Grand Theft Auto IV Preview

So you steal a car (what else?) and start mowing down people and generally causing a bit of a ruck in order to attract some attention. It's not long before the cops come calling. Niko rams into the cop car, gets out, uses his own car as cover and starts blind firing with a pistol. Then, once all of the cops have left their vehicles, our demo dude makes Niko sprint towards a cop car, jumps inside, and speeds off.

We've only accumulated a couple of stars worth of attention, so it's a fairly simple escape out of the search area. But we're told that the police can become incredibly difficult to dodge. They will communicate with each other over police radio (you'll hear them talking about specific streets), set up road blocks and combine to force you to a halt. They will also readjust their search depending on where you were last spotted. So, if they see you while you're trying to get away the search radius will restart from that position. In all, it looks like Rockstar have tried to create a more realistic getaway experience then ever before, one that's based on line of sight and feels like a game of cat and mouse.

Once we've escaped we're given a glimpse of the police database. You simply type in the name of the person you're after and it will cycle through hundreds of faces, eventually returning a selection of results. You pick the right one, in this case Lyle Rivas, and get his address. You mark it on your sat-nav and head towards the mark on the mini-map, smashing multiple posts and destroying fire hydrants along the way.

Niko arrives and, predictably, Lyle does a runner. Here we witnessed a known bug where the mission will fail one out of four times, but don't worry, Rockstar's on it. Incidentally, if you do fail a mission Niko will receive a text message which lets him give it another go. You jump in the cop car, put the sirens on (to smooth the journey so to speak) and give chase. Here we're given a look at how driving and shooting at the same time works in GTAIV. In a first for the series you can smash the near side window, lean out and shoot forwards while in a car, aiming with the right analogue stick. Luckily Niko has an Uzi at his disposal, and goes straight for Lyle's tyres. The car crashes to a halt and Lyle makes a run for it. He doesn't get far.

Back with the speedboat and our demo comes to an inevitable conclusion as we park up on a beach area. Here we find a random computer-controlled resident of the city sitting on a bench reading a paper and minding his own business. Perhaps he highlights Rockstar's most impressive achievement with taking Liberty City into next-gen territory on the PS3 and Xbox 360 - that is to create the most atmospheric video game sandbox we've ever seen. We just can't wait to try it out for ourselves.