Revolutionary. That is the word I'd give if I were asked to sum up GTA3 into one word. Not only did it do what none of us thought was capable at the time, it practically created it's own genre as well. Many copy-cats followed but none came close to the awesomeness of Grand Theft Auto.

And now, seven years later, GTAIV is here! And unsurprisingly, it's great! But just how great is it? Well, if Vice City and San Andreas were never made, then you could call GTAIV as big as a revolution as GTA3. But both of those games added new features such as buying houses, motorbikes and awesome new weapons which made GTAIV have less of an impact. But what really annoys me about GTAIV is the lack of some of these features that many of us considered the norm.

The character customisation (that admittedly, went into the extremes in San Andreas) is very limited, only offering a change of clothes. Now this wouldn't be too bad, but there aren't that many clothes to choose from, and alot of those clothes don't make Niko look any good. Being able to buy safehouses would of been a nice feature in GTAIV, not only to give players that extra amount of freedom, but it would be something to spend some money on (as money is far too plentiful). The lack of planes and parachutes also detract from the fun-factor as base jumping from these sky-scrapers would be awesome fun and planes would be great to pilot. But these are all minor flaws when compared to my next point:

The lack of mid-mission checkpoints. I cannot output the amount of frustration that had built up inside me when I had to restart a half-hour long mission just because Niko accidentaly nudged a car while chasing someone. This led Niko to be hurtled through the air, and before Niko could get to his feet, the guy had gotten away. And this didn't just happen once, but over six times before I finally nailed the ****.

But we should always look on the bright side of life or, in this case, look on the bright side of beating hookers with a baseball bat. I would list what makes GTAIV so great, but this rant has gone on long enough as it is, and I'm sure you already know what makes GTAIV great anyways. To sum up: Grand Theft Auto IV is good ol' Grand Theft Auto minus some of the fun extras that we took for granted in previous GTAs.