Grand Theft Auto IV Hands-On

At last, we get to play the biggest game of 2008.

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Wandering off into the streets of Broker, the first thing we did was to ignore our first mission (which we'll cover later) and get into a fight, in order to check out the combat. In addition to the above controls (which as any GTA player can imagine, are a lot easier to learn than they look), the face buttons perform different things when Niko is targeting someone for close-quarters combat purposes. Hold A to block, or if you press it and get the timing right, you will dodge an incoming attack. Press B to jab, or tap it to do strings of punches. Press Y for a much heavier swinging punch and Y to kick. When you're fighting hand-to-hand like this, you get the same eight markers inside the reticule on the person you're targeting, indicating their remaining health (the same as when you're shooting them). In addition, the marker will be either green or red, indicating the person's level of hostility - red means they're fighting back, green means they want to run away. You can put together combos too. Pressing Y twice - the second time just as the first blow lands - is going to do some good damage.

The game is also smart in the way it interprets your inputs when controlling Niko. For example, if you're in a confined space with a long drop nearby the game realises that you have little room to maneuver and most likely do not want to accidentally run off the edge and start over (or worse), so it knows that if you push the analog stick as you would do in open space what you really mean is for him to go carefully in that direction, forcing him to go slowly even if you push all the way. This was the case in one mission we played near the docks where we needed to climb up a series of containers and storage units using X - the context-sensitive jump/climb button. It doesn't limit your 'freedom of expression' either; if you really do want him to do something else, you can always force your decision by jumping off.

Leading on from this, it is of course possible to stop in the middle of a bridge and jump off it into the water and swim from island to island. You can swim in any bit of water you see, and although we didn't have time to find that Truman Show moment, the sense of true freedom is palpable. Only one island (Broker) is unlocked to begin with, in the same way that only Los Santos was available at the start of San Andreas, but since freedom is the killer app and the incentive to play, it's a privilege that must be earned. Until areas outside Broker are opened up, the bridges are blocked with police blockades. The second area will open up "sooner than it has been before", we're told, and "certainly going up to Boham is very soon." It would be a push to say that you'll feel significantly freer than you did in San Andreas, which rewrote all the rules on freedom. I would say the freedom feels more refined than before.

This is largely down to the driving, which works better now than it did in any previous GTA. Perhaps it's because the game is in high definition now that making vehicles do exactly what you want them to do, even at high speed, is something that works a treat. There's a good sense of the dimensions of your vehicle, and accidentally crashing seems a lot less common. It feels instinctive to predict how various types of vehicle are going to behave when you attempt certain things, and this allows you to calculate risk on the road. Driving feels more rewarding as a result. If you need to make a particularly fast getaway, or if you want to get from one island to the next as fast as possible, the thrill of successfully avoiding heavy traffic at high speed, or negotiating a busy cross section using the handbrake, makes you feel like a star.

Of course, the smoother vehicle handling is not to say it is less realistic or deep. Generally, driving is a bit looser than before. In San Andreas you could accelerate straight away and handbrake around every corner with a little bit of oversteering, whereas now, there are some cars where you should in fact need to use the normal brake first and then maybe a touch of the handbrake. Meanwhile, shooting while driving is less accurate, but it adds another layer to the driving dynamic. You can also drop grenades and Molotov cocktails out of the window at high speed, which we didn't get to try, but it sounds like a lot of fun. When necessary, headlights can also be put on full beam or dipped (but can't be turned off).

The cars themselves are physically more convincing in general. Damage results in the hood becoming loose, and if you then drive at high speed, the g-force (or whatever - I'm no physicist) pushes it right up and it's likely to detach altogether. But if you slow down it gently lowers. You can test this out (and we did) and it's all procedural - not pre-animated. When further damage is done, the car is likely to have smoke bellowing from it, and the physical properties of the smoke behave just as realistically at varying speeds, even if it means it rushes back into the camera. The same goes for the smoke coming out of the window when someone is smoking in the car! If you crash, the driver and any passengers will jolt forwards due to their momentum. A particularly nasty crash might bend the wheels out of shape, which will constantly skew the direction you drive in. Car deaths are also spectacular. At one point we were in a bulky Securicor-style vehicle and after a pile-up the vehicle ended up on its side. Pressing Y to exit, Niko climbed out of the 'top' of the van where the passenger door was and jumped to safety. About ten seconds later, the impact of the exploding van sent Niko to the ground leaving our ears ringing - similar to the ringing sound effect in Half-Life 2.

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