GTA IV – Multiplayer. Exclusive 360 Content. Details Here.

No sooner than the first detailed preview of the year’s most wanted game, GTA IV falls into early subscribers hands, scans and details spread virulently across the internet.

It is, of course, SPOnG’s duty to keep you informed of all the latest must-know videogame news, so read on for all you need to tell your mates in the pub tonight.

Game Informer’s ten-page preview informs us that, as suspected, the game is set in a much-expanded Liberty City in 2007 and that the central protagonist's name is Niko Bellic - an Eastern European immigrant (it suggests Croatian or Serbian) who has come to Liberty City to live the 'American Dream'.

The other important tidbit gleaned from the preview is that GTA IV will have multiplayer, but it's not going to be a massively multiplayer online game, according to Rockstar Games' co-founder and creative VP, Dan Houser - which is hardly surprising news!

The preview merely states that Rockstar is trying to make something that is interesting, fun, progressive and which goes along nicely with the single-player game.

SPOnG spoke with a Rockstar rep earlier today, who told us that an announcement detailing the exact nature of the multiplayer elements in the game would be made in due course, so watch this space.

In the meantime, the other points of interest^† are:

• The GTA IV equivalent of the Statue of Liberty is called the Statue of Happiness.

• DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) is known as BOABO (Beneath the Offramp of the Algonquin Bridge Overpass).

• Rockstar has recreated four areas of NYC plus parts of New Jersey:
Broker = Brooklyn
Algonquin = Manhattan
Dukes = Queens
Bohan = The Bronx
Alderney = New Jersey

• The map is smaller than San Andreas, but considerably more detailed. No countryside or desert, we are led to believe.

• Pedestrians sit on benches, smoke cigarettes (!), read books (!!) and generally act like any real pedestrian would, except that they're sitting, reading and smoking fags, so not technically pedestrians... but we won't go on. But this reading books thing seems highly un-GTA, and as for smoking cigs, that's outrageous.

• Rockstar insists that the game will only look better as the release draws closer. Well, duh.

• Niko's cousin Roman is the only person you know in Liberty City at the beginning of the game. The man is a liar, be warned as he is also one of your major connections at the start.

• Niko is tough. Roman is friendly but in debt to some baaad-ass chaps. The boys are constantly bickering - and not about whether Frank Lampard or Joe Cole should start for Chelski.


• According to Rockstar, the physics have also improved and character movements are more realistic.

• Rather than slavishly following commands, you can choose how you want to spend your time, for example "I want to hang out with him and her. I want to hang out with this guy because he always has fun things to do".

• GTA IV's storyline can be told in a number of different ways. Although these have not been detailed, you can see from the Xbox 360 demo (outlined at the end of this piece) that, for example, you can interact with other characters using your mobile - or, as is more likely, someone else's mobile that you've nicked (or Niko'd)...

• Rockstar consulted crime experts and ex-policemen when making the game.

• There are a great deal more of the fuzz (arresting a great deal more crims) in this version of Liberty City.

• There are no rollerblades, no unicycles, no jetpacks and no planes. There will be motorbikes.

• Both voice acting and soundtrack will feature less well-known artists. This is either because of 'realism', 'authenticity' and 'suspension of disbelief' or because R* couldn't afford anybody big. This will become clear in the long run. Either way, as long as the job gets done and the game's a good 'un, who cares?

• After an initial load sequence, the game will never load again. Not even during exterior-interior transitions (and vice versa).

• OK, now for some real suspension of disbelief: Both the (Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions will "likely be identical". However, the Xbox 360 version will have exclusive downloadable episodic (sizeable) content. So, not identical at all then - what with there being exclusive content for the 360.

• Dan Houser compares the leap from GTA III to GTA IV, to the leap from GTA to GTA III - M'kay.

• The Xbox 360 demo begins with Niko outside the taxi depot, run by Roman in a converted industrial garage in Broker.

• Niko walks into the unoccupied living room of a brownstone house, pushes the door open, pulls out a pistol before going into the equally empty kitchen. Exiting the house via the back door, he smashes the window of a red four-door car using his elbow - he then unlocks it from the inside and hotwires it.

• The camera angle behind the car is closer to the vehicle than in previous GTA titles.

• After selecting a radio station, Bellic navigates to a section of the BOABO arriving at a dockside with a terrific view of the city skyline. Pigeons can be heard in the sky, and waves can be heard lapping the dockside. He pulls out his cellphone which has options for Phonebook, Messages, Organizer and Camera on its LCD screen. He selects Phonebook, and he is then presented with another set of options: City Contact, Docks Friend, and Cab Contact. He has a brief conversation ending by demanding that the person he is speaking to meets him at the docks.


^{† Source GTA4.net}