Spike’s Video Game Awards ‘08

Yes that’s right the VGA ‘ 08 is tonight at 9:00. Game of the year: Gears 2, Fallout 3, or Fable 2. In my opinion it is tough to choose between Fallout 3 and Gears of war 2, Fable 2 in my opinion is good but not compared to these games. Anyway watch on Spike TV at 9:00.

Gears of War 2

Quick Rundown

+great graphics

+good story

+BLOOD!

+chainsaw on a gun!

+achievements are slightly easier to get

-still limited to 2 people split-screening in multi-player

-new characters disappear without need

Basically since the launch of Gears 2 it has been pretty much all I have been playing, other than that I work.  This game is awesome! Gears of War 2 includes a total of 10 new multiplayer maps, plus a code to download five remastered maps from the original game. The new maps take inspiration from the locations in the campaign, whereas new environmental effects change some of the maps as you’re playing. For example, th map “Hail” features razor-sharp rain that gradually kills anyone out in the open. Furthermore, “Day One” has a huge emergence hole in which a beast can take swipes at any surrounding players. Finally, “Avalanche” is completely transformed when a snowstorm hits, turning it from a multi-tiered level into one flat plane. These environmental effects aren’t feature in every map and game mode, but they definitely liven up standard deathmatch-style multiplayer game types such as Warzone.

The original Gears of War was a spectacular-looking game, and the sequel maintains this high technical and artistic quality. Instead of pushing for increased visual fidelity, the graphics engine adds a couple of other dimensions to the presentation, with walls that crumble under gunfire and dozens of enemies onscreen at once. These new features don’t necessarily affect the gameplay, but they look good and help add to the dramatic scale that the designers have chosen. The new organic capabilities of the Unreal Engine make for one particularly memorable level in which you literally have to kill a giant enemy from the inside. Gears of War 2 also has impeccable sound design, with terrific voice acting, meatier weapon effects, and another beautiful cinematic score.

Gears of War 2 has a lot in common with its predecessor, but the new environments, darker storyline (thats right, theres a storyline now!), and epic scale certainly have a lot to offer fans. The new weapons, melee attacks, and co-op options make for a campaign that you’ll want to complete a number of times, and the new multiplayer modes give the game variety and longevity. Simply put, Gears of War 2 is a superior shooter that no action fan will want to miss out on.

Over all a:

The New Xbox Experiance Launched!

We’ll its been a day since the initial launch of the new experiance and its so far is turning out to be great.

Positives include:

Easy access to friends and achievement details

Rockin’ Avitars

and you can now save games on to the Console.

Negitives:

Avatars need more accessories and expressions

not all previous backgound image packs work

Other than that its fun!

Peace, have fun with it!

Fable 2

Quick Run-Down

+Story

+Graphics

+Options

+Comedic

-Options

-Fairly Short

Fable 2 picks up 500 years after the first game, taking place in a version of Albion that has advanced to repeating rifles and grand downtown villas, although magic and fantasy are still very much intact. The evil Prince Lucien, struggling with the death of his wife and child, has embarked on a twisted mission to locate and eliminate the remaining Heroes in Albion, whom the main character must eventually rescue, reunite and collaborate with to keep Lucien from achieving his goal. (You can also do this while playing as Master Chief).

This heroic journey takes players into more than a half dozen different regions, each of which has a unique feel, geography and economy. While the original Fable seemed large, Fable 2 puts the first game to shame, as each of the sequel’s individual regions feels as large as the entire first game. Albion isn’t quite on the scale of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but its geography and size are much closer to Oblivion than expected. With this size come a host of gameplay options outside the main storyline (including the puzzles associated with opening Demon Doors). Because Fable 2 is a game about being a good, evil or “middle ground” character, it includes a variety of side missions, many of which have both good and evil versions (for instance, either stopping some bandit raids or deciding to participate in them). None of these is vital to advancing the plot, although completing them adds to the main character’s Renown and light/dark alignment. Some missions, in fact, only are available to characters of a certain alignment, so it’s safe to say some Xbox 360 owners will not have the same experience as their friends.

Outside of the side missions, Fable 2 also includes several side activities that are important enough that gamers can significantly improve their experience by participating in them. The Woodcutting and Blacksmith jobs, for instance, are great mini-game ways to make gold, even if their swing-meter hit detection is inaccurate and lacking polish. It’s important to pursue these jobs early in the game and to endure the tedium of reaching Level Five in both, because top-rated Blacksmiths and Woodcutters make exponentially more money for each sword they forge or log they split, thus letting players make mad cash with which to buy real estate.

