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Fark.comGTA IV is a vast game, packed with detail. For every major set-piece, or game-defining mission, there are a thousand tiny things ticking away in the background, begging to be seen or explored. As in previous installments in the series, you could spend your whole time in the universe just moving about - there’s a sense of surrounding; a sense of time and place; a sense that around the next corner there’ll be something else to find, and it’ll be even more exciting than what you’ve seen, heard and experienced already.
However, whereas free roaming always stood tall as GTA’s chief skill - offering a sandbox its competition could only dream of, and one that actually included things to see and do rather than the vacuous exploration of games like True Crime and Saints Row - it’s actually the missions themselves that have been the biggest surprise...
Our first mission - ‘Harboring a Grudge’ - involved crooked cop’s son, Patrick ‘Packie’ McReary. After traveling to Broker we knock at his door and his mother and sister usher us in. Unlike in real life, we’re a big hit with the ladies - Niko is batting off the attention of the fairer sex quite a bit in GTA IV. (Which is why we wouldn’t be surprised to see the continuation of San Andreas’ girlfriend missions later on.) Anyway: turns out that the mission’s a low-level heist, and we’ve been asked to steal a shipment of pills from Algonquin’s docks. Packie lets us drive to the site and, once there, we’re introduced to Niko’s all-new, all-impressive acrobatic side.
We’re in need of a vantage point, so Packie starts clambering up to a warehouse roof and asks us to follow him. Climbing isn’t too difficult. When you make Nico jump he auto-grabs onto any ledges - so with a few leaps we’re able to climb and shimmy our way along a billboard and up to the roof. When on the ground we were slightly disappointed to find that, unless we hammered the run button, Nico would only walk slowly - even with the analogue stick at full tilt. But having seen the climbing sections we’re thankful for the walking pace. Any faster and the treacherous vertical climbs would be ruined by accidental suicides almost every time.
