Paul’s Top 10: Grand Theft Auto IV
Written by Paul Lehman
I owe my obsession with video games to the Grand Theft Auto series, so at least one entry had to make my Top 10. Growing up, we didn’t own any gaming consoles because my parents thought that I would be addicted to video games. It ended up backfiring big time, as the forbidden allure of video games grew even stronger. As a young teenager, I saved up a lot of money, and my parents reluctantly agreed to let me buy a Nintendo 64 during my freshman year of high school. The N64 had released a few years earlier, so it was already a little bit old, but I had a great love for multiplayer games like Mario Kart, GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark, and Super Smash Bros by playing them at friend’s homes.
Somehow, I had no real experience with single-player games up to that point. Since my only access to gaming consoles was when I was at a friend’s house, they always wanted to play multiplayer games so that we wouldn’t have to take turns. That was fine with me! The more the merrier, so I was happy being a gamer who only knew multiplayer content.
That all changed during my junior year of high school. I began dating the love of my life, Nikki, who would marry me in 2006 and later become the mother of our five children. In high school, Nikki’s house was a hub for our friend group. She was part of a sibling group of five, and she often had her cousins over to swim and play video games (one of the cousins is my co-host, Ryan).
Nikki’s older brother, Timmy, owned a PlayStation 2 and bought Grand Theft Auto III. It was an eye-opening experience, to see that a video game could tell an interactive story over the course of 15 hours, with violence, chaos, and a lot of fun. A year later, Timmy bought Vice City, and that was the day I truly became a gamer. Vice City was bright, fast, and full of homages to some of my favorite movies like Scarface.
After that, I built my first PC and bought at least one console of each generation. When GTA IV was set to release in 2008, I was practically counting down the days. I picked up my pre-order through Best Buy and quickly realized that IV was better than III and Vice City in pretty much every way. No longer borrowing heavily from mob and drug movies, IV was much more sensitive. Niko, the protagonist, is an immigrant chasing the American dream after being told by his cousin Roman that he was so successful in Liberty City. Unlike the previous games which were more cartoony, Niko is an anti-hero with aspirations to make it big while also dealing with his conscience and troubled past. The story sucked me in as Niko finds himself working for Italian, Irish, and Russian criminal enterprises.
Along with the compelling story, the gameplay also received many updates. Cars drove like they actually had weight. This mechanic was controversial at the time, but I think most people today agree that IV has the best handling while driving around the city. Rockstar also implemented the use of a cell phone, where you could call a taxi for easy transportation around the city, or call police, fire, or paramedic services for easy access to emergency vehicles.
To top it all off, GTA IV has one of my favorite quests of all time, Three Leaf Clover. I’m a sucker a great heist. Many of my favorite movies of all time feature heists (Heat, Ocean’s 11, The Town, Point Break, and others). In this quest, Niko pairs up with the Irish mob to knock off the Bank of Liberty. You run in with masks and weapons and hold the bank customers hostage while taking money from the vault. By the time you’re ready to leave, the place is surrounded by Liberty City PD. This leads to a thrilling segment you have to fight your way down the streets and alleys before escaping underground in the sewer system.
GTA V is fantastic, but for me the apex of the series was IV. The story is more nuanced and actually has a moral message at the end. While GTA V’s success has ensured that future entries will be more in line with III, Vice City, and V, the gritty and real characters of IV worked the best for me. If you haven’t played through this classic, you don’t know what you’re missing.