Game Review: Grand Theft Auto IV
Let’s travel all the way back to the year 2004 where TV shows like Friends and Frasier aired their final episodes, Shrek 2 was topping the box office charts and Rockstar Games had just released their newest big hit; Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Despite the success they were clearly experiencing with the title, the developer pretty much got straight into preliminary development on the next entry in the franchise. It was noted by Rockstar president Sam Houser how the task of following up San Andreas would be “a nightmare”. Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and San Andreas put the studio into the spotlight for good or worse and they knew any kind of sequel they would release would be subject to an insane amount of expectations. This newly defined reputation meant the studio needed to pull every resource they had at their disposal together to make the game something truly monumental. This involved pooling together all the main Rockstar divisions as well as hiring external support. I’d love to say the development of Grand Theft Auto IV was smoother than San Andreas, but as per reports, the grind and subsequent crunch forced a lot of staff to work under insane pressure, which is never anything I can condone, no matter how good the end-product may be as a result.
4 years and $100 million USD later, Grand Theft Auto IV was released originally on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on April 29th 2008 with a PC version landing at the end of the year in December. Similar to the current hype for Grand Theft Auto VI, the hype at the time for Grand Theft Auto IV was astronomical. Pre-orders were through the roof and the marketing machine was in full motion ahead of release. This all led towards Grand Theft Auto IV becoming one of the biggest and fastest selling games of all time before Grand Theft Auto V came along to upstage it. By July 2013, the game had sold over 25 million copies across all consoles. On the critical response, the game was lauded by critics and general audiences alike, with Metacritic reporting a critical aggregate score of 98 to this very day! During award season the game amassed a plethora of nominations as well as a few game of the year wins. I personally remember going with my brother to get the game at our local GAME store in the UK at release and was absolutely obsessed with it at the time. Nearly 20 years later though, I figured now would be a perfect time to play it once more and reflect on the legacy this game established so long ago.
The narrative of Grand Theft Auto IV follows Niko Belic, an eastern-European immigrant who has travelled to Liberty City in America in order to escape his past and find new purpose in the so-called American Dream. He is greeted upon his arrival to Liberty City by his cousin Roman who has led Niko to believe he has become a successful entrepreneur, when in reality he is scraping by, running a low-end taxi cab job with barely enough money to afford a shoddy apartment in the poorer district of the city. Romans’ money troubles are only reinforced when Niko meets Vladimir Glebov; a Russian mobster who Roman is indebted to heavily. Despite coming to America for a fresh start, Niko finds himself doing jobs for Vlad to help pay off his cousins’ debt. These jobs will eventually lead Niko on a path through the heart of Liberty City’s organized criminal network as he begins to operate for other crime families. Despite running away to America to escape his past, Niko soon learns the distance he hoped for is notably short when old acquaintances make their presence known. Before Niko knows it, he’s in deep trouble with the Russians and other parties who all share an interest in killing Niko. It’s up to him to try keep his head above water as he navigates the ever-developing mess that is his new-found life in the land of opportunity.
When I originally played Grand Theft Auto IV as a teenager, I don’t really think I was mature enough to understand the moral complexity this story was so strongly showing at the time, all these years later however; I truly see it. Being a bit older and hopefully a bit wiser, I truly see what Rockstar were going for with this narrative. My prior review of Grand Theft Auto V noted how the satirical nature of the story often eroded any sense of weight it might had to offer and that flaw is only reinforced with my time playing Grand Theft Auto IV in comparison. Niko Belic isn’t some hot shot or charismatic criminal mastermind; he’s simply a man running from his past in hopes of a better life. He wears all of the guilt and hatred from his past around his neck as we witness him try to figure out how to make this new life for himself work. He’s a more stoic protagonist by comparison and his maturity makes him a lot easier to relate to as a result.
Niko’s characterization is also an integral part of the overall themes the story is aiming to project as well. The idea of coming to America for a better life is still a very prominent idea that many people share to this day. The reality of that dream is something Grand Theft Auto IV captures almost immediately though in a raw yet humorous way. Niko’s journey to develop a better life for himself comes at the cost of affiliating himself with a lot of unsavoury characters and as the story progresses, we see how much turmoil that puts on him as a character. Rockstar’s ability to balance their satirical approach while exploring the cold hard reality of modern capitalistic America deserves so much credit. It helps that Niko is surrounded by a supporting cast of characters that help orientate the narrative and its themes around him consistently. There is a consistent balance between the humorous satire these characters offer yet there’s also clear implication of their own underlying stories with grounded writing to make them feel notably three dimensional as well.