Literally every structure in Fable 2 is available for purchase, from small fruit stands, furniture stores and pubs to carriage houses, homes and even the castle. Some real-estate ventures are more expensive than others — buying a home and renting it out isn’t too costly, while purchasing a five-star pub or store can cost more than 60,000 gold — but the purchases are almost always worth it. Every six or seven real-world minutes, the in-game character receives a payment from an investment, be it rent or business revenue. Combine a few stores and houses, and the “free money” really rolls in. Players can get greedy and adjust the rent/prices, but that adds to the character’s corruption scale. The coolest part of these investments, though, is that Fable 2 keeps track of the in-game time even when the Xbox 360 is turned off. So, when players turn off their console for the night and come back to the game the next evening, they may end up being “welcomed” by 35,000 gold or more, depending on the number of properties owned.

When players decide to hop back on the campaign trail, they will upgrade their character’s attributes based on how they literally play the game. Strength Points are earned by doing melee attacks and can be used to upgrade your blocking ability, the strength of your attacks and your overall hit points. Skill Points are gathered by killing enemies with ranged weapons (e.g. crossbows and rifles), and can be spent to learn evasive techniques, to improve your ranged-weapon accuracy and boost your character’s overall speed. Will Points, meanwhile, are earned by using magic and can be spent to learn and upgrade eight magic tricks: Shock, Inferno, Vortex, Time Control (slow motion), Blades (they shoot at enemies from the sky), Chaos (foes do bizarre things like run away, stop moving, fall in love with you or attack one another), Force Push and Raise the Dead (recently deceased enemies return to fight alongside you for 10-14 seconds). The General XP category rounds things out, with points in this category being available for use in any o f the other three categories.

Yet behind all this customization and non-plot gameplay lies a story that needs to be completed, and that’s where Fable 2 suffers some clear growing pains. Peter Molyneux himself has said he didn’t make Fable 2 for hardcore gamers; it’s designed to be more approachable to John Q. Gamer. However, by adding such size and depth to his game, Molyneux and the team at Lionhead have introduced some new variables that quite frankly aren’t addressed like they are in other games of this size/depth, or are addressed in some new ways that just don’t work.

The first sign of trouble comes when trying to navigate the game world. Players almost always have multiple quests or objectives, only one of which can be active at once. When a specific quest is activated, players have three options to find their way to the next objective, each of which involves a gold line along the ground (think Crazy Taxi or Midtown Madness). The first option is a bright gold line. The second option is a low-intensity gold line. The third option is to turn the line off, which most Xbox 360 owners would choose if the game had a mini-map to help navigate the similar-looking subdivisions of each region. But without a mini-map, you feel absolutely crippled when walking through the world without the gold line.

Pulling up the pause menu is no help, because the only maps available are for the area in which you’re currently located, and there’s never an option to “zoom out” to get your bearings in the larger world. Forcing players to use the glowing navigation line is inexcusable. Not only is it graphically annoying, but it suffers from serious slowdown when trying to re-calculate the best route, much like a half-broken GPS. The lack of a mini-map is also horrible, because it’s difficult not only to know where you’re supposed to go, but also where certain landmarks and objectives are located. And, there is quite literally no way to know which regions are adjacent to other regions — and thus which direction you need to go — because you never see a full world map, nor can you “move a cursor” around one. The narrator/tutor in the game may be blind, but there’s no reason for gamers to have to play that way.

To their credit, Lionhead gave gamers the option of “fast traveling” to previously discovered areas, presumably to appease gamers who either don’t want to walk in-game for days or who grow tired of following the gold line. However, because of the poor navigation and the excruciatingly long load times during so-called fast travel, the game quickly delves into a tedious mess of fast traveling from one section to the next simply out of navigational necessity. We played most of the game without fast traveling, choosing instead to wander the countryside, but after seeing the same basic landscapes over and over and encountering only a handful of random enemies along the way, fast travel eventually became the preferred method. Without it, navigation just got maddening and boring.

The second sign of trouble is the game’s linearity, a surprising turn for an action RPG of this size. Being able to see for miles means nothing when the paths and walkways are as pre-determined as they are in Fable 2. See a hillside in the distance? Chances are, it’s either inaccessible due to a valley, a two-foot retaining wall or a river with an impassable shore. Either that, or you can only get there by following a single trail. The first Fable suffered from this as well, although it wasn’t quite as noticeable in a game world of that size. But when Albion is comprised of this many large-scale regions, you can’t help but get frustrated by levels that seem designed with the philosophy of “teach a man to follow, and he’ll walk straight for a lifetime.” The game’s underground caves and dungeons suffer the same DOOM-like fate, a sad fact that’s made worse by an overall lack of enemies to break up the A-to-B monotony.

