GTA IV Review

I could make this review an entire page long, but to spare you time and your eyesight (yes I know white on black isn’t the most comfortable color choice to stare at for five minutes) I’m not going to go into depth on what is good about Grand Theft Auto IV (that is 4 for you idiots who call it “eye-vee” to be “cool”.) If I were to start talking about what makes GTA IV one of the best games I’ve ever played, well, I don’t feel like typing that all out. Find me in person if you want to hear all that or read any other review for the game. So to keep things short, I want to bring up the things I don’t really like about GTA IV, since that list is a pretty short one to begin with.
First, the cuts between cinematic camera angles is noticeably poppy. As in Pop-Ins. You know, the things that plague the revered Halo 3’s cinematics? Yea those. Although, unlike in Halo 3 where you will watch details come into view seconds after the camera shift, GTA IV just shutters a bit between camera shifts and the occasional scene with a far reaching background might pop-in a bit. It’s a slight annoyance that can ruin some of the most engrossing cut-scenes I’ve seen since Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
Also the aiming mechanic is a bit ridged. You use the triggers to aim/shoot. The left trigger brings up the target reticule and the right trigger pulls the trigger. However, if you pull the left trigger too hard it will lock onto a target for you, greatly reducing your mobility when moving and aiming. But, if you pull the right trigger gently it brings up the targeting reticule, so in essence, the left trigger has no real use, unless your looking for headshots–in which case if you are trying to pinpoint the head of some thug across the road who is shooting at you, you might as well try to blow up a balloon and let it loose in hopes that it will hit the thug in the eye, for the chances are greatly not in your favor.
Then, well, I really do not have any thing else negative to say about this game. Seriously, I’m that impressed with it. I even tried to look for stuff to complain about while I was playing it earlier and I couldn’t.
This really isn’t a complaint, but just something I found to be kind of annoying: I got shot up pretty bad and got smashed out of my windshield and was pretty low on health, so knowing that my safe house was miles away, I did what I’ve done in every GTA game (since GTA 3 came out) when I’m low on health and looked for my good friend Sidewalk Sally. I quickly noticed that the new Liberty City has a very low level of prostitution. It took me a good 10 minutes of slow driving before I found a rather chunky hooker who could “regain my health” to put it politely. So after paying the hooker, I promptly did the ritual “refund” move and backed over her, took her money, and left her for dead.
Hey, it’s a tough life in Liberty City.
Rockstar really has made a great game here. They made a believable city, obviously spending hundreds of hours on just the city details alone, and then said to me “Here is Liberty City Tommy, have fun!” and goddammit am I.
99.99%/100