Grand Theft Radar: Daddy's back, you glitches!

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Car-killiing swingsets, two-way eyeballs and five more of Grand Theft Auto IV's most entertaining bugs

After a few days of scouring the internet and attempting to replicate these bugs ourselves, we've compiled a long list of weird glitches, exploits and bugs - and then distilled them down to the seven we liked the best. Check them out in the videos below, or just try them for yourselves - either way, you've got to see them.

Pulling this one off is actually kind of delicate. To see what happens when your buddies get desperate, you'll need to take them out for some activity - doesn't matter what it is - and then, when you're driving them home, block off the passenger-side door. The best way to do this is to get within visual range of their drop-off point, and then get out of the car and run away for a couple of seconds. Be sure to run into your buddy to make him stumble, and then cheese it back to the car and drive away a short distance until the game tells you to go back for your friend.

Now, park the car you're driving on the sidewalk, right next to your buddy's drop-off arrow, jack another one and go back for him. Now, assuming the first car is still parked where you left it, pull up next to it so that you're on the arrow, but your passenger's-side door is completely blocked. Then, this pleasant exchange will happen:

Given that your buddies all have pre-recorded carjacking lines, we're not sure if this actually counts as a "glitch." We've certainly never seen them steal a ride under normal circumstances. But really, if the whole thing was completely intentional, wouldn't it have made more sense for them to not punch Niko in the face before shoving him out of the way?

This is the bug that gave us the idea for this feature, and it's easily one of the best we've ever seen. Near the edge of Broker's lower east side is a playground with two swingsets, which are unremarkable except for the fact that they can launch your car into the stratosphere if you bump it into them. It apparently has something to do with the dangling swing chains, which carry so much force when they start swinging that they'll kick up intimidating clouds of shattered concrete. To get this ridiculous phenomenon to work for you, all you need to do is ram a car into either swingset's central supports.


Above: This is what you get when you mess with playground equipment

If you're playing in single-player, it'll launch the car away from you, possibly high into the distant sky. One the other hand, trying this trick in a multiplayer game will launch you along with the car, which is infinitely more fun:

The fun isn't limited to cars, either - it's also possible to just launch your on-foot avatar, which - again - we had better luck with in multiplayer. This is actually kind of difficult - more often than not, the chain will just injure you or hurl you into the nearby bushes. But the payoff when it works is amazing. Here's what we mean:

To accomplish this, you need to grab hold of the swingset and sidle around enough to get the chain moving, and then try to climb on top at just the right second to get a good launch. It's not easy, but the results speak for themselves.

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.