Okay, so last time in Liberty City, Niko had just found out that Vlad was doing the wild thing with Roman's girl, who is also a friend of Michelle. I didn't think it would end well and it didn't. The pixelated crap hit the fan. Roman apologised on behalf of his girl. Niko just got infuriated and set of to give Vlad a piece of his mind. The end result? You end up on a bit of wasteland next to the river pointing a gun at Vlad with the option to cap him in the head or not. Have to admit, not sure what the whole angry drama was, Roman's girl is a free agent, but Vlad sure is annoying, so I took him out. This lead to a series of events that got me involved with the next tier of criminals in Niko's world only to kill someone else for that boss due to hum having anger management issues.

I suspect this is going to cause much drama also.

The Michael Mann stuff has kicked in. I've done the odd job for Little Jacob who, you guessed it, ain't little. I also never understand a word he's saying. It's a good job the game provides 'mission' instructions otherwise I'd be at a complete loss. He likes Niko to pick-up packages and drop them off. The trouble is they always go wrong. In one a group of gang members was waiting for me resulting in a shoot out in an alley. Another caught me in a police sting operation resulting in a Michael Mann style shoot out in a city park followed by a serious police chase. They don't like it when cops go down. It was epic stuff. I liked the fact the police kept shooting as I dived into my car, the windows exploding as I drove away. It was a great car chase, followed by another street shoot out and then another car chase, they must have then got bored.

I was hoping to reach the end of chapter one, but the game was refusing to give me the next mission on the main story. I assume it will do eventually. This meant I've filled my time doing some some taxi driving for Roman and the much riskier stuff for Little Jacob.

After doing some character levelling for the 4E Campaign, and still failing to 100% decide on my level 19 Daily Power, I moved on to giving GTA IV some dedicated time on the first MGS experiment. The result was good, and I'm starting to really like the game, which has a number of longer-term positives I'll come back to.

The dramatic web of relationships is extending, and I'm sure some of them aren't going to end well. I'm doing work for Roman, Vlad (some Russian thug who shows up at the Taxi firm) and a drug and gun dealer known as Little Jacob. The most recent ones have graduated to involving guns. The mission I started just before I stopped playing has Vlad involved with the girl Roman fancies, a friend of Michelle (the girl I'm dating) and it doesn't look like it's going to end well. I'll re-start the mission next time, but someone is probably going to get seriously beaten up at a minimum.

Speaking of Michelle, she's a nice girl, but not very demanding. She seems to be willing to go out with a guy just off the boat still dressed in some cheap, Eastern European threads since the only clothes shop seems to be a Russian factory outlet. She's also easily pleased, having been taken to a Kentucky equivalent, a burger joint as well as playing pool and darts. I wondered if I should try the strip joint for a laugh, but it doesn't show as an option for her dates. I know she likes the dates because she allowed me into her flat and I gained an achievement. Yes, we've done the wild thing. At the moment this is a diversion, it would be cool if such relationships became critical to the story. She's obviously used to minor criminals as on two dates I stole a car to take her home and she didn't mind.

I have got the hang of the driving. I'm not brilliant at it, but I can now career around the streets and motorways with enough finesse I don't cause a mass of accidents everywhere I go. It feels cinematic, it conjures images of something like The French Connection. I've combined some tourist activities with earning money by being a cab driver for Roman, I can ring him up when I like and get a job, if I'm already in one of his taxis I can just get on with it. I did a few of them in a row today and it was interesting to see the detail in the different neighbourhoods. Liberty City is an amazing achievement. I've also figured out how to change the radio station in the car, which not only allows me to vary music genre, but some of the insane shows that exist across the Liberty City airwaves.

That's the structure of the game basically. There is missions which in turn lead to chapter conclusions and the chapters eventually lead to a grand ending of some sort. I must still be on chapter one. The exact nature of the story I'm not aware of, but based on conversations woven through the game it looks like it is going to have something to do with the war and why Nikko came to America. The missions are accessed at key geographical locations kicked off by yourself, or via the mobile phone. The effect is you can free roam and encounter a core of the missions at your own pace. I wouldn't be surprised that later, more complex missions are obtained for events a day or so later. The game keeps track of time, hours and days pass. It also means the 'open world' and 'dramatic narrative' and co-exist in some fashion.

What are those longer-term positives I mentioned at the start? Well, if 'open world' games are finally starting to realise they have to mix the 'open world' with some sense of context and drama, this is a good thing, as it then means I like them. I don't mind enjoying the open world elements if that's not all there is to it. One game on the horizon that could be amazing, if they get it right, is Just Cause 2. This is basically GTA IV, but you're a super spy rather than a criminal rising through the ranks and it's a fully realised pacific island rather than Liberty City. That sort of game, with the aim being to destabilise the regime in charge, could be seriously awesome. The shorter answer is, any new genre that starts to appeal to me is good considering the number of genres I used to like that have fallen to the FPS onslaught.

GTA IV is an experiment on two levels. First, I've never been remotely interested in any of the previous GTA titles as they just seemed to involve wondering around doing random criminal acts. Look? I can shag a prostitute in the back of a car and it gives me my health back? Isn't this cool? Yeah, if you've got the mental age of a fifteen year old. Second, it's the poster boy title of the 'open world' genre, which often seems to equate to the 'wonder around doing pointless crap' genre. GTA IV is about being a criminal, but one with a life story behind why, and it's still open world, but backed up by a supposedly good narrative. Have I been hoodwinked?

