Five Things Not to Like About GTA IV

Posted by Nate Patrin at 3:24 PM May 06, 2008

I doubt I'm the first person to admit hoping that there would be something really wrong with Grand Theft Auto IV, just so I could learn a few valuable lessons about the corrupt, ass-kissing nature of the game review business and the general perils of buying into hype. There's just one problem: It is as good as everyone says. The graphics are somewhere between "good enough" and "damn that's pretty"; the character animations are exquisite, the gameplay is exciting, and Liberty City is, at least from what I've played so far, one of the most eye-catching, detailed and explorable gameplay worlds of all time. There's some of the usual GTA issues -- I expected and got at least one hair-pulling mission that required way too many tries, a few other missions that required some "what in the hell is happening" trial-and-error, and a fair amount of long-hike chase missions that tested my patience -- but it's more or less impossible to make a Grand Theft Auto game without those things. The real problems that drove me completely insane in the previous games are largely solved: gunfights are kinetic and easily controllable, with a useful cover system that changes the whole dynamic of what used to be a massive headache of a gameplay mechanic; icons are clear and easy to spot; navigating between checkpoints and mission markers is done through a simple and intutitive GPS system (though it still leaves you on your own to discover useful shortcuts along the way) ... you'd really have to scrape the bottom of the bitch barrel to find something serious to complain about here.

So that's what I'm doing. Keep in mind that I'm not that far through the game: my completion is less than 30%, I've unlocked fake Manhattan but still have to reach fake New Jersey, and I haven't even tried hopping on multiplayer. But I've managed, somehow, to find five things about GTA IV that disappointed me in some way, even if it's not nearly enough disappointment for me to scoff at its 99 Metacritic rating. So if you're one of those people who's really desperate to pull a River Kwai on the hype train's bridge or thinks they're countercultural for spending all their time playing Mario Kart Wii instead ("pfft, Grand Theft what now?"), feel free to go on and on and on about these things to anyone who will listen.

1) There's no custom radio station integration
This usually happens to me after about 20 hours of playing a GTA game: the immaculately-assembled radio station soundtrack that Rockstar has so thoughtfully provided, the one that knocked me on my ass when I first read about it and again when I first heard it in action -- David Axelrod! John Coltrane! The Who! LCD Soundsystem! Audio Two! -- eventually starts becoming overly familiar. It didn't help that every time I felt like some electro or fusion jazz would've suited a good car chase, it always landed on the same Black Devil Disco Club or Grover Washington Jr. song I'd heard twelve times before and gotten tired of -- and these were the songs I liked. The PC and Xbox versions of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas helped solve this with custom soundtrack capabilities: you could flip your car radio to a playlist of your own songs -- hundreds of them, if you wanted -- and it even integrated some commercials into the mix. But GTA IV is missing this, which means that if you want to make your trip through Liberty City even more sonically apt (some Television, some Biggie, and a whole lot of Disfear and Mastodon to make up for the game's complete lack of a metal station), you have to play your console's custom soundtrack throughout the entire game, including through some emotionally intense cutscenes where "Colony of Birchmen" or "Juicy" might not work too well dramatically.

2) It can't decide whether to be "The Wire" or "Family Guy"
At many points, Grand Theft Auto IV is unusually heavy and deep for a GTA game. Niko Bellic is a bit of a wiseass and likes to curse profusely just like every other GTA protagonist, but he also comes from a war-torn Slavic nation and has more than a few moments where he reflects, with a surprising amount of pathos, on some of the atrocities he's seen and lived through. And some other incidental characters are straight out of the David Simon playbook, including a jaded and crestfallen former kingpin who's come out of prison to find his former friends abandoning him and his empire in ruins; his bitter reaction to his fallen status makes for some of the most well-written character development Rockstar's ever tackled. So it feels really weird to sit through one of these dramatically intense cutscenes, then hop in your car to be greeted by the same schticky toilet-joke radio commercials and crass innuendo that the series has always traded in. A lot of the satire in this game is top-notch, but it clashes noticeably with some of the game's more somber and reflective overtones.

3) The occasional low-detail NPC
There's one early-mid-game cutscene, which I won't spoil as far as plot developments go, where Niko's cousin Roman -- an extremely expressive, well-detailed character model with a huge repretoire of facial movements -- is standing directly beside a much less-detailed, unnamed character, who was probably made low-detail because his role is extremely marginal. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it looks a bit startling, especially when so much of the game's plot and character is driven by how well-acted and expressed the characters' actions are in the cutscenes.

4) Vehicles can get really squirrelly
This is maybe the most frequent gripe amongst players, and I can understand it well enough, even if years of playing racing sims where the acceleration trigger has to be held gingerly has helped me adapt fairly quickly. The biggest headaches I've had in this game so far are the missions where I've had to chase somebody on a motorcycle: when you're on a vehicle that flings you off after almost any collision at the cost of time and health, it's not so good when the vehicle in question tends to get a bit too sideways when you're trying to corner at full throttle yet still seems to take turns way too wide when you're braking. Motorcycles used to be the most fun form of land transportation in the game; now they're something I try to avoid at every cost.

5) There's no damned parking
This is how much I have to stretch to find gripes. It's a little annoying trying to get to a mission or a store, pulling up to the curb, exiting the driver's side door and immediately getting hit by a taxicab because I'm actually parking in a lane of traffic. I suppose I could park on the sidewalk, though. It wouldn't be the most flagrant violation of traffic law I've ever done in this game.

Expect a more complete, less nitpicky review later this week.