Under the Knife GTA Special- Special Nitpick review

By Kaiserhawk

(He really did like this game)

Since everyone, their mum, and their dog have already bought, played, got the t-shirt and seen the film adaptation of GTAIV there really isn’t much point in reviewing it, it’s GTA goodness with a next gen look. Yeah sure things have been revamped like combat, wanted system and other stuff as well as carrying over and improving the dating from San Andreas (Getting fat to attract Barbara lol) but while IV is being lauded as if it were the Video game messiah I thought it would be interesting to knock it down a peg…or two.

First on the list are your friends and Girlfriends. By reaching a certain percentage of “Like” on different friends will unlock special abilities like free taxi rides from Roman, armed goons from Dwayne, and Car bombs from Packie. Speaking of which I thought it was a little off giving the Irish guy’s special ability car bombs (Don’t get it? Look up the IRA). It also seems rather sad that your cousin Roman has to like you before sending you cabs and that it takes a few outing with him to get to like you. Anyway what’s annoying about this is that if you don’t speak to them for a while you drop in “Likeness” indicated by a “thumbs down” icon on screen. You get a thumbs down if you don’t call them for a while, blow them off, stand them up, are late picking them up, and for your Girlfriends trying your luck and failing.

Speaking of showing up late sometimes I swear the game hates you at this sometimes. You are always given an ingame hour to go pick up your friend, any later and you are late (durrr) which will indicate with a thumbs down and your friend busting your chops about it. What’s so wrong with this you ask? Well at times you have to pick up your friend on the other side of town thus making your designated hour very difficult to keep. Also friends will call at importune times such as when you are on your way to pick up another friend or when you don’t actually want to associate with anyone.

Another thing I could talk about is the lack of unlockable content that had been in the previous instalments. For example completing Vigilante missions in previous games gave you an increase of body armour however for GTA IV you get an achievement. I’m sorry but a crappy increase of a redundant number is not going to help me with harder missions and I was happier with the ingame rewards rather than the system ones. At least they made the vigilante missions easier this time around but other than going towards your 100% completion and the standard cash reward there isn’t really any real sense of accomplishment with these. While were on the subject as well it seems that the overall side missions have taken a step back. In 3, VC, and SA as well as the “Stories” games you had the staple Fire, Paramedic, Vigilante, and Taxi missions as well as other. But these were the main four that appeared in all the other games. In IV however I’ve only encountered Vigilante and briefly Taxi. I say briefly because you work for your cousin until his taxi garage is destroyed so out of the main four staples you only really have Vigilante missions… that are as stated above are lacklustre in their rewards.

The predictability of a GTA story is a little feeble in that most of them are bound to be about betrayal. GTA IV is no exception. In most instances the person who betrays you is usually bound to be the primary antagonist a good example would be Big Smoke or Lance Vance. While GTA IV tries to be different with the choices you can make I.E who to kill or to let someone live instead of killing them. But ultimately it turns out you will be betrayed by someone at some point in the story (I’m not going to say who). It’s the same predictable action which I have come to expect and would it kill the writers at Rockstar to mix things up a bit and you know NOT have anyone betray you…or if they do, don’t make them the primary antagonist.

One thing that seems to annoy many folks but I’m not to bothered about it was the ability to purchase new safe houses and businesses has been removed. While many would complain that they liked the whole real estate tycoon thing Tommy and Carl had going on it really doesn’t suit Niko’s character well. However that said there is a lack of things to actually buy in the game. Sure you could buy clothes and guns but those are hardly going to sap the cash away from your wallet, leaving you most of the time with a huge wad of cash and not having anything big to spend it on. Remember back in San Andreas there was a huge wardrobe of clothes to buy as well as jewellery and hairstyles, modding you car, and gambling in various Las Venturas casinos. Hell you could even go into debt in that game, whereas in IV you’ll see that huge number just taunting you, wanting to be spent. The only huge expensive purchases made in the game are high-end suits, high tier weaponry, and hospital bill from when you call out paramedics (depending on the injury)

I also wanted to bring something up about multiplayer but I can’t really find anything much wrong with it. It’s fun to play co-op missions like Deal Breaker and Hangman’s NOOSE as well as competitive matches like Cops & Crooks as well as Turf war. My only complaint is that of the players and I can’t really blame Rockstar for that, however the one thing that annoys me is that to unlock new clothes for your Multiplayer avatar you have to level up in ranked matches. Sounds easy, yes. Well it is. It just takes a while. Each rank has a huge jump that you need to reach before your next rank. Say from rank 1-2 it would be a matter of a few thousand dollars, easily made in a few matches however it would be a larger jump next as it would require an additional 30K to advance from rank 2-3 not so easily obtained in just a few matches. The fastest way I can see levelling up is to avoid competitive team battles and focus on Co-op missions, especially Hangman’s NOOSE as there is a trick to finish that mission easily and quickly even on it’s hardest difficulty. However as previously states this is where the player base will fuck things up. You’ll enter a match lobby only to be kicked in a matter of seconds for multiple reasons; you’re not their friend, no headset, ect and when you are kicked you a launched back into the single player game rather than a match select screen. Aside from these things though the multiplayer is a great new addition to the game.

Right now may as well be a good time to put a disclaimer that I actually really love the game and am not some kind of large-scale troll. While it won’t be my game of the year it is still fun altogether and despite its annoying hitches it may be one of the best games of 2008. I might revisit GTA IV in the future with a real review, I may not since there are so many to read that my hypothetical one may simply just be another hat in a ring full of them all praising the crap out of GTA IV. So my closing statements would probably be

(A) Try your luck or (B) Say goodnight

-Kaiser out

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