Grand Theft Auto IV

The advantage to riding in cabs as opposed to just jacking them is that you can get wherever you want to go in a hurry, without having to worry about leaving a trail of wreckage and angry cops behind you. And although getting to check out the cab's interior or watch the scenery speed by from a first-person perspective is kind of cool, you'll probably just want to pay the cabbie extra to hurry - or, better yet, pay a little more and skip the trip entirely.

If you're still thinking of jacking a cab, though, be forewarned: just driving one won't enable you to trigger the cabbie missions of earlier games. Instead, you'll need to go through Roman and his taxi service if you want to do honest work for a little while; if you need an incentive other than cash, consider that it'll also open you up to missions and contacts you wouldn't get otherwise.

Once we'd skipped the trip, the cab dropped us near a basketball court, where Roman was getting kicked around by a couple of Albanian loan sharks he owed money to. We ran to his rescue and - by pulling the left trigger - targeted one of the thugs and dropped into hand-to-hand combat mode. Like so much else in GTA IV, getting into fights is a little more complicated than it used to be; here, each of the controller's face buttons does something different, and we were able to bust out some mean-looking combos, thanks to Niko's mastery of Israeli martial art Krav Maga. His most useful move, however, is his ability to duck attacks (provided your timing on the block button is just right) and deliver a brutal counterattack.

Once the thugs were down, Roman saw their boss - a guy named Dardan - making a break for it, so we dove into Roman's car and raced after him. As we tore through an urban obstacle course in the industrial slums of Broker, following a GPS-plotted path toward Dardan, Niko and Roman engaged in a little light conversation about how loan sharks are parasites that gave Niko nothing but trouble in the old country. And once we finally caught up to Dardan, the bastard fled on foot, forcing us to chase him up a few flights of stairs into an abandoned factory.

Unlike his unarmed cronies, Dardan carried a knife, and it was here that we learned another of Niko's important talents: the disarm. After enduring a few slashes, we managed to duck out of Dardan's way, grab his knife and turned it against him. Surprisingly, this didn't really make things much quicker; stabbing someone can be a pretty drawn-out way to kill them in real life, and here it was almost unsettlingly realistic. Dardan absorbed stab after gooshy stab, eventually bleeding out to the point where we were able to finish him off with a couple of swift boots to the head. Scratch one loan shark who won't be bothering Roman anymore.

Interestingly, the first time we played this mission, we failed it by trashing Roman's car during the chase. If that happens, you'll get to see a cutscene where Niko and Roman are sitting at a bus stop, and Roman grouses that not only did the loan shark get his money, but now he has to figure out how to replace the car, as well. Roman stomps off in a huff, and Niko loudly curses at himself. And then, when we retried the mission, the conversation during the chase was slightly different.  Apparently, obsessives who want to see absolutely everything are going to have to fail each mission at least once to watch what happens.