GTA IV Online Review

Posted on: Yesterday 22:14 GMT



Grand Theft Auto, just the name sends chills down the spines of some of the finest game developers around. However, when previous GTA’s have came and destroyed the competition, developers just shrugged their shoulders and put their own titles release dates back a few months, giving the gamers time to dedicate their gaming lives to GTA and to do everything imaginable within the game. But now, could this latest GTA kill off all competition? With a wide variety of online game modes and a host of customisations, the life span could theoretically be increased by a factor of 10. This could make GTA IV one of the greatest games of all time, however in my opinion this will heavily rely on the standard of the online, for this, the latest title of possibly the most popular gaming series to date. Now I will highlight some of the most impressive modes that should perform well at a competitive level.



Cops n' Crooks

I will start off with the most impressive looking of the game modes, which is “Cops n’ Crooks”. In this mode you can only have two teams, one being (you guessed it) the Crooks the other being the Cops. There are two versions of this mode. One is named “all for one”; where one team is made up of crooks and one boss and the other team all spawn as police, in police cars. The Cops can win by either destroying the getaway vehicle or killing the Crooks boss, if they kill normal Crooks the Crooks can respawn and the Cops can also respawn if they get “a cap popped in their ass”. The Crooks win by extracting the Boss in a getaway vehicle at a random place in the map. The other mode is called “one for all” this is the same but there is no Boss and there are no respawns, the police win if they kill all the Crooks or destroy the getaway vehicle, and the Crooks win if they kill all the police or fill the getaway vehicle with Crooks (that is four people). This mode uses the whole map of liberty city and looks very promising and will rely on good teamwork and co-ordination. This mode should be perfect for clan matches.



Turf War

Next up you have a mode called “Turf War”, in which there are several positions across the map that are captured after controlling them for a period of time, the more people on the point, the quicker you capture it. You win on this mode by being the team that has acquired the most cash, you get cash by controlling points, the more points you have the more cash. This appears to be a simple and promising mode that could result in some classic moments.



Team Mafiya Work

“Team Mafiya Work” is a simple, “complete random objective” mode. You can have 2-8 teams, (the teams being as small as two), and each team is given the same mission to do, the team that completes it gets the cash. The winner of this round is (surprise, surprise!) the team with the most cash at the end. The objectives range from escorting wanted men, to stealing cars. I think this mode could last a while, and new objectives could be released through updates to keep the game mode fresh and unique.



Team Car Jack City

“Team Car Jack City” works the same as “Team Mafiya Work” but the teams (as small as two men) have to steal cars and extract them, the better condition the cars are in at the end the more money you get. However if the car you steal is “stuffed with drugs” then the amount of money you get for delivering the car will always be the same, no matter how damaged the car. This mode seems to be the least interesting out of the team modes, and will most likely be a mode you will fall back on when growing tired of everything else in Liberty City.

There are other modes that Rockstar are going to let us discover for ourselves, there will also be the standard team deathmatch, deathmatch, normal racing or GTA racing (in which you can get out and shoot at the other racers) and some other less team based modes. Overall this looks like a very strong multiplayer especially for a game that could sell more than any of its competitors without even bothering to put an online section in it. Now all I need to do I sit in a dark room waiting until Tuesday the 29^th, for the postman to deliver GTA IV, the most promising game of 2008.

Finally, UnK has come back to this thread.