Tourist information

Welcome to the domain of hatred and evilness happiness and lollipops belonging to me, Cyan, cynic, main propagator for the death of Jeremy Wilken and general evil person who’s very much in love with a neologist. It’s awesome, really.

I write about two main subjects: what's going on in my life (duh, it’s a blog) and web design. I’m regularly chucking out useful stuff, so it is actually worth your time. Promise.

There’s generally a relaxed attitude around here. Stick around, have a cocktail...just don’t touch the candy.

No, really. Don't.

Posted: 4th January 2009

Review: Grand Theft Auto IV: Bring Hammer

Categorized: games, reviews.

The GTA series has always had one major appeal: the ability to run around with various types of weaponry wrecking havoc in my wake. That’s always been the golden heart of the franchise, and I can’t help but think that in this iteration Rockstar did not only murder the cop-killing fest but did it by burying it alive and waiting for its last sigh. The storyline at the beginning is awfully hard to get into and eventual boredom sets in quite rapidly. The problem is that I can’t go on a rampage because there’s not a gun in sight for the first few hours of the game; I have to grudgingly do as the game tells me. The missions do get more exciting as the story advances, I admit, but the first few hours are seemingly all variations on the classic “drive me here and escape from the police”-style which I thought was deprecated back in III.

The police system took a massive U-turn, and instead of the standard wanted-stars-which-never-go-away formula, they’ve mixed it up with inclusion of a search area. Sounds good? It’s not. It seems that the difficulty curve swerves massively up after three stars as pretty much all the police cars in Liberty screech after you. Even when you’re at a petty one the Random Placement Monster wants your blood more than a deranged rabbit, randomly spawning on-foot policemen and absolutely refusing to label these on the radar so the damn area is reset.

Driving’s also taken a turn for the worse in IV. All the cars—and I mean all of them—have terrible steering, and that just doesn’t work when the city has more sharp corners than a Rubik’s Cube which has been attacked by ninjas. Whenever you go somewhere whilst vaguely breaking the speed limit the gameplay pauses and steps aside to let the physics engine piss all over your face whilst you furiously mash the controls.

Now, understand me when I say that the game is truly amazing. The storyline is as immersive as a warm duvet and has a bit more depth than the comparatively shallow American-cheerleader stuff we’re used to. You’ll hear about your missions after a bit on the radio and can read about them on the Internet. The same dark sense of humour is there, right down to the logo of the bowling alley and the name of the drink vendors. The game still has some of the pin-ups of its predecessors: you can, for example, have fun with a prostitute and then step outside, gun her down and take back your money. Even the Pay ’n’ Spray is still there, although it is of dubious use unless you want to skip ahead a few hours in the game, which wouldn’t be necessary if the game didn’t decide to be a bitch and opening hours on the missions. The whore.

The combat system has been majorly revamped for the better, now emphasizing a duck-and-cover system. There are a couple of problems with it: Niko, the protagonist of arbitrary name, has a terrible tendency to take cover on the wrong side, allowing him to be riddled with more holes than a female cheese. That doesn’t subtract from the slightly sick fun of blasting people with a shotgun or watching them slowly burn when you litter the area with Molotov cocktails. The rocket launcher maintains its position as most destructive weapon, and I find myself subconsciously reaching for it because the explosions are so damn pretty. That’s right. They’re pretty. It’s beautiful watching drivers being cremated in their former vehicles. God, I need to get out more.

I haven’t yet found my ideal radio station in Liberty, but they make a comeback. Lazlow is back, and, although he’s a lot more obnoxious than he was in III, so he’s lost some of his appeal, but it is fun watching him toss around the term “Web 2.0”, which as is irritating and commonplace in the game as it is online.

Okay, I’m being a bit harsh. I love GTA IV, and not without reason. The immersion, wit and simple brilliance pretty much counteracts anything I could throw at it (apart from the driving: that will always suck.) I’m going to play on it a bit more. It’s amazing.

Keep your lives, though, lads.