02/05/2008

GRAND THEFT AUTO IV (PS3, X-Box 360)

It’s wild, it’s violent, it’s mad, it’s irresponsible, it’s…fabulous! The ninth in the Grand Theft Auto series is set in “Liberty City” – New York in all but name – and is an adventure and a half that has little in common with the eight games that have gone before it. Star of the show is merchant marine Niko Bellick, who’s arrived in the US in search of a new life bearing the scars of the Bosnian war. He arrives expecting the good life, but finds instead nothing but trouble. All that awaits him in Liberty City is a dodgy job working at the taxi business run by his heavily in debt cousin Roman. What they don’t tell you at the start is the REAL reason Niko has gone to Liberty City – to find the man who betrayed his army unit in Bosnia.

So that’s when the fun starts as we’re asked to negotiate our way around the complexities of the four districts of Liberty City. You can drive, walk, run, swim, climb and jump around the place certain only in the knowledge that every hop, skip and jump will lead you to ever more scary threats and dangers and you are forced to steal weapons and transport if you’re to make any sort of progress and survive. For sure you’ll find yourself in armed combat before you get very far at all as the action hots up in garishly realistic battles and car crashes. The detail is pretty awesome – you can identify very specific parts of your enemy’s anatomy to target – but you have to keep an eye open for your welfare and health. A few painful car crashes with your head smashing through the windscreen take a dreadful toll on you!

All the while you have to stay one step ahead of the police, perhaps using various disguises to do it as the chase hots up, while there’s always an interfering pedestrian or passer-by willing to call the cops if you step out of line. So it’s not easy, but with a multi-player capacity also available there’s a lot of fun to be had in its testing demands. There’s some cool music on the soundtrack, too, so well done Rockstar Games. Well done on the huge marketing campaign as well. I do believe you have a winner there…

Official Website

Back to Cyn's Top Tips