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Grand Theft Auto IV
Here I am reviewing one of the most expected titles of this generation, first in selling and in expectations (partially failed, I’ll tell you right now) just like a GTA title could be.
And just like every respectful chapter in the Grand Theft Auto saga, also this one carries a huge dispute dust on, false priggishness and useless moralism, but we’ll talk later about this.
Grand Theft Auto for the fourth time
Everything started in 1997, when a company, called DMA Design Limited (now become Rockstar North) developed a controversial title both for PC and Playstation named Grand Theft Auto. In this videogame you personified a newbie, silent and cold (my mistake, silent and cold) criminal who cleared his way to criminal gangs, by sticking up, stealing and murdering. The main feature of the game was the total freedom to go around the city without having to follow the main plot (which still was interesting), stealing car or using the weapons at your disposal against people or other vehicles.
The title raised some good success and the saga went on with an expansion named Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 and its official sequel, GTA 2. The new-gen of videogames saw Grand Theft Auto III taking the game concept in the full 3D, with a large city to be explored and seen (Liberty City). This third episode was a true bomb for the gaming market, getting an impressive popularity, that increase more and more with the next chapters, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (my favorite one), set in a Miami in the 80s and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas where there were even 3 cities, countryside, deserts and mountains. I also have to quote two minor episodes GTA: Vice City Stories and GTA: Liberty City Stories, that simply came out to be expansion to the referring chapters.
After all these great victories, it was logical to expert from Grand Theft Auto IV something extraordinary, moreover considering the expensive advertising campaign that led its release. Media obviously have had something to seek their teeth into, attacking the game like starving wolves on a juicy prey. We’ve heard anything and even more on TV: there’s who thinks the game leads to violence, there’s who compares it to a military training, who describes it as a “woman-raping” title (which is absolutely false) and even who blames it for some murders really happened.
Therefore, as usual the public opinion took it with a very deep scorn, but still, according to the selling, we’d say that many of these people, if they partially blame the game, on the other side they go buying it, seeing the records the title got in a few days after the releasing.
The plot
After a mute American, an Italian-American mafia man, and a gangsta rapper African-American, it’s time for a former Balkan soldier. Niko Bellic, coming from the Balkans (not clear where exactly from, but he seems to be Serbian), goes ashore to America looking for someone and with the most classic of expectations: living the American dream. Waiting for him in the new continent, there is his cousin, Roman Bellic, who, by mail, always played as a rich man, with lots of beautiful women and as a worshipper of the good life. At his arrival Niko finds out that the situation is not exactly this one. Roman lives a poor life, has only a relation with a girl working with him at a taxi depot and he is in a lot of trouble with some criminals. In fact, his hope lied in his beloved cousin. So Niko decides to give him some help, trying to solve his problems, but ending up stuck with a no-ending criminal circle. He will often be found with making choices, between good and bad times, trying to outcrop into the frantic daily life of Liberty City.
Graphic Engine
This title is based upon the Rage (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine) graphic engine, already used for Table Tennis (Rockstar’s too) and it’s absolutely to be awarded for how it can move the enormity of Liberty City, which actually is the New York of our days. The city is rich in details and is just like its real master.
A great job has been made on the physics of the objects and people, turning out to be superior to many other games out till now. In fact, there’ll also be some very realistic animations of people walking in the streets, relating to the surrounding events (for example, if you run them down or if you try to knock them). Even the way the characters in the movies move or gesticulate is beautiful, so much that they sometimes look to be created by the motion capture technique, as realistic they seem to be. Animations aside, also their looking is quite good, but they don’t absolutely reach some recent productions, maybe because of the quantity of the polygons the graphic engine has to move on your screen.
The graphic part is maybe the one that mostly feels the lacks of this Rockstar title: the whole game will always be covered by a, sometimes annoying, “patina” that makes it unfocused, maybe to avoid the seeing if some huge aliasing flaws (that are in the game). Besides, I had to realize with a lot of regret that the older chapters’ problems weren’t solved: it will happen very often to see some background objects appearing at few meters from your character, or even to drive on an invisible road, due to the excessive speed of your vehicle (because of the impossibility for the graphic engine to load the several texture on time). For this loading problem too, you’re even likely to end up in some areas and have to wait a few seconds before the surrounding environment is correctly loaded and this is a huge problem that Rockstar is carrying on since the old GTA III. But it’d look like these flaws decrease or even.... |
