The Land of Opportunity
Over the last days I had my fair share of playtime with GTA 4. I am over the 30 hours mark and still only got 47% of game yet. At least according to the ingame statistics. Usually I would’ve already given up, as my patience is not very strong with overly long games. But not so with GTA as it has so many little details that make you come back over and over again. I don’t want to spoil anything of the story here now so I’ll describe the stuff in general.
The main missions are vary varied and consist of every thug job you could possibly think of. Now it’s in the nature of things that the number of different mission types is still at some point limited. So a general critique on repetitive mission design could be valid. But it is not. Unlike what Ubisoft for example did with Assassin’s Creed, Rockstar knows how to keep the missions feeling new and fresh, even when you have to replay them because you failed at the first attempt. Ubisoft went the cheap way and everything is always the same including the voice acting. Not so Rockstar. When you retry a mission, the lines spoken by the characters now are different from the lines spoken before. The more crucial missions mostly have at least two ways to solve them, although you often read them up in some internet forum afterwards just to let yourself know what an uncreative idiot you were for not doing it the other way.
The design of the city also helps of pushing the feeling of repetitiveness away, as the surroundings in form of traffic patterns, streets and available cars make even very similar missions quite different. And when you’re not doing any of the main missions, the game still has a lot to offer. Actually I should say the city has a lot to offer, as the city is the game. You’ll meet a lot of different people in Liberty City, some of them might become friends often depending how you acted before. You can meet with them, go to a club or play pool, or you can just do some work for them to get some money. It really is up to you, but you’d miss a huge portion of the game if you ignore it. The character design is awesome and there are 2 people that I’ve met till now that I really like.
And there is stuff, that you can do, which I haven’t done yet because I am not overly interested in it. For example surfing on the game’s internet. Dating with random people - there is an internet dating service. You could also just explore the city by car to find stunt spots. And lots more that I just can’t recall at the moment. At some points it is really breathtaking as you just don’t know what to do first. But then the game gives you the freedom whatever you like most. Like getting a private dance in a strip club. Pro tip: ask for another dance two times and a surprise is waiting.