2001. Imagine the Scene. We’ barely had time to get over the nineties, people were starting to trust computers again after the whole ‘Millennium Bug overreaction, Tie-Dye T-shirts finally went out of style, and the only people still wearing tracksuits were scousers and the unemployed. I was a friendless, bad-skinned, brooding, ‘Would-be Complaining “No one understands me” If There Were Anyone To Understand Me To Complain To’ 16 year-old boy. Coincidentally this was the year that the controversial (you could enlist a prostitute, then murder her to get your money back) video game series Grand Theft Auto went all 3rd Gen. That is to say it built a game to be played on 3rd Generation machines, utilising their superior power chips. But the third instalment of the already popular game was the first to propel the previous birds-eye camera’d, mission based city shoot-em up into superstardom. Grand Theft Auto III featured a change of developer. First thing Rockstar did with the already best selling recipe, was change it. They took the one original thing about the game setting it apart from everything else, and made it normal. Sounds like a mistake doesn’t it? The contrary would have to ready itself for a pile on, because the resulting gaming experience became he most cloned way of playing a game since Ralph Baer’s ‘Control Pad’.

They moved the camera down from birds-eye, to a 3rd Person view behind the character. The simple move allowed the player to see much more of his/her surroundings, making the gaming experience exponentially more enjoyable. The additional information involved in the extra dimension meant Sony’s ‘Playstation 2’ was the only console with the required muscle to house the required technology. Luckily there was still room for even more information. So much in fact, that it could house the entire game’s 3D map. With this came the invention of ‘Free Roam’. Even though in Grand Theft Auto III (like all GTA’s) you still had certain missions from different people to keep the game on track, you were free to roam about as much as you damn well pleased.

Before this, you had games like Resident Evil where you could free-roam around one, unmoveable camera shot. When you went out of view, the game loaded another picture, which you were in. There was room, and time free to dick about in the gamesphere, NOT completing it, but only within the confines of that one photograph. Quite limited. Grand Theft Auto III meant you could piss about in the entire city without having to do a damn thing towards completion of the game. Not if you didn’t want to. Because of the free-roam gameplay, it gave the developers the frankly genius idea of hundreds of little mini-games. From Service Missions (Taxis, Police, Ambulance, and Fire Crews – stealing one of those vehicles, and doing the job that should be done by them), boosting cars, to collecting drugs from secret places, driving over secret ramps, and owning businesses... The game away from the game was bigger than the game! This (as the aforementioned 16 year-old...) was mega. I lapped it up like a solar powered robot dog stuck on ‘Extreme Lap’ setting.

I went for the next game in the series too... set in the fictional Vice City. This showed a few minor improvements in gameplay, with different things possible (like being able to shoot out tyres, and through windscreens), apart from these it was pretty much business as usual. Same game, different character, different city. Which I’m fine with! I loved the original GTA III, and I loved Vice City. The next instalment however... Set in the again fictional San Andreas, is where it went tits up for me. By the time San Andreas came out, I didn’t have a console, and thus lost the ability to buy. Gazz however (good on ‘im) queued in the ‘day of release’ line to get his mitts on a pre-order copy (nerd). Like Vice City, San Andreas was run by the same game engine as Vice City, and the original GTA III, so not too much was different. Only it was. In the two previous versions you started off in one area, and two more became available to roam as the game went on (ending up with you free to drive/fly/sail across all three). Same plan for S.A, only the first bit was bigger than the other’s entire maps! So more area to explore right? Wrong. Only between ½ and ¼ of the area was city. The rest just fields. Fields, hills, big-ass lakes. I played the game through pretty far (Without actually being able to finish it), and these things showed absolutely NO purpose but getting in the bastard way. It wasn’t difficult to get through them, they were just boorrrrrrrrring.

