Grand Theft Radar: Guilt-free Grand Theft Auto IV

Mission 5: Bleed Out
Finally, something'shappening! With Roman cornered by a couple of Albanian thugs in a basketball court, we were morally obligated to intervene. And when we arrived on the scene, we did what any sensible, upright citizen would do: we called the cops. Unfortunately, the cops were all busy doing meaningless busywork, and while we were arguing with the recording, one of the thugs - Bledar - walked up and clocked the back of Niko's head with a clumsy punch.

Above: Look at us, doing the adult thing and calling 911. Too bad 911 is a joke

Above: Oh, you know it's on now

Above: Niko and Kalem take a break from punching each other like wet sides of beef and settle their differences with a dance-off

Now, the interesting thing about assault charges is that they don't normally apply if someone else hits you first; in that case, face-punches aren't so much "assault" as they are "self-defense." So once Bledar had landed the first hit, we were legally free to pummel him into a limp mound of nonviolence. We then did the same with his accomplice, Kalem (once he'd already given us a couple solid knocks to the chin, of course), after which Roman spotted the ringleader, Dardan, and we chased after him to make a citizen's arrest.

There is, of course, no way to successfully catch up to Dardan without speeding, but - as we mentioned at the beginning of the article - the cops don't count that as a crime, so neither will we. We also won't count Niko's trespass into an abandoned warehouse, where Dardan was hiding with a knife.

Above: Dardan just wouldn't stay down. The guy is determined

Again, we let Dardan take a couple of swipes at Niko before we took action, disarming Dardan and pocketing the knife. Despite repeatedly insisting that we leave him alone, though, Dardan wasn't about to let us exit without a beating - so we gave him a particularly savage one instead. Toward the end, Dardan tried to stagger over to a nearby window, so as to dramatically fall out of it the next time we hit him. But there was no way we were going to let him turn Niko into a murderer. Not yet. So we gave him a few more crotch-kicks and one final stomp to the torso, and he didn't get up again. Niko's taunt - "It's just a wound! You want me to finish you off!?" - confirmed that Dardan would recover to harass other people in the offscreen future, and we strolled out to tell Roman everything was going to be OK.

CRIMES COMMITTED: None (although we probably should have called the paramedics before leaving - not that it would have done any good)

Mission 6: Easy Fare
What should have been a simple cab ride, with Niko picking up Roman's friend Jermaine, was what finally turned our hero into an unwitting criminal. After taking Jermaine to his lockup as directed, the cops immediately descended on us like a flight of fat blue Valkyries.

Above: Don't do it, Niko! Stay good!

There's no way to get through this mission without attracting police attention and then evading it, so we had no choice but to tear ass out of there, taking care not to run over any cops on the way. Eventually, we ditched our pursuers and things returned to normal - but we were left with the horrible, horrible guilt of knowing we'd openly defied the law. We like to think that, that night, Niko cried himself to sleep while thinking of all the poor officers who had to explain to their superiors why they gave up the chase after less than a minute.

Thanks, Jermaine. Thanks for ruining Niko's life. Have fun never appearing again for the rest of the story.

CRIMES COMMITTED: Resisting arrest