Nico Bellic arrives in Liberty City ready for a new life
Rockstar Games
It is well known that Grand Theft Auto is one of the most successful franchises in terms of both sales and technical quality. Since the first episode with its 2d views from above, the title has been able to charm gamers from all over the world thanks to the incredible freedom of action granted by the game: racing in a car, exploring the details of almost faithfully reconstructed cities, carrying out illegal actions. unthinkable (fortunately) in real life. When the action finally became three-dimensional, everything got bigger but the depth of the title was still based on the vastness of the map and the careful reconstruction of a full-blown city. As time passed, the situation did not change: after Vice City and San Andreas, it was GTA 4's turn to bring back to gamers' consoles, a "New York" in scale, all to be discovered and conquered.
Grand Theft Auto IV
We are in the shoes of Nico Bellic, a Serbian emigrant who, at the invitation of his cousin Roman, moves to Liberty City, "the land of opportunities", at least in Nico's imagination, formed on Roman's exaggerated tales. The dream of a land where you can rebuild a new life and erase the ghosts of the past that often re-emerge in the stories of NB after the dark years of the war, soon vanishes and this is replaced by the concern for the many troubles in which Roman usually gets into, from gambling, to loan sharking, to drug trafficking. Soon our reputation as a precise and reliable criminal will attract the Liberty City bosses who will take advantage of it to entrust us with the dirty work and the possibility of erasing even the last skeleton in the closet of a painful past.
As soon as the game starts, we will have to immediately perform in a driving session, and it is already here that we can learn how GTA IV differs greatly from its predecessors even if the purpose of the game has remained unchanged. Before we get comfortable with the introduced vehicles, in fact, it will take some time given the much more simulation approach adopted by the developers. Driving a car is no longer as simple as it was in previous episodes and all of this will make the characteristic chases more difficult. Even the physics of the impacts is very realistic, the only concession to the arcade is the excessive rolling and pitching of almost all the vehicles, an element that is due if you wanted to make the past fun as well (and given the size of the city )by car.
Rockstar, from this point of view, has worked just fine since the main goal was to ensure a more real vision of the game when compared to previous episodes. After the first mission and witnessed the first intense movie, we will be directly catapulted to Liberty City (which is not difficult to identify as New York, with its characteristics Times Square, Brooklin etc.) which for the occasion has been divided into five neighborhoods: Algonquin, Broker, Dukes, Bohan and Alderney.
At first, you may find yourself somewhat disoriented, but it will take you a few minutes to become masters of everything the city has to offer. In this sense, talking about the title in question is a very difficult undertaking given the amount of things to do. First of all, the news are many and relevant starting from the gameplay. Rockstar in fact wanted to focus the gaming action in the use of the mobile phone; through it you can do everything: call friends, take photos or request special services. In fact, once we meet a character from the story-line, Nico will have his number available in the address book and whenever we wanted it, we could go out to have a drink or eat a sandwich.
Once we have acquired a certain percentage of feeling, we will unlock a given skill, such as the ability to call a taxi or even reinforcements if we need them. Another new implementation concerns the covers: in fact, during the shootings, we will be able to hide Nico behind a wall or a car and then come out and fire, very useful especially when the numerical inferiority makes itself felt. The controls are very intuitive in firefights: with LT you make a lock on, with RT you press the trigger, with B you reload the weapon while with RB you take refuge in the nearest shelter (Xbox 360 configuration, with PS3 press the corresponding keys).
The thing that is most astounding, however, is the life that surrounds Nico Bellic: in addition to the usual passers-by, we will notice workers at work, men selling hot dogs, cleaners. Everything makes GTA 4 grossly represent a life in New York that hangs between poverty and wealth. The difference between the social status of the different neighborhoods is in fact clearly visible. Bohan is one of the poorest neighborhoods with its badly paved streets teeming with thugs, while Algoquin and Dukes are the more "established" neighborhoods, full of beautiful cars and imposing buildings. Also noteworthy is the presence of the Statue of Liberty which, however, has taken the name of Statue of Carefree. In addition, passers-by will run away and call the police if we pass by with a weapon.
gameplay
The storyline once again follows the classic series of missions whose beginning is marked by the achievement of a pointer in the shape of a "letter" on the radar at the bottom left. As just mentioned, the missions are many (94) even if one cannot fail to feel the influence of the previous episodes. Indeed, they will tend, at least in terms of execution, to all resemble one another: homicides and car thefts are in fact the main tools through which to carry out your mission. However, the lack of timed missions is strange. Some missions then seen the use of purely cinematic cutscenes will give you some more emotion, such as the one in which you have to perform a bank robbery surrounded by the police.
