Kikizo Preview 2

The theme with lead protagonist Niko Bellic is 'small fish in a big pond'. It's not the rags to riches story that has highlighted past GTAs; rather it's "rags to slightly better rags", as Rockstar puts it. The character has different motivations this time around - in the last trailer, Looking for that Special Someone, we learn that Niko's not only there because of his cousin Roman, he's also there because he's looking for someone. But who?

We start with Niko at Star Junction, Rockstar's version of Times Square at 5AM early in the October morning, and it's still dark, yet full of all the real character of dazzling neon Times Square. An overweight 'De Vito-in-Friends'-looking cop passes by and like all other NPCs, is animated uniquely and walks just like a fat New York policeman should. There's a theatre show on called T.S. Pirate at the Thespian Theatre, as well as a camera store called Liberty Cameras - in fact we're pretty sure it's the exact store where Kikizo picked up a videocamera many moons ago. Yes, we like Times Square shopping, and we're not sorry about it.

As a newly arrived immigrant into Liberty City, Niko - or 'Nikolai', as he's referred to later in this demo - is about to embark on another day. Local police officer Francis McReary has some sort of dirt on Niko, and is asking a few favours - in return, he'll keep quiet about what he knows about Niko. One of the favours he's asking is to kill a lawyer from the law firm, Goldberg Ligner & Shyster - a mission that forms the basis of this demo. But if you've already heard about the basics of that from a games magazine, keep reading, because throughout this article we're going to cream on many of the extra details every one of them missed out.

He's about to call a buddy of his, a guy by the name of Little Jacob, and this simple phone call is emblematic of a couple of fundamental changes in the game. The series has always emphasised non-linear gameplay and player choice, and the phone call he's about to make, Rockstar says, extends this concept. "Whereas past GTA games have been about accepting missions, now that line is blurry and you actively take more of a part in telling the story yourself." More on this later.

He's got a long day ahead of him in this part of the game, so he's going to need some firepower. He's about to call Little Jacob - a Jamaican gun dealer from Dukes, Liberty City's interpretation of Queens. Little Jacob is in the neighbourhood of Rotterdam, one of the many areas you'll get to know as you play the game. For that matter, Rockstar has actually named each individual street in the whole of the city, and the name of each street is displayed in the bottom right as you enter it, as well as 'street signed' graphically in the game - a first for GTA. We set off for Rotterdam on a breezy motorbike ride, and stopped next to a pizza store that sells pizzas at the very reasonable price of 99 cents, and a large cocktail bar lit up in fluorescent pink called Bahama Mamas.

Page: 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 

NEXT PAGE >>