The Big Issue: Can GTA 4 survive the hype?

You might have noticed that a little game going by the title GTA 4 is due out in just over a week. Even if you haven’t been caught up in the euphoric hype across every gaming forum on the internet, chances are you’ve seen the trailer on TV, seen a 10/10 review in a magazine or heard people talking about it at work. To say Grand Theft Auto 4 is hyped is quite possibly the understatement of the year, with people expecting the game to be what dreams are made of. The problem is, can it, or any high profile release, ever live up to the hype surrounding it?

I, like many of you, have tried to keep a level head. GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas were all brilliant games, but not without their problems. In my opinion slightly awkward controls have always prevented the series from reaching the gameplay heights equal to its monumental sales, but when Wez returned from a hands-on session claiming this is one of the areas Rockstar has worked on, my biggest concern about GTA 4 was immediately shot down.

What about the visuals? The open-world nature of the series resulted in fairly rough visuals on the PS2, and even with the increased horsepower of modern consoles surely we can’t be expecting a graphical tour de force. Well, again, according to Wez and many others, GTA 4 looks phenomenal. By all accounts, it’s not visual perfection, but the environment feels alive and the physics on display need to be seen to be believed. You only have to cast your eyes over any of the trailers to see GTA 4 is literally dripping with cool.

So that’s two down; what about the multiplayer? Previous GTAs have dabbled (mainly in the PSP games) with some competitive multiplayer game modes, but none have taken the industry by storm. After Wez had seen the single-player game twice, we started to wonder if the multiplayer was being glossed over for a reason. It seems it wasn’t – GTA 4 sounds like it’s going to have one of the richest multiplayer experiences of any console game to date and Rockstar has even set up a site to track all your stats, look at leaderboards and take part in tournaments.

Taking everything into account, my level head is starting to waver. I’m yet to even consider what Rockstar is doing with audio. Throughout the game you’ll be able to listen to typically hilarious radio stations, pick up ambient noise while walking about in Liberty City, hear thousands of lines of recoded dialogue and even tag songs you like, to download later from Amazon.com – sure, it’s a slight cash-in, but incredibly cool.

It’ll all be over in eight hours though right, just like ever other modern action game? Wrong. You’re looking at 25 hours if you scream through it, but around 100 if you want to clock it completely. And, Xbox 360 owners will be able to download two exclusive episodes that add even more content. So that’s fixed controls, superb visuals, brilliant multiplayer, unmatched audio and 100 hours of gameplay. I can feel the hype coursing through my veins.

We’ve got to remain sensible though. I’ve been bitten too many times to let myself fall into this trap again. If we keep telling ourselves that GTA 4 is just going to be another great game, and not a game made by gods, we might just live through it. But we won’t. I’m already starting to sleep badly and it surely won’t be long until I start to dream about GTA. How can we all be so hyped for a game that we’ve barely seen anything on? Most of us haven’t even seen it being played, with Rockstar drip feeding us with cinematic trailers. When was the last time you bought a game and didn’t already have an idea of what it would actually look like when you started playing?

GTA 4 might well be one of the greatest game ever made when we finally all get our hands on it come April 29, but just try, as much as you can, cle/28-02-2008-323.html”>to stay calm. It simply won’t live up to everyone’s long list of expectations, and as such could be slightly disappointing. Six months down the line, when we’re all still playing Cops and Crooks online we won’t care, so try to remember that it’s just a game. But then again, we could all keep hyping it until we all explode with excitement.