Mikel: After the Statue match, we moved the action to Bohan, the game's equivalent of The Bronx. There's a lot of crummy-looking industrial areas along the borough's waterfront, and it was here that we threw down - this time with cops activated.

We started the round under a huge bridge, goofing around with friendly fire rocket launchers - I'll let Chris explain that one - but while we were playing, our opponents had drawn a bead on our location. Barrera told us to get ready, and in a few seconds the other team came barreling toward us in cars - and were greeted by a barrage of RPG fire that turned those cars into an explosive liability. The rest of the match quickly devolved into a chaotic mess, as the cops were alerted and started being a massive pain in the ass. It wasn't just one or two fat officers, either - no, they showed up in droves, clogged a freeway off-ramp with a small fleet of squad cars and started shooting at everyone dumb enough to get close.

After high-tailing it away from them, I hopped on a stray motorcycle and roared away for a bit until an over-aggressive cop car bashed me off of it. Desperate to get away, I ran to a ledge and leapt down to a concrete dock some 30 or 40 feet below. As it turns out, you can fall a pretty good distance in GTA IV without dying, although you'll leave some nasty blood splats on the concrete. After climbing my way back up to street level, I ran toward a car that I saw parked nearby - but before I could get there, an enemy driver swerved up from behind, and knocked my legs out from under me and sent me rolling over the roof of his car. It was only as I was slowly trying to get up from the pavement - still miraculously not dead - that a cop ran up and shot me in the back just as the match was ending. Lame.

Chris: This year, GTA’s rocket launcher is the weapon to beat. Sure, you know it spits fiery flashes of murder, but it has other uses. With friendly fire turned off, Mikel and I were escorted underneath a bridge, where we took turns taking RPGs to the feet. Our bodies ragdolled upwards like we were bungee jumping backwards, all in hopes of landing ourselves on a bridge several stories up to head off an approaching enemy. I took my shot like a champ. Everyone held their breath as I made my ascent, then cheered as I cleared the bridge railing like I was representing my country in the Olympic pole vault. Unharmed, I dusted myself off and prepared for the next kill.

I hope my next observation doesn’t find it’s way into Jack Thompson’s next Powerpoint, but here goes: the great thing about killing cops is that they’re an endless source of assets. You’re guaranteed to get at least a pistol out of killing one, and the shit they drive is one of the better vehicles in the game. Even when cars are slow and scarce, you can just manufacture a little mayhem and the LCPD will deliver you a fresh ride like an angelic valet service.

Getting away from the fuzz is another story. In addition to the ambiguous star meter, the onscreen radar flashes a blue wanted circle. Escape the circle, shake the tail, and you’re no longer a fugitive. But with eight maniacs going at it, the level of havoc is increased significantly, thus a larger wanted radius. As a merry result, deathmatch becomes a traveling carnival of chaos, and luckily, respawning places you just outside the heavy firefights, so as not to make you a constant victim.

Even better, the rapid pace doesn’t allow for a lot of time to exploit choke points, hoard weapons or camp cheap-ass snipe spots. It’ll be difficult for experienced players to create a conveyer-belt of kill, as they’ll have to constantly adjust their strategy along with new players. And I’m all for forging a treaty between the Harry Hardcore and Norbert N00b.

Mikel: We took on one final Team Deathmatch before moving on, but this one was the most fun yet: we were turned loose in the streets of Algonquin (the game's busy Manhattan analogue), with every player toting rocket launchers. To say it was effing insane would be an understatement, as everything seemed to be in a constant state of exploding, or filling up with whirring RPG rounds that were about to explode. The street was filled with wreckage, debris was flying everywhere and - more than once - the action was so thick that the framerate got extremely choppy (although to be fair, this was an unfinished version of the game). This usually happened when we were being tossed through the air by a lethal rocket blast or running in fear from same, though, so it didn't really detract from the overall experience.

Chris: The folks in the know snuck us down into the subway, where we turned stair entrances into choke points. If you wanted to come down to the rails, you had to go through our rockets.

Crouching might remove the onscreen dot over your head, but people still show up on the radar. Headshots? The rocket launcher cares not for these things. Trusting the radar and firing in a general direction worked well for me. The resulting explosions exposed craven players hidden behind street medians, or - if I'd only grazed them - they'd usually reveal themselves by running away.