Niko Bellic was just another immigrant drawn to the US, like so many others, by false promises and foolish dreams. From the moment he got off the boat, his life was consumed by violence and criminality, caught up in an underworld that refused to let him go. In that respect, he’s no different from millions of others.
Niko is set apart only by his determination to pursue the one thing that brought him to this country - and by the fact that he’s the protagonist of Grand Theft Auto IV. If it sounds like I’ve been talking about a real person, that’s because, for the first time, the protagonist of this GTA feels like a person. Niko isn’t a cartoon or an exaggerated pastiche of ‘gansta’ chic - he’s a simple man, instantly relatable, and from the moment he sets foot on US soil, the tragic arc of his future seems as inevitable as the tide.
Niko isn’t the only character you’ll find yourself relating to, however. Unlike the stereotypical caricatures that have populated previous games in the series, most of the characters you’ll encounter in Liberty City are tragically relatable. I say tragically, because Liberty City is not a place where good things happen to good people - or bad ones, for that matter. From your ganja smoking partner to the thugs, dealers, crime lords and ex-cons you end up working for or alongside, nearly every character you meet in Liberty City feels like a person you could have encountered in the wrong part of town, in the real world. You feel for these characters and interacting with them stops being a matter of cut scenes to skip past and starts being a matter of conversations to enjoy. A major part of that believability stems from the writing, but almost as important, however, is the Euphoria.
The Euphoria engine is the system of physics and animation on display in GTA IV, used to replicate the natural motions of human beings, and the way they physically interact with the world around them. Euphoria lends a visceral reality to the physical reactions of every inhabitant of Liberty City, from the core characters to the random pedestrians on the street, and that reality fundamentally alters the way you interact with the game. For the first time, pedestrians don’t feel like hilarious, helium filled crash-test dummies.
The way they react to the casual impact of an automobile is almost disturbingly realistic. They don’t go flying every which way in a comedic sprawl - hit a pedestrian in this GTA, and they’ll crumple under the wheels of your car, and, if left alive, slowly rise, cradling injured limbs, and limp or run away, calling for help. After a short while, the power of this new realism had made me a more cautious driver, kept me on the highway and off the sidewalks, unless fleeing for my life. Don’t misunderstand - fleeing from the police is as much of a thrill as ever, but the visual consequences surrounding your every mistake lend a new hard edge to the proceedings.
The focus on realism has brought with it a number of undeniable improvements to the GTA formula, but progress has its price, and in this case, that price is the endless text-message and cell-phone haranguing of friends and girlfriends. As you progress through Liberty City, you’ll have lots of chances to make friends and meet people, both online and in person. Friends who’ll want to go bowling with you, or play darts, or go get plastered and drive home drunk. And, hey, that all sounds like a blast, right? Until you get about halfway through the game, that is, and rack up five or six friends.
These friends, you see, begin calling and text messaging you, asking you to go out on the town with them, or take them on dates. They do this on a daily basis, every last one of them. If you want to keep them all friendly, and retain access to the bonuses their friendship gives you, things can easily reach the point where you’re stuck spending so much time partying with your friends that you spend days between missions, doing nothing but playing the same minigames, over and over again, until you never want to see another dartboard for the rest of your natural life.
Fortunately, when Niko’s virtual friends get to be too much for you, you can take a break by rounding up a few of your real friends for one of the many multiplayer modes the game offers. A first for the series, GTA IV has a robust multiplayer system with both competitive and cooperative games, as well as a Halo-style party system to let you group up with your friends and challenge other parties to combat. With 14 different game modes, this may be the first Grand Theft Auto you play longer in multiplayer than in single player.