Another problem with a fantasy RPG like this is the development team’s apparent decision to nerf the magic system altogether. When playing with melee or ranged weapons, those attacks’ accuracy and power show marked improvement when upgraded to Level Two or higher. Ranged weapons get more accurate, more powerful and can be zoomed-in, while melee weapons do more damage and can be swung in devastating Flourishes to knock down even the strongest enemy. On Level One, the various magic powers show great promise as well, particularly force push and raise the dead. But use them enough to warrant upgrades, and the risk/reward balance goes out the window, and along with it, all motivation to upgrade magic in the future.

Fable 2 uses a tiered magic system in which Level One players can select the magic spell they’d like to use and press the B button once to use it (there is no mana bar; use magic as fast and as often as you can). However, Level Two spells and higher must be charged like an energy weapon, with the time required to charge the spell increasing based on its level. On the surface this seems like a legitimate requirement; if you want to use more-powerful magic, you’ll have to take the risk of being hit while charging it. But when you consider the full arsenal at your disposal, the upgraded melee and ranged weapons don’t require charging, and they often do just as much damage as magic. And, as the game progresses and enemies become more numerous and more powerful, there’s basically no time to charge higher-level spells, rendering them pretty much pointless. I’m all for risk/reward, but its magic-only implementation makes no sense, and it will likely deter lots of gamers from using some of the higher-level (and very cool) spell variations.

At least the spells look good, even when in Level One. Fable 2 does a fantastic job of maintaining the fantastical design and feel of the first Fable, but with higher resolution textures and much-improved draw distances. The main character’s progression as his/her appearance changes to reflect the player’s tactics is also much more subtle than the original, as it doesn’t take place when leveling-up, but “organically” in on the fly. The only unfortunate holdover is the use of bloom effects and overt image softness, both of which seem artificial and a bit “last gen.” The camera could also have used a bit more polish, particularly as it gets stuck indoors, but since that’s an issue with most third-person games, we won’t hold anything against Lionhead for not being able to solve an industry-wide problem.

What we can hold against Lionhead, though, is becoming victims of their own ambition and achievement. Fable 2 is literally a huge improvement over Fable 1, with a comparatively massive game world, and it has a dizzying number of non-essential activities and customization options to help immerse gamers in the world of Albion. It also includes online co-op via Xbox Live — an option that has the potential to boost the fun factor — but as of this writing, that option is not available. But even as Molyneux said he’s not going after core gamers, his team’s game-design decisions seem to imply otherwise, thus opening them up to new criticism. Linearity and navigation issues are fine in a small game world, but Fable 2 got big. Having a simple ability-upgrade system makes it easier to refine, but Fable 2 “went deep” with its magic upgrades and nerfed them in the process. As a sequel, Fable 2 does things very well, and we’re impressed at how much Lionhead has built off of the original’s modest foundation. But while Fable 2 may not consider itself competition for other high-profile hardcore RPGs, its content additions justify the comparison, and those comparisons definitely show growing pains.

I Rate this game Solidly at:

Call of Duty: World at War Beta!

Well the bata has been released to everyone! It will run untill 2 am on November 11. It includes 3 maps and all wepons, perks, etc. It is only an online-multiplayer beta. This game compaired to COD4 is very dark and for me this game is a game I would get but not at the release date. Download it (free for 360 and PC, there is currently no PS3 version avaiable) and you decide!

Rock Band

Quick Run Down:

+Interactive/Different

+Graphics

+Music

-No online band

Rock band is the next gen music game as it brings music to the masses in a way we’ve never seen before, in a video game

Developed by Harmonix, the company responsible for creating the Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution franchises, Rock Band allows you to live out your rock star fantasies by playing as a four-piece band — guitar, bass, drums and vocals — with a soundtrack of some of the most well-recognized rock songs of the past 40 years. Easy enough for almost anyone to pick up but loaded with enough depth to keep experts playing for months, it won’t be long before Rock Band is the game everyone’s talking about.

Rock Band could best be described as “band karaoke.” Instead of having just a singer sing along with the music, Rock Band introduces other musicians to the fray. If you’ve played Guitar Hero, you’ll immediately grasp the guitar and bass sections, as you attempt to strum along with notes as they descend down the screen. The drum tracks work similarly, with a new drum controller that consists of four electronic pads and a kick pedal. (Rock Band currently sells as a special $170 bundle that includes the game, a guitar controller, a drum controller and a USB microphone.)

