Here’s another post fresh from the Sarcastic Gamer Community blogs, this time coming from Kiltman67, who’s got a few things to say about Grand Theft Auto IV, now that he’s finished it. Remember, getting onto the front page is as easy as signing up for an account on the forums and getting to work in your own personal community blog. We’ll be keeping an eye out for any articles that really stand out and if it’s awesome, we’ll put it up here. Good work, Kiltman67!

So somehow in between E3 videos and blogs I managed to find the time to complete the story of GTA4. Overall I enjoyed it and will return to the game at some point to finish all the races, kill all the birds etc. but there are a couple of big issues I had with the game. Obviously spoilers ensue… read on at your own risk.

First, is that I wasn’t impressed with the final mission. In past games I always remembered the last mission as being something challenging and most importantly, epic. San Andreas, in particular, always stands out; with the shootout in the burning building, followed by the chase on the fire truck. The final mission of GTA4 on the other hand was disappointingly routine, and with the exception of determining which direction to drive off the ramp, ridiculously easy.

I also couldn’t quite work out why they decided to put two health packs in the casino, about ten seconds apart with only two guys in between. How difficult did Rockstar think that was going to be?

Secondly, the story disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, it did have some great moments and of course the requisite humour, but it just lacked that real sense of being engaging. This was billed as being the first GTA game with a deep, powerful storyline and yet at no point did I feel it was gripping me like some other games have done in the past year.

Thirdly, I was just as disappointed with the characterization, particularly that of Niko. When the game first came out, I lost count of the number of journalists discussing the fact that Niko was one of the few lifelike characters to appear in a GTA game. He was billed as this ordinary guy who through his situation ended up getting forced into doing things and yet (as was noted in the special SG podcast) he always came across as a sociopath.

In the first few missions with Vlad I could see that he was being pushed in a direction he didn’t want to go, culminating in having to kill his first person in the city. But once he’d killed Vlad he was into full on sociopath mode, relishing every kill and seemingly never hesitating to pull the trigger.

When he faces Darko at the airport it’s almost as if Rockstar decided that, 80% into the game, they should actually give us a choice of who we wanted Niko to be, so when you let Niko go, it seems completely out of context (As Doc pointed out) and suddenly for no reason at all he’s seeking redemption.

My final issue was Niko’s relationship with (as the title suggests) Gracie. For those of you who don’t remember (which would be easy given how she was dealt with across the game as a whole), Gracie is the boss of the Ancelotti family’s daughter who Niko kidnaps.

When they first meet to go on the test drive Gracie is keen on him, already having a thing for bad boys and Niko seems perfectly willing to flirt back with her. This continues as they drive around Alderney and for the first time in the game I really felt immersed in Niko and expected him to help out Gracie, but I was ripped out of that immersion as he began to kidnap her.

There seemed to be precedent for that, I seem to remember that when Packie first suggested the plan Niko was against it, not wanting to get her involved, and even their fighting in the car had more sexual chemistry than he had with any of the girls he slept with (until the moment he knocked her out).

Then with every mission that involved Gracie, I kept waiting for the “swerve” where he would turn on Packie and rescue her but it never happened. In the end it just irritated me that with the promise of this realistic main character, the first time I actually felt I knew him, he did the complete opposite.

And it’s not like Niko and Gracie would have made a bad couple. I never got to date Kiki, but Carmen seemed to solely exist for comic relief and health boosts that rarely had any effect, and Kate, while I can see her role as a therapist for Niko, she gave him little more than cold indifference and he never seemed that keen on her until her death when we were meant to believe he was heartbroken. Throw in the fact that it would have made a great twist, with Niko dating one of the enemies as well as how his “friendship” with Kate would have gone if he and Packie were feuding.

On the subject of women, I was also a little disappointed that it never felt as if they wrapped up his story with Michelle.

Ultimately I felt GTA4 was a great game but I never really felt that, with the exception of combat, it was in any way a significant progression from San Andreas.

With the story out of the way I can now move on to other games without any guilt, though I will keep on wishful thinking that the DLC will bring a continuation of the greatest love story never told: Niko & Gracie.

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