I bought it, I played it, it gave me a cold. GTA IV is out now... in case you haven't heard.
Okay maybe it didn't give me a cold, but I did catch a cold the day I brought it home and since everything else gets blamed on the GTA series, I figured I'd lump my cold in there as well.
Let me first say that, for the most part, GTA IV has lived up to the hype. It's a solid, fun, and nice looking game.
That being said, it feels pretty much like every other GTA game I've played, albeit with a fresh coat of paint. I've had a couple of "OH WOW!" moments for sure, and overall I'd give the game a solid B+, but I'm worried that I may get bored with it too quickly. I have yet to try multiplayer though, which could keep me playing for years.
To all of you who have never played a GTA game, and are staying away due to all of the horrible things you've heard about it, let me just say this:
GTA IV is what you make of it.
Sure you're required to kill people as part of many of the missions, but 99.9% of the time, they are bad people who have little to no redeeming qualities. It isn't as though you're asked to take out an orphanage or bomb a school bus. Speaking of that, there are NO children in the game at all. I'm not saying that you're a noble soul in the game, but a good example is a mission where you have to go and rescue a mob boss' daughter from a gang of bikers that she's fallen in with. You wind up killing the bikers, but only after they shoot first.
I've also had at least one mission already where the game gave me the choice to kill a man or save his life. I saved him, but I'm wondering if that choice will come back to bite me later.
Can you kill old women in the game? Sure, but you don't have to. You're never forced to (at least I haven't been yet), but like in real life, you have the choice to do so and suffer the consequences.
I'm not making excuses for what is a brutal and violent game, I'm just saying that if you're staying away from GTA because you read on the interwebs that "the entire game centers around launching babies into buildings to make them crumble to the ground," give the game a shot. It's not what you think it is.
All this being said, my favorite moment from the game so far went like this:
I was on my way to pick up my girlfriend so that we could go bowling. I had no car, so I did what anyone in that situation would do and stepped in front of one driving down the street and pointed my gun at the driver. He refused to get out and even made some less-than-friendly comments about my person that I took offense to, so I shot him in the face. He then slumped forward onto the steering wheel (causing the horn to blare), and his lifeless body pressed down on the accelerator of his car. His car then ran me over, killing me, and the car knocked over a fire hydrant, which sprayed water into the air.
So there I was, dead in the street, having learned a valuable lesson that if you're going to shoot someone in the face, don't stand in front of their car when you do it.
GTA IV: Teaching us lessons every step of the way.
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