WP-Dev Dojo

In a nut­shell, GTA4 keeps every­thing good about the pre­vi­ous games, while dra­mat­i­cally improv­ing most of the annoy­ances. The dri­ving is slightly more chal­leng­ing — if only because it’s actu­ally dif­fi­cult to drive at a rea­son­able speed that won’t result in you fly­ing through the wind­shield in a head-on col­li­sion — but when you pull it off, it suc­ceeds in cap­tur­ing the feel of speed in a way I haven’t seen since out­side the Burnout series. The shoot­ing and fight­ing engines have been com­pletely redone, and actu­ally work this time. The annoy­ing micro­man­age­ment aspects of San Andreas, where you had to grind at the gym to keep in shape are gone, and the con­stant court­ing required to keep your girl­friends happy have been sim­pli­fied, so that now your friends will call you every now and then to sug­gest going out to a vari­ety of in-game enter­tain­ment, includ­ing magic shows, bowl­ing, darts, and of course, strip clubs. More impor­tant than any of those, though, is the story. There’s a real nar­ra­tive attached to the char­ac­ters in this game. You have the sense that they existed before you came along, and they’ll still exist after you leave — well, the ones that are still alive, any­way. The story just feels bet­ter, and the world feels more alive. It’s com­pelling to the degree that I find myself think­ing about it at odd moments dur­ing the day, in the same way that the story in a good book will cap­ture me. Long story short: if you enjoyed the pre­vi­ous games at all, you’ll love it.