The new Rock Band guitar controller is a small-scale model of a black-and-white Fender Stratocaster, and looks a lot more like a serious instrument than the SG and Xplorer models that shipped with earlier Guitar Hero games. It’s got a few cool new features, such as a pickup switch that tweaks the sound of your guitar and extra fret buttons at the top of the neck that can be used for solos.

While the new Strat is a decent controller that should satisfy casual players, experts will likely get frustrated with the extra-wide fret buttons and squishy strum bar, which add some difficulty to tougher solos. The good news is that the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band is compatible with both the older Xplorer and new Les Paul controllers that ship with Guitar Hero III, so if you’re the type of person who’ll get bent out of shape over the Strat, there’s a good chance you already have the guitars to replace it.

The new drum controller is a solid piece of hardware that should stand up to a beating, which is a good thing because you’ll probably feel compelled to beat it a lot. It ships in several pieces but can be assembled pretty quickly, with clasps that allow you to adjust the height of the kit and gamepad buttons on the center to allow for easier menu navigation. The pads are more rigid than standard drums, which can take some getting used to if you play real drums; otherwise, the toughest challenge is getting coordinated with the kick pedal and getting a feel for hitting the pads, which are a relatively small target compared to real drums. (A pair of wooden Ludwig drumsticks are included with the package.)

The last piece of hardware in the bundle is a USB microphone (the Xbox 360 version includes a small powered USB hub for you to plug everything into). The mic sounds pretty decent, but has no actual controls on it; you’ll need to connect a gamepad to navigate the vocal menus. If you’re overly self-conscious about your singing, you can use the gamepad to adjust the relative volume of both the game vocals and your own on the fly.

Once you’ve gotten all the hardware together, there’s a ton of gameplay in Rock Band. There are three solo campaigns for the guitar, drums and vocals, consisting of nine tiers of five songs each, increasing in difficulty as you go along. Overall, the guitar tracks are slightly easier than the Guitar Hero games: part of it is the actual song selections, which shy away from shredfests in favor of more mainstream songs; part of it is that the note charts are just friendlier, particularly avoiding piling on the three-note chords the way Guitar Hero III does.

As it turns out, the drums offer the most challenge in Rock Band as the addition of the kick pedal adds an entire new level of complexity to the game. It doesn’t take long to get the hang of playing simple rhythms, but by the time you’re working your way through the Hard difficulty, you’ll feel besieged by constant rolls that make it hard to keep a streak going, and the Expert versions of the song are loaded with never-ending kick drum beats that may often seem too rapid to be played by normal humans.

The vocals are a bit easier, but require some prior knowledge of songs: unlike the other instruments, where it’s abundantly clear what a yellow note requires you to do, the vocal tracks only show relative pitch, so you’ll need to get familiar with the songs to learn exactly what you’re supposed to be singing.

Rock Band’s setlist is a fairly impressive one. There’s a wide array of genres and eras represented, from The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” to modern hits like Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” and Queens of the Stone Age’s “Go With The Flow.” The best thing is that almost all the songs are original tracks, putting an end to the sub-par cover versions that sometimes plagued the Guitar Hero titles.

Once you’ve got four players together, you can get into the meat of Rock Band: playing as a group. The interface is fairly clean, with three columns showing the guitar, drum and bass tracks, and the vocals running horizontally across the top.

A number of special features make band play more than just co-op with four people. As players collect energy and deploy Overdrive — Rock Band’s version of Star Power — the entire band benefits from a bonus multiplier. If the entire band uses Overdrive at the same time, you can build a x8 score multiplier for the group, which, combined with a max of x4 for guitar, drums and vocals and x6 on bass (yes, the bass goes to x6 now), means you can build x32 or x48 bonus multipliers, making it possible to put up scores of 2 million and higher on a single song. While guitar and bass activate Overdrive in a similar manner to Guitar Hero — tilting the instrument — the drums activate via special fill sections and vocals by singing through empty space.

The flip side is that it’s more than possible for players to fail songs. Rather than making people sit and watch, it’s possible to “rescue” the slacker by activating Overdrive… assuming someone has it. There’s also a limit to how many times you can save someone: three strikes and you’re out, and you’ll likely take the group out with you, as the band’s crowd meter sinks rapidly while anyone’s on the sidelines.

