Undeterred, we got right back up and - at the insistence of the Rockstar reps - yanked the poor ice-cream salesman out of his van and took the wheel. Clicking the left stick turned on its jingle, a tinkly version of Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy that matched its speed with that of the van. The freezer-equipped hulk was slow to accelerate, but soon we were roaring down a freeway turnpike with bastardized Tchaikovsky blaring like speed metal. Then, suddenly, Niko flew through the windshield because we'd crashed into a pylon, which we hadn't seen because the van's fat ass was blocking our view (something we could have remedied by just switching the camera mode).

After letting Niko get up and dust himself off, we steered him back out into traffic, which resulted in him getting hit by a car and falling to the street, all while clutching at its hood for support in an impressive show of the game's Natural Motion technology. After recovering and stealing a taxi, we continued on to tear ass through Liberty's streets until we reached a nice, green-looking park. Here, we plowed into a jogger and sent him flying, abandoned the cab and punched a stylishly dressed woman near a fountain for no reason. We're not sure if the jogger was more pissed about being run down or our treatment of women, but right then, he caught up to us and started swinging.

At first we tried outrunning him, but he stayed on Niko's heels, so we tried beating him down instead. As we traded blows in the middle of the street, a small crowd started to gather around and yell at us. Suddenly, the screen went into sepia-toned slow-motion, with all movement leaving blurry streaks on the screen, and Niko collapsed. Somehow, the jogger had punched him to death. Oh, the humiliation.

We weren't about to let a little thing like death slow us down, though. Respawning outside a hospital, we immediately ran over to the nearest cop car that was idling in traffic and tried the door. Locked. But it wouldn't stay that way, as the fat cops inside stepped out and immediately drew down on us. They then fell for the oldest trick in the GTA book: we ran away and they chased us, and then, once we'd lured them away from their ride, we doubled back around and stole it.

This was our first taste of GTA IV's approach to police attention, and within seconds, more cops were on our tail. As we tried to race out of the blue circle that suddenly appeared on our onscreen map, we succeeded only in colliding with more police cruisers, increasing our wanted level to the point where we could hear a chopper bearing down on us. This continued, with more cops spotting us and preventing our escape, until our cruiser was smashed up beyond repair. Trying to flee on foot, we were immediately mobbed by trigger-happy cops, and after soaking up a few bullets, we discovered that riding in a cop car had gifted our inventory with a pump shotgun. We blew away one of the fatter cops at point-blank range, ran to a nearby parked car and tried to take cover against it; unfortunately, a few other cops had snuck around behind us and a hail of bullets sent Niko crumpling into a sepia-toned heap. Again.

All right, playtime was over; it was time to get down to business and crack open the missions Rockstar had been tempting us with. We started with Bleed Out, an early mission that begins with Niko's fat cousin Roman calling him in a panic and begging for his help. Niko can accept or reject the request, and while his decision can change the course of the story a bit, turning the mission down won't end with Roman turning up dead somewhere. We accepted, and then - in order to get to Roman in a hurry - we did something we've never done before in a GTA title: we hailed a cab.