Your mission: Drive to this person’s house and kill them / pick up drugs (because that’s all the missions ever were). So you’d spend 30 minutes driving over country roads (American country roads, with not much - pixelated or otherwise - to see), get to their house, kill them with a couple of shots. 2 minutes. Then 30 min drive back to your house to save. Brilliant. I’ve been playing for an hour, and I’ve done one, easy mission. Even worse than this, was the inbuilt requirement to eat... work out... socialise... and have a girlfriend. If you let any of these social life bars slip, you’d suddenly become a fat, unloved, pariah. Why do you care? Because you need friends or a girlfriend to complete certain missions, and they’re a bitch to get back once you lose them. After each completed mission, you spend a full game day working out, one taking the Mrs. to a bar or something boring, one hanging with bro’s, another schmoozing the Mrs. to keep her sweet, then after all that sitting about eating and drinking you’ll probably need to work out some more. When you weren’t doing that, you could guarantee one of your ‘hoods’ would be under attack, so you’d have to go and see to that. You couldn’t get 5 minutes in that game for some ‘Me Time’ to even go out and play the fucking game!

This is why, I was dubious about GTA IV when it first came out (or rather when Gazz and I first moved in – for the second time, and I played his copy). The improvements were stark and plenty. Best of all, no need to work out, no need to eat (unless you needed to top up your health), no need to hang with bros more than once every few weeks. The requirement to get and keep a girlfriend was still there, which was a tad annoying, but by itself not so bad. GTA IV is a good game, GTA back on form. But it wasn’t great. I played it sure, and enjoyed it in doing so, but I didn’t love it. Only when I had a spare half hour. I didn’t think about it when I was away from it, I didn’t rush to get home to play, or stay up until way later than is proper or healthy, just to get a perfect score. In a way, that’s probably a good thing.

In the years after the release of the original GTA IV, Rockstar played their usual Vice City, San Andreas ‘Let’s Make a Shitload of Dollar For Next to No Work’ trick and released The Lost and the Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony in 2009. Both were set on the same map, with the same engine as GTA IV, but saw you take control of a different character, and play out different missions. October 2009 saw the release of a bumper pack with both new games in one, and luckily for me, Gazz jumped on it faster than a kid with a blackcurrant ice lolly on a bouncy castle. The differences between it, and original GTA IV are minor, but matter immensely in overall enjoyment. The biggest is that they’ve done away with the need to get and keep a girlfriend. All right, it may not be realistic, young boys should be taught the importance of a strong female presence in their adult lives, as well as the importance of wooing and treating this special lady from time to time. But then children also should be taught that killing gangs of people with a chainsaw in the middle of the day is in one way or another, wrong. But GTA has never been good at teaching things, so live with it. Nope. Now you still get to have sex, but it’s easier than ever. Just visit one of the bars you’re able to get in after about 10% of game completion. Park yourself on the dance floor, and if you complete ‘The Bus Stop’ Dance routine well enough – you get your end away. That’s the most realistic part of the game. Then you can collect lady’s numbers for booty calls across town.

Other additions include better characters, better dialogue, more integration between missions and other things to do (I recently had to escape capture by base jumping. As soon as that was Mission Complete, a whole host of base jumping locations popped up. I thought nothing of it, but it turns out the next mission involved skilful skydiving. I needed to go back to a base jumping sight and get a bit of practice). A few favourites such as the Services Missions and car boosting lists have been removed long ago (I think they were taken out to create space in San Andreas), and not put back in, which is a bit shit... I don’t think there are any secret jumps to do either (I’ve found ramps, but not been rewarded for it). But it’s really the little things in the game that make it my favourite so far. If I step out in front of a moving car, more often than not it will just run me over. If I grab onto someone’s door, the driver will speed off, dragging me across the tarmac until I let go. The Auto-Aim and Take Cover systems are so much more improved it’s actually worthwhile using them. And the characters in general are so much better rounded. Previous incarnations had them simply shooting, and shouting their mouths off. In The Ballad of Gay Tony especially, they all seem to react like people actually would, just trying not do their jobs, and not get hurt.

Playing GTA IV: EFLC is possibly the best GTA game (subtracting the initial nostalgic preference) ever. If, after Vice City, like me you felt your loyalty waning, but you still yearn to return to the heady days of GTA III, I’d seriously suggest picking up this title. It’s available from Amazon.co.uk for £24-£26 (depending on console), so why not?