With a full group, you can play Rock Band’s marquee mode, Band World Tour. Here, you can create custom characters, pick a home city, and begin the process of playing gigs as a band. Some gigs are just single songs; others allow you to create your own setlists, play mystery setlists, or are marathons requiring you to play five songs or more. (The Endless Setlist requires the band to play all 58 songs in one sitting). As you successfully complete gigs, you unlock new shows, venues and cities, eventually leading to your band reaching the Hall of Fame and world stardom.

The Band World Tour is unique in that it’s not the straightforward type of campaign we’ve become used to in these types of games. You’re not stuck on one difficulty and left with a linear progression of songs to clear. Instead, you’ll almost always have a large number of gigs available in multiple cities, and players are constantly forced to make decisions: should you play on Medium to get through a song, or on Hard or Expert to go for big points, at the risk of possibly failing songs and losing fans?

About the only disappointments in the World Tour are the fact that you end up playing the same songs many, many times, and that it’s only available to play offline, ruining our dreams of building supergroups with friends across the country.

here are two head-to-head modes — Tug of War and Score Duel — in which you can take on opponents in guitar, bass, vocals or drums. And while there’s no online support for the Band World Tour, you can play single songs as a band with online players. The game could sorely use some sort of online browser showing available musicians looking to rock out — you’re basically stuck with a quickmatch feature or sending friend invites — but the games we’ve played have been lag-free, which has been a pleasure. There are also a large number of leaderboards up and running, but they’re a little unwieldy to navigate (and currently not updating properly).

While graphics take a bit of a backseat to the music in Rock Band, the presentation is top-notch nonetheless. With an abundance of venues, you never feel like you’re playing the same arena over and over. The camera angles are more akin to a handheld cam in the crowd at a concert, and a stylish grainy filter gives it the look of a proper rock video. The character customization system makes it possible for the game to supply you with a constant stream of oddball band members, which is a nice change of pace after looking at Guitar Hero III’s stiffly animated singer for the 300th time.

I rate this:

Gears Of War 2 Achievements

Yes, the achievements for Gears 2 have been announced, and this time you can get most of them without playing over xbox live.

Unlockables;

Complete Act 1 in Gears of War: Unlock Anthony Carmine multiplayer skin in Gears of War 2.

Find 10 COG tags in Gears of War: Unlock Minh Young Kim multiplayer skin in Gears of War 2.

Defeat RAAM in Gears of War: Unlock RAAM multiplayer skin in Gears of War 2.

See after the break for a full list.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

The Good

• Intense story that will excite fans and non-fans alike
• Crazy art design dripping with intensity
• Powerful physics engine lets you execute all sorts of awesome-looking moves
• You can punt a Jawa!!!

The Bad

• You can’t punt everything!!

Well this is a game that did not excite me that much when it had been advertised before the release, but when I sat and started to play it, it was actually very fun and enthralling.  The story line of the game fills in a lot of the gaps that are missing between movie 3 and 4. And the detailing in the art and the design of the game is excellent compared to most games, I think that the detail blows the graphics in Halo 3 to pieces, but most games seem to do that! another thing that i enjoyed about this game is the different engines that its uses. Yes it uses more that one. One example is if you pick up a soldier and move him near a box he will grab onto it and wont let go until he is killed. That brings me to the most comedic part of the game…the Jawa’s. Little annoying creatures that when button mashed right will be picked up and punted into the horizon.

And the only flaw i found with the game is that not everything can be punted like a Jawa!

Other reviewers have been rather harsh on the game. I’ve seen the flaws that they have pointed out and have yet to actually find on that is true. I enjoyed this game and rate it:

Battlefield: Bad Company

Quick Rundown:

+at times is very comical

+realistic

+fun to just blow stuff up (ie. buildings, vehicles, people)

-multilayer is limited and the server is horrible

In Battlefield: Bad Company, no one is safe. Not a sniper hiding inside a tower. Not a soldier driving a massive tank. And definitely not you, as you bob and weave across a fiery sandbox of destruction. If you thought the action of the Battlefield franchise was intense before, you haven’t seen anything yet. Thanks to a fleshed-out single-player campaign, Battlefield’s trademark multiplayer action, and a new level of destructibility, Bad Company is quite simply one of the most fun shooters released this year.

Sweetwater and Haggard entertain themselves, and you, with a little rock-paper-scissors in between firefights.

Grand Theft Auto IV (4)

The Good

• Superb character-driven story
• Liberty City really does feel alive
• Multiplayer modes that let 16 players go wild across the entire city
• Genuinely funny radio and TV shows, comedy acts, and character dialogue
• Controls are much improved over previous games.