I was hoping that the GTA IV was going deliver something more akin to a Scorsese film, or something like Heat? Let's just say it has an interesting set of open credits as Niko enters Liberty City harbour on a cargo ship, but it's hardly the opening of a Hollywood blockbuster. It sets the scene though, as Niko seems to have been a soldier in what I can only assume is the Bosnian War (though it never says so specifically), and has come to pursue the American Dream after receiving endless letters about mansions, sports cars and girls from his cousin Roman. Needless to say he finds Roman in a dead end job with serious debt troubles and your protagonists gets pulled in.

At the moment, it's a bit like I've been promised a Sorsese experience and instead I've been forced into the inane life of a dead-end Eastern European with a cousin who can't stop getting into trouble every five minutes. I'm even dressed like a Chav. It's annoying, if the game was supposed to be a grand spy drama I'm doing the equivalent of pretending to be a Gas Man to gain entry into random houses. Repeatedly. I've met some of the cast, including the woman Roman works with and her friend. I've even been on a date with said friend, Michelle, it involved bowling because my character entire wealth can be measured in small change. The bowling mini-game was annoying. I have trouble even buying a Hot Dog. You start at the bottom of the rung and the game does a great job of making you want to buy a gun, or likely steal one at this stage, and shoot Roman in the head yourself.

That's the not so great stuff, which I'm hoping opens up once the story starts to kick in. It's just not displaying great pacing at the current time and involves so much driving around doing things for other people I feel like I'm in a world more boring than my own.

Mass Effect it ain't. Yes.

The good stuff is Liberty City. The realisation of Libery City is amazing. One of the problems with the GTA titles before is you had a city to roam around in but it never really looked like one, it was just a basic, game orientated abstraction of a city. Liberty City in GTA IV is a city. It lives and breathes. It's claustrophobic. It's massive. It has people living in it. Cars roam around its roads and freeways. Air planes come in and out of its airport. It has a water front and it's poor and rich areas. You can even ring people on your mobile phone and watch TV. You feel like you are walking and driving around a city like New York. It's very well done. Not only that, it doesn't seem to involve any load times, you can just drive around it. Okay, it seems to stagger what parts of the city open initially, as a terrorist threat has the 'Brooklyn Bridge' analogue closed off, but it's impressive nevertheless. It is a very impressive achievement and even makes someone like me want to explore a bit.

At the moment Liberty City has me sold, the events in the game don't. I'm hoping the street level antics that don't amount to much soon open up into a story of love, revenge, betrayal and serious choices and I finally get to experience that grand crime drama. We shall see.

I know, it's shocking. You might have no reason to know it's shocking, but it truly is. I've never been the least bit interested in purchasing a Grand Theft Auto game or any game remotely like it, such as Saints' Row. The Grand Theft Auto games have two things going against them. First, I don't see the point in glorifying crime, or getting off on running around committing crimes, killing cops and shagging prostitutes in the back of cars. I'm not a prude, I just don't see the point in playing a game about it. This brings me to the second point: I'm not the biggest fan of sandbox games. In fact, as far as I'm concerned sandbox games can crawl into a whole, bury themselves and suffer a slow death. I want to play a computer game to be entertained, not run around in some puerile attempt at modelling a city in a vein attempt to find something to do with a bit of meaning.

The trouble is the city modelled in Grand Theft Auto IV looks absolutely fantastic, and it would seem, while GTA IV still provides a sandbox to play in, it also provides a framework so you can immerse yourself in your own Martin Scorsese film of vengeance, betrayal and crime. Now, that could be fantastic.

I'm not an expert on the game, as I've not been reading every bit of information that leaks out or is released as part of the publicity machine, but the bits I have read make the game sound absolutely brilliant. Yeah, that's what they are supposed to do, so that's to be expected, but keep in mind that hasn't been the effect of anything released about previous GTA games. It would seem that the city, modelled on New York, while not being New York, is a living, breathing and vibrant place. It's congested, real and you can almost smell the car fumes and feel the heat. It's not the dispassionate and basic models that have been seen before.

It has a new level of reality layered over the top, in that the graphics are so good you start to feel part of the place. You can use your mobile phone to arrange meetings and it's an essential part of the game. I've even heard one story of your character having to hunt down another character, but in this new, realistic, bustling city the target isn't just stood waiting to be found. So the player rang him, and watched his target pick up and answer his mobile, thus picking him out from the crowd! The criminality aspect is also realistic, ensuring that the balance of crime and law is more dramatically tense. There is no more committing crime after crime and having comedy chases with the police (only to fool them by pulling into garage and instantly having your car sprayed pink). How much crime you commit in the game has consequences. Hell, even the act of getting a gun is now a tense affair involving mobile phone calls and deals in allies, not just a quick visit to a Guns'R'Us. I'm even hearing reports, that when the shit does hit the fan and the bullets do start to fly, it's no longer an affair of boring, dispassionate destruction but an intense experience along the lines of the film Heat.

Finally, and by no means least, and I admit some of this information is tenuous and threaded together from numerous things I've read, but I'm getting the impression there is some story to be found in that sandbox city. A story of desperate crime, violence and vengeance. A sense that the main character survived something, and while he ain't a saint, there is certainly people out their worse than him. He speaks about being the one who survived? Survived what? And what plot of violence and betrayal lies behind those lines?

I'll be reading the reviews with interest, because at the moment, based on the information I have encountered, Grand Theft Auto IV sounds like it might actually be revolutionary and totally engrossing.