Republican Space Rangers

Satire here is also a little lacking. Where in past GTAs it was at least a little bit subtle, or comprised of more in-jokes like the awesome Diff'rent Strokes parody Just the Five of Us from Vice City, now it comes off like one long anti-American screed about how the USA is corrupt, stupid, and war-mongering. This is most apparent on the new TV stations that Niko can check out in his off-hours at home, as they're loaded with unfunny programs. Republican Space Rangers is a cartoon about American thugs in space slaughtering aliens for looking queer. FOX parody Weazel has now become so blunt that it might as well hit you with a sledgehammer, with plugs for news shows that are all "War on Terror, Weather, and Sports!" Station CNT goes after rednecks for their love of NASCAR. You get the feeling that the scripts were written by the most unimaginative posters at Daily Kos and Captain Obvious clowns who wouldn't have been able to score a night on Evening at the Improv. Very little of this stuff is funny, aside from the outrageously common use of the C-word (it's not as big of a deal where Rockstar North is located in the UK as it is here, I know, but, uh, wow), unless you're amused by shooting fish in a barrel.

Look and sound of GTA IV is just about identical on both Xbox 360 and PS3, by the way. I played both versions and didn't notice any appreciable difference, aside from the faster loads on the PS3, which installs part of the game to the hard drive before you start playing. If I had to pick one or the other, I'd go with the 360 edition solely for the exclusive online content coming out over Live starting this August. But if you've got both systems and don't care about the downloadable extras, pick PS3. I found the 360 game an incredible burden to my console, cranking up the noise of the fans and disc drive to vacuum-cleaner levels and causing two hard crashes during the opening cinematics. Once I got past the opening, however, it was clear sailing save the ungodly racket coming from my TV cabinet.

Well, most of the time. In addition to Niko's constant wrangling with morality and making judgment calls like the early one where he can ditch helping Roman avoid a beating to carry on with his other activities, like a date, there are consequences for damn near everything you do in GTA IV. Although the basic structure of play remains the same, and most of the mission goals awfully familiar, everything has been tightened up and given more of a structure. Sometimes, this is a very good thing, as you can now replay failed missions with a tap on your cell phone and take cabs and trains all over the city when you don't feel like driving. But at other times, it's almost as if the developers at Rockstar gave the critics an ear and tried to prevent you from reveling in the nihilistic crime sprees that CJ and Tommy Vercetti could get away with in San Andreas and Vice City.

For starters, cops are everywhere in Liberty City. During the day, you can't drive more than a block without running into at least a couple of cruisers and boys in blue walking the beat. Watch it when you're taking corners, as it's really easy to sideswipe a cruiser or run down a fat street cop and kick off an inadvertent chase. It can also be tough just to jack a ride in peace, as you're in cop sight a lot of the time and you now have to take a few extra seconds smashing out windows and hotwiring some vehicles. This is a lot more realistic and flat-out cooler looking than simply wrenching a door open and taking off, at least.

Ditching cops is more involved now, too, as you can only lose your wanted stars by escaping a search bubble that pops up on the mini-map whenever a chase is on, and can only use a Pay and Spray if you're out of sight of the boys in blue. This makes more sense than the "run around until the star disappears" concept of the last two GTA games, and isn't particularly difficult to pull off as there are lots of open stretches where you can bury the needle and leave pursuers in the dust. But chases tend to drag on longer now because there are so damn many cops in the city that you're forever running out of one search bubble and right into another (the center of the bubbles change depending on the latest cop to spot you).