Liberty City continues to be a unique setting in the world of games—a foul-mouthed, violent, and consistently cruel parody of American city life. In the latest iteration of Grand Theft Auto, we also learn that Liberty City’s geographic location is right in the middle of the Uncanny Valley.

GTA 4’s look, when it pulls everything together successfully, is an eerily realistic virtual world. Pedestrians hold entire conversations on their cellphones, which you can eavesdrop on. An interconnected media including radio, television, and internet will reflect the changes you create by committing crimes. And your friendly companions call you to take them out to location-specific minigames like bowling, pool, and darts.

The main problem with a game so sprawlingly complex, with dozens of choices available at every turn, is when the seams begin to show in the game’s execution. In this sense, GTA4 still feels like a work-in-progress. There are some issues with clipping, like the way you can peer through the character models if the camera swings too close, or strange AI quirks, like how none of your dates in the game will react too negatively to carjacking and vehicular manslaughter.

In a perfect virtual world, these hundreds of technical glitches and lapses in artificial intelligence should be invisible, but unfortunately they’re as much a part of Liberty City as the dynamically changing weather. Why should we forgive lame oversights, like a nearly impossible-to-read cellphone screen (which also serves as the game’s multiplayer menu), or the game’s less-than-ideal framerate?

Here’s why: Because it’s too damn fun, warts and all. I have hardly ever laughed as loudly as I did when playing GTA Race, one of the game’s multiplayer modes, sabotaging other racers when I had lost all chances of winning (call it the “Hillary Clinton strategy”). There’s nothing quite like blocking a racetrack with a city bus and causing a massive pileup, then blowing it all to hell with a rocket launcher, to feel like a true bastard.

The “dicking around” quotient in the game’s multiplayer, and to a lesser extent, in the non-story single player, is still GTA’s most entertaining quality. When you’re not specifically on a mission, or are just trying to just get from point A to point B, the environment is still a random element where you might speed on the freeway, smash into oncoming traffic, and flip your car onto a nearby roof. If the simple act of running errands around town was this volatile in real life, I’d never leave the house.

The driving mechanics are a type of genius reserved for racing games like Gran Turismo and Forza. Although I’m not usually a big racing fan, after playing dozens and dozens of white-knuckle matchups I have to say that I now understand the appeal of these racing games, but I can’t see myself playing any other game for that same kick. GTA4 has pedestrians, mailboxes, dumpsters, and of course other cars that will make any race through town a unique and endlessly enjoyable experience.

The destructive physics in this game apply to everything from your car’s handling to the velocity of a screaming body as it bounces off your hood. Lampposts and other debris respond appropriately to being knocked around by a vehicle, and your car’s windows, lights, and wheels will all break away if you treat your ride too rough. And this is all before you even introduce the game’s weapons.

GTA 4 doesn’t really take any risks with the arsenal—you’ve got melee weapons, pistols, shotguns, machine guns, assault rifles, and a few explosives. This is probably one of the departments where downloadable content could make a difference. New weapons like a grenade launcher or taser might have added a new dimension to the online deathmatch and story-mode shootouts in the game, so this really feels like the bare minimum when it comes to weapon selection.

Fortunately, the new cover system even makes pistol and machine gun combat great. I found the controls to be largely effective, with a great blind-fire system and the ability to aim at your target before popping out of cover. Sometimes the cover system doesn’t lock you onto the right place, or you’ll find some areas where cover should work but doesn’t, but we’ll just file those under G for glitches.

For all the random races, shootouts, and exploration in the game, the real thrust of GTA 4 is in the story. Niko Bellic is a charming European immigrant, who reveals himself to us, the player, at the same time he introduces himself to the game’s non-playable characters. Details of Niko’s past, like the way he survived a war and betrayal back home, pepper his dialogue with the seedy criminals who so often need Niko to drive them across town.

My only complaint here is that Niko is a blank slate to us until he opens his mouth. It would have been nice to reveal more about his character in more subtle ways. One example where this works is when Niko responds to others through email. His responses are often pithy, funny, and revealing. More instances of private characterization, like when Niko writes to his mother to tell her that he is doing well in America, would have helped strengthen the game’s emotional impact.

At times GTA 4 can feel like it is an artifact from the future, where every game we play will have utterly integrated physics, AI, visuals, sound design, and open-world freedom. If only every game could have four years of development time and tens of millions of dollars in production values.

A few regular bugs and gameplay conventions will require your suspension of disbelief, but that is part of the irrational fun that is the GTA universe. Of course it’s absurd, from a story point of view, that you can replay any mission without consequence. I must have killed the same cheating girlfriend about twenty times before completing the finale of one mission.

The cellphone text messages asking you if you want to replay a mission seem like something out of the films It’s A Wonderful Life or Bruce Almighty, a convention from any other impossible fantasy world. It slightly diminishes GTA 4’s claim to realism, but it’s no more unusual than extra lives or save points in any other game.

This is a great jumping-off point for the next generation of the GTA series. GTA 4, like its predecessors, is a fantastic, gritty crime drama with absurd flights of fancy. If the storyline, setting, and feature set keep expanding exponentially, you can be sure this is a series that isn’t going away any time soon.

Tags: GTA-4, Rockstar

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