The Bad

• Occasional problems with friendly AI
• Some minor visual quirks.
• I would like to have seen a co-op mode

Stepping off a boat in the shoes of illegal immigrant Niko Bellic as he arrives in Liberty City at the start of Grand Theft Auto IV, you can tell immediately that Rockstar North’s latest offering is something quite special. Yes, this is another GTA game in which you’ll likely spend the bulk of your time stealing cars and gunning down cops and criminals, but it’s also much more than that. GTAIV is a game with a compelling and nonlinear storyline, a game with a great protagonist who you can’t help but like, and a game that boasts a plethora of online multiplayer features in addition to its lengthy story mode. It’s not without some flaws, but GTAIV is undoubtedly the best Grand Theft Auto yet.

Liberty City has changed a lot since 2001.

One of the many things that set GTAIV apart from its predecessors is Liberty City, which is more convincing as a living, breathing urban environment than anything that you’ve seen in a game before, and bears little resemblance to its namesake in 2001’s GTAIII. Liberty’s diverse population believably attempts to go about its daily business, seemingly unaware that several criminal factions are at war in the city. Niko has no such luck. He’s compelled to start working for one of the factions shortly after arriving, when he learns that his cousin Roman has some potentially fatal gambling debts. Niko’s military experience makes him a useful freelancer for employers in the business of killing each other, and though his reluctance to carry out their orders is often apparent, he does whatever is asked of him in the hope that completing missions for other people will ultimately give him the means to complete his own.

Actually, Niko doesn’t have to do everything that is asked of him. On several occasions as you play through his story, you’ll be presented with decisions that afford you the option of doing what you think is right rather than blindly following instructions. You don’t necessarily have to kill a target if he or she promises to disappear, but you have to weigh the risk of your employer finding out against the possibility that the person whose life you spare might prove useful later in the game, or even have work for you in the form of bonus missions. To say anything more specific on this subject would be to risk spoiling one of GTAIV’s most interesting new features, but suffice it to say that every decision you make has consequences, and you’ll likely want to play through the game at least twice to see how the alternatives unfold.

Grand Theft Auto IV’s story mode can be beaten in less than 30 hours, and there are so many optional activities and side missions to take part in along the way that you can comfortably double that number if you’re in no hurry. The majority of the story missions task you with making deliveries and/or killing people, and play out in much the same way as those in previous games. With that said, most of the missions are a lot easier this time around, partly because Niko is a more agile and efficient killer than any of his predecessors, and partly because the LCPD seemingly has better things to do than hunt down an illegal immigrant who’s gunning down undesirables all over the city. Some of the more imaginative missions sprinkled throughout the story include a kidnapping, a bank heist, and a job interview. The cinematic cutscenes associated with story missions are superbly presented and are the sequences in which the game’s characters really shine. Without exception, the characters you encounter benefit from great animation, great voice work, and superbly expressive faces. They’re not always so impressive when they join you on a mission and refuse to do what they’re supposed to (for example, not following you on an escort mission, or failing to negotiate a doorway). Nevertheless, these problems are few and far between, and they’re made less painful by the new “replay mission” option that you’re presented with whenever you fail.

He’s a gun for hire, but Niko Bellic is the most likeable GTA protagonist to date.

New abilities in Niko’s arsenal include scaling fences and walls anywhere he can get a foothold, shimmying along ledges, and, most importantly, taking cover behind objects. The ability to stick close to walls, parked cars, and the like at the touch of a button makes GTAIV’s gunplay a huge improvement over that in previous games, and, in tandem with the new targeting system, it also makes it a lot easier. Enemies are rarely smart enough to get to you while you’re in cover, and given that you can lock your targeting reticle on to them even when they’re hidden, all you have to do is wait for them to poke their heads out and then pick them off with a minimum of effort. Locking on to enemies targets their torso by default, but you can use the right analog stick to fine-tune your aim and kill them more quickly with a headshot or two. Playing without using the lock-on feature make things more difficult, but you’ll need to master the technique so that you can shoot blindly at enemies from positions of cover when you dare not poke your own head out to line up the shot.

