Grand Theft Auto IV

'Grand Theft Auto IV' opens with Niko Bellic arriving by boat in the New York-like Liberty City.

Soon he discovers that things aren't going to be as easy as his cousin Roman promised — the fancy cars and big money would have to be earned, and in this case earning means a life of crime.

Booting up the year's biggest game release is a bit like getting off that boat for the first time — it is exciting, and maybe even a tad overwhelming, but most of all it is absolutely teeming with possibility.

As Niko, you start off by driving Roman home from the docks and soon after that things settle into the familiar 'GTA' formula of driving around a huge open-world environment and completing missions.

But even as it feels familiar on one level, it feels completely new on another.

The city looks and feels like it never did in previous games — it's a huge living, breathing, concrete world that has been endowed with a level of detail that is just absurd for a videogame.

Early on, for example, sitting in Roman's apartment, you discover that you can watch television. And rather than just watching the same thing over and over again, there are real shows you can watch, just as there is a whole bunch of in-game radio stations you can listen to wile driving, and an in-game internet that you have to use later on in the game.

And most impressively perhaps, much of this content is really pretty good. The satiric "Republican Space Rangers" TV show, for example, could very easily live on real-world television.

The key though, is that none of this is straight or boring. Instead, all the radio and television programming is filled with sharp social comment — although it should be noted that some of the content might be considered offensive by some.

Add to this the huge and excellently rendered Liberty City with its slums, parks, and upper-class shopping districts and you get a sense of place much like what you'd get from a good book or film.

Rather than just presenting all this as a passive backdrop, the game creates the impression that things are happening in this world quite independently of you. So for example, while walking around you might stumble upon a car crash scene that had nothing to do with you, or see police chasing someone down the street.

And just to distract you some more, 'GTA IV' lets you take a girlfriend out to play some bowls, or to do things like shoot pool with your friends. Indeed, practicing your pool can become a major time-killer in itself.

But even with all these sideshows at your disposal, 'GTA' is still fundamentally about playing through the game's substantial series of missions — and here things have gotten a bit more streamlined.

The key to everything is your mobile phone. Just as you can use it to set up a date with a girlfriend, it is also the major channel through which your missions are triggered. Typically, a mission would start with a call from an associate saying something like "meet me there," or "go there and do that".

The missions themselves haven't changed that much though and if there is an area in which 'GTA IV' disappoints it is here. However spectacular it gets — you'll be flying a chopper and whizzing about in speedboats at times — you will still spend most of the time driving and running around on foot shooting people. Fortunately, the missions are so well thought out and framed that this should not be much of an issue.

At its core, 'GTA IV' is still very much akin to an action movie — albeit a rather over-the-top one. And, as action goes, this is probably about as well as action has been done in this kind of third-person shooter. The driving mechanic is very well implemented, the auto-aim is good, and the game even features a 'Gears of War' style system for taking cover.

Playing through the rather engaging storyline will take quite a while and, given that you are likely to get seriously sidetracked, 'GTA IV' will eat up a lot of your time. Add a very solid online offering and you have a very substantial package.