Grand Theft Auto is one of the key reasons we’re producing Play today. We’ve had our perceptions of both gaming and pop culture turned inside out by the series, and that monumental trend has carried on into Grand Theft Auto IV. After the extensive, three-and-a-half year wait for this fourth instalment, it’s hard to put the meteoric impact of the game into a mere eight pages of words. Walking outside and having flashbacks of GTA IV isn’t uncommon, even after a few hours of play– the game feeds you so many options, tasks and memorable moments, that absorbing it all is a joyously difficult task. GTA IV is an achievement, in that it encapsulates everything that has been great about gaming for the past five years, while still dictating what all other developers should aim for in the future. The end result is a detailed, all-encompassing journey through the most exciting game we’ve played in years.

Essentially, Grand Theft Auto IV is the game that GTA III would’ve been, had the technology been available at the time. This version of Liberty City is optimised, to the point of insanity; people in the streets are conversing, eating food, talking on their phones and taking taxi rides. Nothing has been neglected. The props have been individually designed, so even the merest burger box leaves an impression, when Niko drops it on the sidewalk. The detail, which is applied to the game on a universal scale, is part of what makes Grand Theft Auto IV the game it is. Every tiny feature of the city demands relentless exploration, and you won’t resent Rockstar for crafting GTA IV in this obsessive way. The term ‘living, breathing city’ has become an annoying buzz phrase, used by lesser publishers to describe inferior sandbox titles, but Liberty City shows why it was coined in the first place. Liberty City is clearly Rockstar’s love letter to New York, but it’s also their creative playground for Niko Bellic’s incredible story.

After the impressively reworked credit sequence, which follows Niko as he arrives in the lively city, the tone is set. Niko’s story starts with typical American Dream fallacies, witnessed in just about every entertainment medium over the past fifty years, but this is just a hint of what is to come. Like GTA III before it, Grand Theft Auto IV is expertly unravelled. You start in Broker, a basic slum defined by its poor buildings, shady characters and inexpensive vehicles. Drive along the shore, and you catch a glimpse of the iconic Algonquin skyline in the distance; knowing that you’ll make it there, at some point, is an enormous incentive for ploughing through the missions.

Through art direction alone, GTA IV is a truly beautiful game. The iconic New York skyline is recreated with gusto, while every single real-life parallel– Star Junction, the Times Square equivalent especially– is hauntingly familiar to anyone with a knowledge of the city. Visually, only a few gripes can really be made with GTA IV. There’s a tiny bit of pop-up, now and then, and character models are occasionally weak, but the elaborate reconstruction of each landmark must instil fear, into the minds of rival developers.

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