Given the amount of trouble that you get into as you play through the story mode, it’s inevitable that the police are going to get involved from time to time, even when their presence isn’t a scripted feature of your mission. Liberty City’s boys in blue are quick to respond when you get flagged with a wanted level of between one and six stars, but they’re not nearly as tough to deal with as their counterparts in previous GTA games. They don’t drive as quickly when pursuing you, they rarely bother to set up roadblocks, and you’ll need to blow up practically an entire city block before the FIB (that’s not a typo) show up. Furthermore, you’re given an unfair advantage in the form of your GPS system; when you’re not using it to plot a valid route to any waypoint of your choosing, it doubles as a kind of police scanner. Any time you have a brush with the law, the GPS shows you the exact locations of patrol cars and cops on foot in your area, and highlights the circular area (centered on your last known whereabouts) where they’re concentrating their search. To escape, all you need to do is move outside the circle and then avoid being seen for 10 seconds or so, which is often best achieved by finding a safe spot and just sitting there. It’s not a bad system in theory, but in practice it makes dodging the law a little too easy, especially when your wanted level is low and the search area is small.

The new cover system makes gunplay much easier than in previous games.

When you’re not running missions for criminals, taking part in street races, stealing cars to order, or randomly causing trouble, you’ll find that there are plenty of opportunities to unwind in Liberty City. Some of these optional activities offer tangible rewards that can prove useful in missions later on, whereas others are just a fun way to kill time and take in more of GTAIV’s superb humor. For example, you can watch television, listen to numerous different radio stations, check out some genuinely funny shows (including some big-name acts) at cabaret and comedy clubs, and use a computer to surf the in-game Internet.

GTAIV’s Internet is filled with spoofs of all the kinds of Web sites that you’d only ever look at accidentally or when you know there’s no danger of getting caught. Some of them can be found only by clicking on links in spam e-mails, whereas others are advertised prominently on the search page. There’s plenty of amusing stuff to find if you spend some time in one of the “TW@” Internet cafes, but the most interesting site by far is an online dating agency through which you can meet women who, if they like your profile, will agree to go on dates with you. Dating and socializing with friends is something you can spend as much or as little of your time doing as you like, and though the people you meet can occasionally be demanding to the point that they become irritating, keeping them happy invariably benefits you in some way.

Keeping friends and dates happy means spending time with them and doing things that they enjoy, and all of them have different personalities. Some friends like to join you for minigames such as tenpin bowling, pool, or darts, whereas others prefer to go out for a meal, get drunk, or take in a show. Of course, dates are much fussier than regular friends, and their opinions of you are influenced not only by whether you pick them up on time, where you take them, and whether you try your luck when dropping them at home, but also by a number of much more subtle factors. Dates will comment on stuff like the car you drive, how you drive it, and the clothes you wear. They’ll even notice if you wear the same outfit two dates in a row, though not all of them will be bothered by it. The rewards that you get when another character likes you enough vary depending on who it is. Without wishing to give away specifics, befriending a lawyer can prove useful if you’re having trouble with the cops, for example, and having a nurse on your friends list can literally be a lifesaver.

GTA4’s friends invariably come with benefits.

You’ll keep in touch with your dates, friends, and some of your enemies using another of GTAIV’s great new features: a cell phone. It’s hard to believe that something as simple as a cell phone could add so much to a game like this, but it’s implemented so well that it’s hard to imagine leaving any of Niko’s safe houses without it. If you’ve ever used a cell phone in real life, you’ll have no problem operating this one and, given that it’s controlled using only the D pad and a single button, it’s easy to call up acquaintances and take calls even while driving. There’s no unwieldy conversation system to deal with; you simply choose which friend you want to call, what you want to talk about (it could be work, a fun activity, or asking for a favor) and then, assuming that he or she answers the phone, the conversation plays out. Incoming calls are even easier, though they occasionally come at inopportune (or amusing) times; hearing your cell-phone’s signal interfere with your car radio is the least of your worries when you consider the possibility of a date calling you while you’re with a prostitute or embroiled in a gunfight with the Mafia. Incidentally, new ringtones and visual themes for your phone can be purchased via the in-game Internet, which is typical of the incredible attention to detail that you’ll come to take for granted as you play.

To give you some idea of just how much thought has clearly gone into the crafting of GTAIV, even the act of stealing a parked car, which is still achieved by pushing a single button, can now result in any number of different things happening. If the door is locked, as is often the case, Niko will smash a window with his elbow or his foot to get inside. Once inside the car, he may need to hot-wire it to get it started; you can speed up the process slightly by using the shoulder buttons on your controller. If the car has an alarm, it’ll sound for several seconds and cause the headlights to flash on and off as you drive away–practically begging any nearby cops to come after you. Stealing cars with drivers and/or passengers inside opens up lots more possibilities, the most amusing of which is someone (possibly you) getting an arm caught in a door and dragged along as the vehicle speeds away.

