Niko’s aiming for Spring — brown is supposed to be in this season.

Rockstar’s golden hooker, Grand Theft Auto, was supposed to return last October in the much anticipated fourth installment… wait, sixth installment? Eighth? Okay, let’s just say Grand Theft Auto IV and move on.

October came and went, and obviously the game was not released — if it were, you’d be playing it right now instead of just reading about it. All that’s about to change very soon.

Take Two, publisher of the game, has GTA4 nestled firmly in their second quarter release calendar, which runs from February to April. Rockstar Games Vice President of Product Development, Jeronimo Barrera, confirmed that it’s still on track to meet that goal.

As far as the progress of the game goes, Rockstar seems to have addressed most of the things GTA fans have bitched about, such as having to drive all the way back to the starting point if you fail a mission, just to re-initialize it — now it’s a quick button press. Mission repeats will also have some varied dialog so “players won’t get bored”.

Your wanted level is now only affected if your crimes are actually witnessed by the police. Once the fuzz shows up, the mini-map flashes to indicate your danger zone. While you’re in the zone, the police will continue to give chase, so the goal is to escape and hide. Fighting back or causing any other kind of mayhem while in the zone will increase the radius and just make it that much more difficult to shake them.

Cars now have GPS systems in them to help guide you to your destination. The route will be drawn out on your mini-map, and expensive cars will even have talking GPS systems. Additionally, random events will occur while driving, such as barrels falling off of a truck, bums lying in the road, or other car chases completely unrelated to you or your actions.

Finally, probably the biggest gripe about the GTA series, is the targeting system. This has been completely overhauled and is now quite similar to The Godfather. Pulling the left trigger aims down the sights of your weapon and allows free-aiming. Holding the left trigger while aiming at an enemy locks onto that target. Once locked, you can move the right analog stick up or down to target the head or legs, respectively, and flicking the stick left or right changes targets altogether.

All of this works in tandem with the cover system, which is very much like that in Gears of War. Run into a wall or obstacle, hit the cover button, and you’re stuck to it. You can then peer out and aim with left trigger, or you can blind-fire.

Basically, Rockstar implemented all of the good things about Saints Row, added the targeting of The Godfather, and sprinkled with a pinch of Gears of War. Even if this wasn’t the next Grand Theft Auto game, I’d still say that’s a recipe for a delicious “I-will-buy-this-game” sandwich.

MTV News had a 90-minute exclusive preview of the game and claims it’s looking great. The build was running on an Xbox 360 development kit, and “appears to be shining with polish” — they see no reason why it wouldn’t make the target window of February – April. You can read MTV News’ full impressions here.

Update: Take Two just announced that the official release date for GTA4 is April 29, 2008. Sam Houser, Founder and Executive Producer of Rockstar Games, had this to say:

We’ve pushed ourselves very hard to make something incredible and hope the game sets a new benchmark for interactive entertainment.

I’m sure your game will do just fine, Sam.