Grand Theft Auto IV on XBOX 360

Is there a doubt in anyone’s mind that 2007 will end up going down in the books as the greatest year in gaming history? The holiday lineup on the Xbox 360 alone is staggering, with games like Halo 3, BioShock, The Orange Box, and Call of Duty 4 competing for your gaming dollars. We had a chance to see each of those titles at E3 last week, but there was one sure-fire blockbuster that was noticeably absent from the festivities (aside from an all-too-brief showing at a press conference). Granted, it’s not like we were expecting to see Grand Theft Auto IV at the show, as developer Rockstars Games is notorious for their protection of their marquee titles

GTA IV tells the tale of Nikolai “Niko” Bellic, an Eastern European immigrant that comes to New Yor…er, Liberty City to chase the American Dream. Although his cousin Roman promised him a life full of champagne, women, and luxury cars, Niko instead finds that his deadbeat family member is deep in debt and working at a cab stand. Since Roman is the only person that Niko knows in the city, he must stick by his cousin in an attempt to help him out of trouble and make a name for himself. Like any GTA game, you’ll meet a wide array of memorable characters, helping some of them and putting some in the hospital.

Our demo kicked off in Star Junction, which is GTA IV’s version of Times Square. The first thing we noticed about the game was how authentic everything in the environment was when compared to the real New York City. Seeing the Xbox 360-powered Liberty City was an eye-opener, as we were actually able to tell precisely where we were in the environment by the landmark buildings, a far cry from the low-res doppelgangers in the last-gen games. For instance, as we rolled down the game’s version of Fifth Avenue, we knew that the Metropolitan Museum of Art would be right across the street from Central Park (or Middle Park as it’s known in the game).Like the previous games in the franchise, the game world in GTA IV is broken up into a number of different locations. Liberty City is made up of representations of four NYC boroughs: Algonquin (Manhattan), Broker (Brooklyn), Dukes (Queens), and Bohan (Bronx). You’ll also be able to take a trip to Alderny, the suburban area that’s modeled after New Jersey. We were told that the development team is still determining whether or not to make everything open from the beginning, although we’d bet that they’ll stick to the same formula to keep the missions close together. This is apparently the biggest city ever seen in a GTA, and while it’s not as large as the state of San Andreas, it’ll still take about an hour to drive across it.

If the segment that we saw was any indication of what to expect in the final product, GTA IV looks like it will have some extremely intense combat. As Niko made his way down the multi-floored office building, he had to take down a number of rent-a-cops that stood in his way. It appears that you’ll be able to deal location-specific damage, and shooting an enemy in the leg will cause him to crumple to the ground. Once our hero finally made his way outside, he was faced with a bunch of cops that were waiting for him behind their cars. This intense shootout reminded me of the bank robbery scene from Heat, which is high praise indeed. Everyone who hated the gunplay in the previous GTA games should be pretty happy with what they’ll see in this one.

There’s definitely still a lot for us to learn about GTA IV, but we were ecstatic to see that the game is shaping up beautifully. It appears that the development team is working hard to ensure that the game will be rooted in reality quite a bit more than the previous titles. While we might take stuff like cell phones, internet access, and taxi cabs for granted, they are a big part of living in the “real world” city. The combat appears to have been much improved, as well, which was one of the biggest problems that people had with the previous games. You can be damn sure that we’ll be bringing you a lot more info on everything from the combat to the soundtrack in the weeks leading up to the game’s release.
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