Four weeks ago in this publication I referred to Grand Theft Auto IV’s depiction of immigrants as being more nuanced and sympathetic than that demonstrated by the exquisite Baltimore-set television drama, The Wire.

But what’s really nagged and irritated me over the following weeks is that, with a little distance and perspective, the bold proclamation was so obviously made, like so many from within our industry, with the aim of elevating video games to the respectability of more established media via bald association.

The opinion piece was written following a short weekend's playing of the game just prior to its release and, as I’ve played on through the rest of the story, the fault lines in that specific claim have become ever more apparent. While I adore the slow pacing of the first few hours, the way Nico starts off on the straight and narrow and is dragged into the shadows of the American Dream by forces of poverty and necessity, the game soon enough swings into full adolescent-posing-as-adult narrative fizz.

In the weeks prior to GTA IV’s release, Rockstar made promises that print and online publications would receive early review code so that they might fully ingest and digest Liberty City in order to deliver mature and balanced opinions on its day of launch.

In reality, this was not the case, with precious few publications getting to spend prolonged time with the game ahead of release. The first review of the game came from the UK’s Official Xbox magazine bearing the worrying caveat “based on unfinished code”.

At best then, by the time the game had been played, copy written and subbed ready for the Tuesday morning, most journalists (both in the UK and the US) had played for only a few hours, experiencing just a fraction of the game’s content, a situation testified to by various admissions in professional reviews.

Time Magazine dubbed their piece Grand Theft Auto IV: The 6.24% Review while the Associated Press reviewer, Lou Kesten, admitted to having spent only spent eight hours with the game.

Slate Magazine’s excellent Chris Baker admitted he only had chance to ‘scratch the surface of the game’ going on to say in a comment on N'Gai Croal’s Level Up blog: "I couldn't even attempt to be definitive…it was kinda liberating”.

The BBC noted the phenomenon saying: "Most reviewers were not sent advance copies of the game, and instead had to attend Rockstar offices or sit in booked hotel rooms to play the game,” where Rockstar could keep an eye and some pressure on them. While these few admitted the partial and necessarily subjective nature of their reviews, how many passed off their impressions as being definitive of the whole?

For the reviewer it’s an inconvenience at best, at worst a pernicious and blatant attempt to colour their opinion in as short an amount of time as possible. Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii: all big name titles (in both size and stature) only supplied to many games reviewers a few days before their release.

What’s interesting is the recent rise in a different approach to reviews, one that isn’t dependent on their being published on the day of a game’s launch and that doesn’t doesn’t come with a score attached. The staggering popularity of Ben ‘Yathzee’ Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation videos (which, according to Alexa.com have booted host site The Escapist’s profile up several internet leagues), are almost always focused on games that the viewers have already experienced first hand post-release.

1. GTA is downright boring to me.
2. That is so not Ploid's hand!

up to 16 people

on the screen with jacob it says you can customize characters for multiplayer. sex, hair, clothing...

Mafia and Team Mafia work, you will play as one of Kenny Petrovics mafia henchmen, competing to complete hits ordered by the boss over your phone before your rivals. In "cops n crooks" A group of players will play as police, other as criminal, the police must make sure they don't escape alive, they can also see the criminals location ont heir GPS while criminals have no clue as where the police are.

Also in the single player mission "hangmans Noose" there will be co-op, the mission you and your friends will be able to escort a mafia man, while ambushed by the SWAT, but it doesn't end there, carjack, turfwar, bomb da base II, free mode, the 100 hours of single player are nothing compared to the 10 years of multiplayer.

Cash is earned by winning levels, and it earns players more character customization options. More significantly, cash awards are accumulative throughout a persistent ranked career, which is how Rockstar "ranks" your skill level.

In Team Deathmatch, you can set up an equally balanced eight-on-eight battle or a lop-sided two on 14 fight. You can pick a custom or quick game, and if you're the party leader, tweaking options alters each game significantly. You can change weapon types (all handguns for instance or only snipers), add or subtract police, traffic, pedestrians, or blips (i.e. enemy location).

We weren't given a view of the lobby system, but from Rockstar's hints, it sounds like you will just run around going Bananarama in Liberty City until someone launches a game. The good news is that when a game is set up, the host has a myriad of options depending on the mode. This is everything from turning on cops (yes, you can have a wanted level in multiplayer), adjusting the density of traffic, selecting from several weather options (fog and heavy rain being the coolest), time of day, and even what radio station is playing. We counted sixteen options for one mode and the others had similar amounts.

While all of the multiplayer modes I played were good, C&C was far superior to the others. It's my new favorite type of entertainment.

I own a Ps3 and I shall own GTA4.

Nothing, NOTHING can beat the original though, going so fucking fast from that shitty bireds eyes view when you're tearing down the freeway, or across the broken golden gate bridge, and BAM! You don't make it and your shitty car crashes and burns into a bus, or a truck, or something that's just incredibly deadly that it isn't right.

Then those cheats for infinate and all weapons, and you found yourself a populated areas, and blew people to shitereens and nothing coul dstop you, and your multiplayer would just keep going up and up and up, til eventually you got bored, jumped in a truck for lulz, and ploughed through the cop's barracades to an Autoshop, spend a fraction of what you earned killing people, just so that you could do it all again.

Fkn awesomeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~