Once the cutscene was over and Niko was out on the street, we got to see something that's been hidden from us up until now: random street violence. See, there are two ways for Niko to steal a police cruiser: find one on the street and smash its window to gain entry, or wreak as much havoc as possible and let the the law come to him.
Thankfully, the Rockstar reps showing us the game took the latter route, and Niko whipped out a pistol and fired wildly into traffic. Pedestrians ran screaming, and cars crashed into each other in a panicked attempt to escape. One SUV driver actually ducked down behind her dashboard when she saw that Niko was aiming at her, then swerved blindly before hauling ass in the opposite direction. Only a few people actually got hurt, but the important thing was that the assault worked as intended: a pair of chubby cops showed up in seconds and started screaming at Niko to drop his weapon.
The cops started out by taking cover behind their open car doors, but then - in direct contrast to the surprising intelligence of the dashboard-ducking SUV driver - they let themselves be lured away from the car, enabling Niko to double back and effortlessly steal it out from under them. Without so much as wounding the cops, Niko left them in his dust, running down an unlucky pedestrian on the way and flinging him, screaming and hilarious, into the air. Another pedestrian was unfortunate enough to get in Niko's way as he barreled around a tight curve; the guy screamed, fell on his ass in an attempt to get away and got creamed by the car anyway, prompting a loud wince from everyone watching.
After that, it was a classic GTA police chase, with Niko jamming on the gas to put as much distance between the cops and himself as possible. As we've seen previously, escaping the police is a little simpler than in previous GTAs; instead of ferreting out a Pay 'N' Spray, all you really need to do is break the cops' line of sight long enough to get outside the wanted radius, a circle on your map that grows or shrinks depending on your wanted level. In seconds, Niko was home free and - after placing a quick cell-phone call to Brucie - was instructed to use one of GTA IV's coolest new features.
MR: So it looks like our early worries about the tone being too grim and realistic may have been unfounded.
CB: I agree. Somehow, everything looks far more realistic... but still cartoonish and definitely not real. Why do you think we still find the violence funny and not disturbing? The graphics are much more realistic, after all.
MC: With corpse physics like that, it's difficult not to laugh. We're meant to find it funny. Right?
CB: Everything is still over-the-top enough… JUST. It's hard to take that too seriously. Hard to get too offended when it's so cartoonish in nature, even if not cartoonish in graphics anymore.
MC: I thought it was more outrageously over-the-top than ever. It definitely showed that GTA's action is still massively spontaneous and unpredictable. … The way cops take cover and fight with a bit of brain massively helps. Old GTA firefights used to seem a little too disorderly.
MR: They're not so smart that Niko couldn't lure them away from their car. I was kind of surprised how seemingly easy that was, considering they've built up the cops in previous demos as these omnipotent monsters that you don't want to piss off.
CB: Well, these were the first-alert cops, after all. I hope the inevitable SWAT teams and FBI dudes would react more intelligently and ruthlessly.
MC: Two of the cops (in the UK demo) took cover behind the open doors of their vehicle, only for Niko to collide with it and knock them flying.
CB: Awesome, we didn't see that.
MR: Sounds nasty. But hilarious.
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