Most of the vehicles in GTAIV, like those in previous games, have very loose handling that makes it easy for you to perform Hollywood-style U-turns, skids around corners, and the like. You can play through most of the missions without ever violating a traffic law if you really want to, but you can get away with (and will have a lot more fun) driving like a lunatic, provided that you don’t collide with any police vehicles or mow down too many pedestrians. A neat touch when driving with the default camera view is that the camera, which is positioned a few feet behind the rear bumper of the car, centers on you rather than on the vehicle, effectively offering the vehicular equivalent of an over-the-shoulder view. When you take the control of something sporty, the camera also positions itself much closer to the ground, which adds to the sensation of speed.

The police are rarely far away, but escaping from them is easy for the most part.

The vehicle handling is difficult to fault, regardless of whether you’re in a sports car, a garbage truck, a motorcycle, a speedboat, or a helicopter. However, while driving, you might notice one odd quirk that has been a constant ever since GTAIII: When taking the controls of certain vehicles, you’ll suddenly notice a lot more of the same vehicle on the roads. It’s not a big deal, and it isn’t detrimental to the gameplay, but it’s a little jarring if you get into one of the more unusual vehicles in the game–for example, the equivalent of either a Ferrari or a pickup truck–and suddenly find that the city is filled with them. That particular quirk is pretty common in some of the multiplayer modes as well, though you’ll likely be too busy keeping an eye out for other players to take any notice when you venture online.

Getting online in Grand Theft Auto IV couldn’t be easier. You simply select the multiplayer option on your cell phone, choose which type of game you want to host or join, and then enter a lobby and wait for the game to start. You won’t be getting bored staring at a list of names while you’re waiting, though, because when you enter a lobby you actually enter an online version of Liberty City in which you and up to 15 other players are free to do anything. There are weapons scattered all over the place to ensure that things don’t stay too friendly for very long.

There are more than a dozen different multiplayer modes to choose from, and although some of them are variations on similar themes, there’s certainly no shortage of variety. As the host of a multiplayer session, you also have the freedom to greatly customize all of the game types with variables such as friendly fire, police presence, weapons sets, traffic levels, radar functionality, and many more. You can choose where you’d like your game to take place as well, considering that many gameplay modes can be played either on a specific Liberty City island or across the entire map.

Even conventional 16-player modes such as Deathmatch and Race feel quite different than anything that you’ve played before. And in addition to those, there are objective-based games in which you’re tasked with completing missions similar to those in the single-player game: a team-based Cops ‘n Crooks mode, a Turf War mode in which teams compete for control of territories, a carjacking mode, three cooperative missions that support up to four players, and more. With the right group of people, there’s no reason why you can’t have a lot of fun with every single mode that’s available. We experienced a few frame-rate issues and lag that caused other players and their vehicles to jump around the screen at times, but for the most part GTAIV’s online play is a real treat. One especially neat touch is that, as a passenger in a vehicle being driven by another player, you can mark waypoints on the GPS system for your driver using a map that tracks the locations of other players and objectives.

Multiplayer games are an opportunity for up to 16 players to get together in Liberty City.

If you’re wondering about differences between the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Grand Theft Auto IV, the truth is that there aren’t many. The PS3 version can only be played after a mandatory install that takes around 10 minutes, and its load times are a little shorter and less frequent as a result. The visuals, which don’t always hold up to close scrutiny but are impressive during typical gameplay, are comparable and feature the same quirks (shadows that flicker, for example) on both consoles. Likewise, the audio, which can take a lot of the credit for why Liberty City feels so alive, is exceptional regardless of which console you have and how many speakers it’s hooked up to. True to form, GTAIV’s soundtrack has plenty of great licensed songs and, unlike other games we could mention, it doesn’t force the artist and track information down your throat with pop-up windows that detract from gameplay. However, if you want that information, you can simply dial up a song-recognition service on your cell phone and, after a few seconds, receive it in a text message. Genius.

In case you haven’t guessed already, Grand Theft Auto IV is a game that you simply have to play. The single-player game, which you can still play long after you complete the story, is the series’ best by far, and the multiplayer features are good enough that you’ll likely have no problem finding people to play with for many months to come. The minor flaws that you’ll experience are no more difficult to overlook than those in previous GTA games, and they’re greatly outnumbered by the features that will impress and surprise you anytime you think you’ve already seen everything that the game has to offer. There’s lots to see in Liberty City, so you’d best get started.

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