On that front, it’s important to discuss the world design as well, as I feel that also plays a pivotal part in helping to project the themes and tone the game is aiming for. Rockstar clearly went out of their way to realize their fictional version of New York City to an insanely accurate degree. Nearly all of the primary boroughs of the real-life city are reflected within this map and there’s so much effort into ensuring every avenue and street corner feels lived in and alive. It’s important to remember this is a game from 2008 so this kind of graphical scope was beyond impressive for the time and I would argue it still holds a lot of impressive scale to this date. The way the game starts you out in the poorer boroughs before slowly letting you progress and inhabit the richer districts of the game as your wealth and criminal network expands is a smart and subtle sense of progression.
The world in itself is as much of a character as Niko is. That’s no surprise when it comes to Rockstar to be fair, as they are the kings of creating living, breathing worlds to experience. Their interpretation of Liberty City feels very akin to the real-life place with how busy it feels and the random dialogue of NPC’s you’ll discover as you simply walk the streets. You’ll see helicopters fly across the skyline or boats skimming down the river. Rockstar programmed the city to feel alive without the main player having to be an integral part of it, which is one of the key strengths of any open world in my opinion. It helps that there’s also a plethora of random encounter missions the game will offer you that allows you to get a sense of the weird and wacky people that inhabit the city and how they all need Niko’s help navigating their own problems.
While the world design is great, the way it feels to navigate and fight through is less so. I don’t even think this is down to the game ageing poorly either, as I recall not really enjoying the gameplay all that much when I played it all those years ago. I think the worst example is the driving mechanics in all honesty. I feel Rockstar wanted to go for realism with the way cars drove in the game, as everything feels overtly heavy and clunky like the cars have actual weight. I appreciate that’s not a deal breaker for some but it was definitely a problem for me, both back then and now. I hate how hard it is to turn corners in this game, even if you brake and try to steer around them in time it never feels reactive enough and I’d always end up mounting the curb. It made the moments where the game expected you to race or chase other vehicles so tedious because you were having to compensate for the controls while trying to achieve the objective. I also feel the way Niko moves and operates in combat shows some of that sluggish nature as well, it’s not a very reactive animation style so you have to play everything slow. It made moments where you were caught in hectic firefights way more stressful if an enemy ended up getting too close because you’d have to back away to be able to aim properly at them and in that time, they likely already would have killed you.
I at least found the mission variety in itself fun and extensive. The game consists of 88 core story missions with a bunch of additional side activities to experience on top of them. Each mission did a good job in not only giving you some new objective and area to explore, but it helped give the game a decent sense of depth and variety. As in most Grand Theft Auto games, the game starts you off doing small, menial missions and then eventually puts you in big bombastic set pieces near the end. Unlike Grand Theft Auto V though where I feel the game was more interested in throwing you into these scenarios with little care or justification, Grand Theft Auto IV at least feels like you can understand the progression of the stakes and why Niko goes from driving cabs at the start of the game to chasing down and jumping onto helicopters near the end. It’s not nearly as bombastic as Grand Theft Auto V by comparison which is something I actually appreciated upon reflection.
On the presentation side of things, I just want to reiterate once again how good this game looks, especially when you consider the limitations the original hardware presented at the time. Rockstar are clearly wizards when it comes to understanding the scope of their engine and the rendering capabilities of the tech. For a game from 2008, Grand Theft Auto IV still looks beyond impressive with the way the city looks and is able to come alive through different times of the day. I do think the character models have definitely aged the worst though, everyone kind of looks like clay models of what a human being looks like but again that’s a product of the time more than anything. Michael Hunter worked on the original score for the game and while you likely won’t hear much of it if you’re listening to the extensive radio selection, it is worth praising his work nonetheless. Soviet Connection is an iconic piece of gaming music, so much so that anyone who hears it would be able to immediately tell you what game it’s from.
My time revisiting Liberty City before I fly out to Vice City once again has been a lot more fun than I expected. After being nauseated by the over-the-top style of Grand Theft Auto V, it was nice to experience a much more somber and restrained interpretation of the series. Rockstar went all in on making this game a truly memorable time capsule of an era of American society that many people alive today have lived through. Its honest and well-balanced narrative offers players a grounded character to follow with an array of emotions to experience along the way. The world itself invites you in so easily and you often forget this is a video game at times with how well it emulates the City That Never Sleeps. It’s not without its flaws for sure, as the gameplay portion definitely didn’t age as gracefully as the rest of the game, but what’s here is more than enough to warrant your time and investment as you follow Niko Belic as he tries to realize his version of the American Dream
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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