At each completion, however, it is inevitable to feel a sense of gratification if a few moments before you were chased by dozens of police cars or vans loaded with Swat. The police represent one of the greatest difficulties of the game since reaching the many coveted six stars will be difficult to escape, unless you fortunately stumble upon a Pay'n'Spray around the corner.
If he were killed, Nico would be admitted to the nearest hospital with a few dollars less but with all the weapons in the holster. We also won't have to go back to the shelter to save the game after each mission as the game has an auto-save feature. Once the story is complete, which spreads over 20-30 hours, you can dive into trying to complete the title at 100%. To do this, the developers have decided to re-adopt the usual alternative missions (with some cuts) such as killing two hundred pigeons scattered around the city, jumping unique stunts and finding cars. The game structure, however, will never be too trivial since we will be able to make our character "live" too, by having him eat in one of the many Burner Shot or by giving him a change of clothes from time to time.
Technical Department
As far as the quality of the title is concerned, we can say that the Euphoria engine works quite well and guarantees the city a unique depth and truly amazing graphic effects such as "blur" when in the sun to symbolize the feeling of heat.
The facial features during the films, which sometimes give some purely cinematic emotion, are simply fantastic and make the expressions funny or not good depending on the situation. The textures for their part prove to be quite well done but we regret that their quality is not the best if they do not have a Hard Disk. However, some drop in frame rate is present as well as some not sporadic episode of pop in, especially as regards the lighting effects, these are small defects that are fully acceptable if you think of the enormous amount of data that the graphics engine is forced to. to manage.
The car models have also been carefully crafted, with both "sound" and road behavior variations clearly evident. Note the presence of helicopters and the absence of planes and bicycles.
The soundtrack is one of the many strong points of the title: incredibly varied, it boasts more than two hundred songs divided into the classic GTA radios, from reggae to those of Russian music, up to those dedicated to club dance lovers. The dubbing of the characters (in English) is very accurate and carried out by professional actors. The absence of dubbing in Spanish, if for some it may be a defect, we believe it should be considered an advantage because it manages to preserve cadences and idioms typical of a multi-ethnic city like New York and which would certainly have been lost in the translation. The subtitles, which sometimes take some license from the original speech, can be annoying while you are performing the mission and you are forced to read, but after a few hours of play you will learn to get used to them.
GTA 4 also boasts a wide multiplayer mode consisting of 16 modes to be faced alone or in a group, accessible whenever you want through the appropriate menu in Niko's mobile phone. This mode is also provided with a ranking that goes from level 1 to level 10. The passage from one level to another is carried out upon reaching a certain amount of money that will be accumulated with each kill or victory. The game modes present are varied and fun and range from classic deathmatches to car racing up to the realization of missions as quickly as possible than the other competitors.
The lag after the various patches released especially for PS3 is almost completely absent and it is not difficult to find other players with whom to share an online competition, but also a free exploration of the city; in fact, through the free mode, it will be possible to go around Liberty City with fifteen other users, albeit without tackling the storyline missions together.
We are certainly not faced with an engaging multiplayer like the one offered by Gears of War or Call of Duty 4, but we cannot say that it cannot give a few hours of lightheartedness bearing in mind that the soul of the game is in single player.
final Thoughts
The wait for a new chapter in the GTA saga, after San Andreas who was able to satisfy most for its freedom of action offered on a vast map, has certainly paid off. GTA 4 has improved the experience of the previous episode by succeeding in a very difficult task: to innovate where it seemed impossible to do so. One of the most appreciated innovations was certainly the presence of the mobile phone, a very useful accessory around which a large part of the game structure, the internet and of course the multiplayer mode revolves.
Rockstar has really worked hard to make Nico Bellic's adventure feel like a real experience featuring world-class cinematic sequences. In short, fun is guaranteed, as well as a few moments of reflection on the tragedy of the war (Niko's response to the question: "Aren't you afraid for your soul?" wall slaughtered one by one you understand that there is no soul to save and no afterlife "") waiting for the long awaited special content for X360 to arrive. An unmissable masterpiece for Grand Theft Auto lovers!
