What came next will be familiar territory for any GTA fan: trying to maneuver a big, slow, vulnerable truck around crowded city streets while carloads of angry thugs roar after you in hot pursuit. What made this particular run unique, however, was that Niko found a box of grenades in the back of the cab, which we proceeded to start dropping out the window to frustrate our pursuers. In the end, though, it didn't really help; just as we were about to pull into Packie's lockup and end the mission, the truck took one hit too many and exploded. Damn.

Finally, we got a chance to try out another truck-themed mission: Truck Hustle, which we saw during our last eyes-on preview. We'll spare you the details; the important parts are that we got to blow a bunch of stuff up with a rocket launcher (which at one point went wild, sharply curving mid-flight to fly straight up) and climb up a moving truck to hijack it while it's being driven.

That last bit was simple, but required patience; after jamming on the X button to make Niko run after the truck, grab on and haul himself up its back, we had to slowly crawl across its roof to reach the cab. This amounted to holding up on the stick when we wanted to move forward, holding down on it (to hold onto the truck) when we saw a turn coming and rolling from side to side when we drifted too close to the edge. It was arduous, but it was also a pretty close approximation to hanging on for dear life to the outside of a slippery moving vehicle. And besides, busting in through the passenger-side window and turning the driver's gun against him was a satisfying way to end the whole ordeal.

Once the last mission was complete, we were treated to a little bonus fooling around on the back of a dirtbike, which kept flipping over backward whenever we tried to do wheelies, but which eventually led us to pull off a unique stunt jump that gave us control over the camera speed and angle as we sailed through the air, flubbed the landing and died from being hurled across a roof.

After that, though, our first crack at Liberty was over, and we were left with the odd feeling that we hadn't even scratched the surface. Our time with Grand Theft Auto IV was too short to make any sweeping judgments about the game, but what we've seen so far has impressed the hell out of us. This isn't just another GTA with a coat of next-gen paint; this is an entirely new way to approach the "living world" genre, one which feels a lot more alive and interesting than anything we've seen so far. So long as nothing happens to screw it up, it promises to deliver an amazing experience when it hits on April 29. And that's not even including the multiplayer, which we should have a full report on soon.

Feb 29, 2008