At the rate that Rockstar is releasing new information for GTAIV, you'd think that this game was shipping no earlier than 2009. As secretive as this company has been over this last year, you can only imagine our surprise when they stopped by the game informer offices for an impromptu hour- long game play session with the xbox 360 version of the game.
Unlike our previous experience in liberty City, which began in the borough of Broker, this one stated that with Niko, still dressed somewhat shoddily, standing calmly in the neon-lit and heavily populated streets of Star Junction(GTA IV's version of Times Square).
As the electronic billboards flickered with color and life, the denizens of the streets could be seen doing various things, such as buying a paper from a dispenser, or gathering on a street corner for a cigarette and a chat. No stickler for details, you can actually hear the flick of a lighter when someone lights up. It's elements like these that really make this city feel alive.
The demo itself started off fairly slowly, with Niko nonchalantly taking a stroll, but soon showcased a number of new innovations for the series, such as the ability to whistle and wave for a cab. IN our demo, the first cab that Niko tried to flag didn't stop, which brought a hilarious flip of the bird from our Eastern-European protagonist. The second cab did pull over, however. Rather than jacking it like you would in the other GTA games, players now have the chance to hop into the back seat. From here, the game zooms into Niko's eyes with a first-person view showing the interior of the car, and a cabbie that is ready to get his marching orders. The player must first give the cabbie a location, which is handled on the d-pad. When the car starts moving, players have the option to hit the A button to skip the ride and be warped to the location, X to tell the cabbie to hurry it up(which is shown visually by the cabbie speeding up and punching the horn) and Y to exit the cab. The right analog stick is used for camera movement, for which there are dozens of views.
After a nice ride through Liberty City, Niko hopped out of the car and made tracks into an alley where a contact, Little Jacob, who he contacted earlier on the phone, was waiting. The two parties exchanged pleasantries, then Jacob popped open his trunk to reveal a stockade of weapons. It was at that point that Rockstar pointed out that you have to build a relationship with Jacob throughout the course of the game before he will go out of his way to deal with you - especially in the light of the fact that there will be no ammunition stores in the game.
What followed was a series of phone calls and cab rides. The outcome of all this concluded with Niko taking on a mission to take out a lawyer named Goldberg (of Goldberg, Ligner, and Shyster). Since Goldberg is hard to get to, Niko chose a non-lethal approach to get to him. He was going to apply for a job at the law firm. The quickest way to do this was to hit the closest TW@ internet Cafe - a place loaded with people huddled around glowing monitors. As Rockstar pointed out, every computer in the game can be interacted with. IN this instance, Niko booted up a web browser, surfed a news and link heavy page, then went to the law firm's site where he submitted a resume.
This brings up another huge aspect of GTA IV. Unlike previous games in the series, this one now has a working calendar, which is broken into actual days of the week. After Niko's application was reviewed, he received a telephone call from the firm, who in turn, set up an appointment with him for Thursday at noon.
In preparation for this event, Niko purchased a chocolate brown suit from a top-tier clothing store called Perseus. The clothing changes in this GTA won't be fantastical, and are used in realistic ways. At the law firm, Niko was escorted to Goldberg's office. After taking a seat, the interview began, As Goldberg chatted it up, Niko stood up and pulled a gun on him. This action was met with hilarious response on Goldberg's part. He said that the firm supported the second amendment, and that "Guns don't kill people. Video games do."
With one quick shot, Goldberg flipped backward out of his chair and through a window, falling several stories to his death. This, of course, brought about a police firefight and chase. While still making use of a wanted star system(up to six stars), the police now have a search radius, which is represented on the map with a glowing ring - the more severe the crime, the larger the ring. It's up to the player to figure out how to get out of this zone. Do you change vehicles? Hide? Try and outrun them? It's now more of a game of cat and mouse.
Rockstar wouldn't go into the specifics regarding how the controls work, but did show us some tasty firefights, with Niko ducking behind cover (which, depending on the material, could be destructible), and exchanging fire. When the odds leaned in the favor of the police, Niko switched to an Uzi to show off a new move: blind firing over objects.
The demo ended with Niko going down in a hail of fire. It was an awesome run, and made us want more answers, such as why would there be a multi player option on the phone during the single-player game? Does this imply co-op?
. Ik hoop wel dat de wapens zichtbaar zijn op Nico.
maar enfin, hij zit daar tenminste, ik zit hier 
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