Grand Theft Auto IV

Is it really worth this much hype?

	Version Xbox 360, PS3	Developer Rockstar North	Publisher Rockstar	Genre Action

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All the control instructions we learned in our hands-on previews are naturally explained in the proper game, with a near-perfect learning curve as the early stages of the game unfold. Forget training modes - this is the way it should be done.

I am generally very happy with how the targeting system worked out. Holding the left trigger half-way to free aim, and fully to target, is something that soon becomes intuitive, despite the previous worries I had about the fiddliness of the control system. Likewise, cover and all of its nuances work wonderfully in combination with the targeting styles, and while it will definitely take fresh players a while to get accustomed to, the result is the most rewarding gun combat I have experienced in any game like this, engendering precision, creativity, and most of all freedom of choice.

Having said this, there were still a couple of inexplicable moments when the context sensitivity seemed to fail, with everything proceeding to go horribly wrong at the most inopportune moment. This was rare though, and for the most part, whether sniping from afar, tactically clearing out an area with grenades, or launching a rocket into an explosive mess of death, controlling weapons is pretty much spot-on, and you will feel like a total badass.

Driving really becomes second nature in a more convincing way than in the previous games. There's also fantastic vehicle variety, providing a significantly different experience depending on the type, size, weight, quality and condition of your vehicle.

Fighting is instantly intuitive; a simple game of timing and response. However, I went through the entire game without using any hand-to-hand combat whatsoever; I didn't really see the point or need to use it, since shooting is way more fun.

Another thing that happened way less than I expected is getting busted. Busts are now very rare, although death, for me, was not. The game's difficulty is more about risk of death than busts, which is a good thing since the latter results in weapons being taken (often at quite a financial cost). I went through the whole story with nearly 100 deaths but only five arrests.

I love the way the game offers freedom to choose which missions you want to do and cleverly structures the story so that it always makes sense regardless of how you tackle them. The way that you can handle missions in various ways encourages you to think creatively; even when a 'smart' way to finish a mission seems unlikely ("they surely wouldn't let me win the mission by doing THAT") you soon wind up saying "Oh my god it worked!" and are rewarded for being downright cool. It's great to be able to take out an enemy getaway car before it's even used, which is occasionally possible. However, I also noticed some dynamic mission changes, so that you can't do something the easy way based on prior knowledge on a retry.

We won't go 'into one' listing all of our favourite missions - you need to discover them all for yourself. Needless to say, the game does a fantastic job of setting up missions and story points in many of the coolest and most unusual spaces the city has to offer, including an underground bike chase in the subway system's network of tunnels. OK so we mentioned one (sorry) - but there are about, ooh let's see, 93 others to enjoy. And some a lot grander than the one we just mentioned.

Some might argue that mission-after-mission-after-mission can be repetitive since there are a finite number of mission styles, but this is nonsensical to me; this is a GTA game. The latest SingStar is the best karaoke game ever, and probably a 9/10 game for all its cool next-gen features, but you don't hear people complaining that it's just singing - and then more singing. All games are fundamentally repetitive in some way - when you think about it, that's what makes them fun. This is a mission-based game, and it's easily the best mix of mission styles to date.

The way that missions vary, the different ways they can be tackled, and the themes, locations, characters and motives for each mission keep things fresh throughout, and the sheer scale and richness of many missions neatly ticks the 'woah, next-gen' box when it comes to GTA's bread and butter. Also, escaping police with their new line-of-sight system is a continuous mini mission in its own right - there's even an Achievement or two based around the concept.

It's possible to get through all the missions in less than 30 hours, but to do so this rapidly would literally mean skipping cut scenes, ignoring calls and side quests, and basically ruining the game. We went through the story (which represents 60% of total game completion, according to the Stats) in about 40 hours. However, there are of course ways to speed things up from the longest way of doing things; chiefly taking a taxi and paying a little extra to skip the journey when you need to travel a distance and fancy hurrying up - we ended up taking cabs a LOT, despite how enjoyable the journey is. We would probably have relaxed in a few more rides were it not for the pressure of wanting to finish the game for review (which was already running late).

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