Fun-For-All

I finally was able to connect online in GTA IV this afternoon. A friend of mine sent me an invite and we played in a free-for-all game, just the two of us. While there was certainly fun in the chaos we created, it was missing some interaction from the city, either through a gang or the police, to challenge us and provide an opposing force as we impressed our will upon the city.

The session started innocently enough. We gathered weapons from around the safehouse spawn area and got in the chopper. After a bit of scenic flying around the city, we landed outside Central- I mean Middle Park. We terrorized the citizenry who could do nothing to defend themselves besides running away, willy-nilly like, screaming, and generally panicking.

Betrayal came soon enough and, I must admit, I was the betrayer. As my friend and I were both emptying our clips into a car and we accidentally maneuvered ourselves into a crossfire. He died. I laughed.

Our unity shattered, vengeance became the order of the day as I tried to withstand his attacks (I got the better of him several times before he got me back) and then, in turn, give him chase. We did all of this without ever once seeing the police, or anyone else, try to intervene.

I could not help but to contrast this with the similar multiplayer experience in Crackdown. In that game, it's possible to become embroiled in massive shootouts with gangs and police- so huge that they reverberate from one end of the city to another. In contrast, our titanic struggles in Liberty City were empty outside ourselves. The city was merely a backdrop, filled with cardboard shooting decoys.

Truth be told, I had a blast online. I just couldn't help but see an omission that could have taken the experience to another level. Picture the two of us in Central Park, both with six star warrants, fending off wave after wave of S.W.A.T., uniformed cops, and helicopters. It would have been epic. That wasn't what we had. What we had was the two of us trading rockets in an empty park in a city that paid us no mind. It was fun. It just wasn't epic.