Features// Pocket Plays GTA IV Multi-Player

Before Cops ‘n Crooks gets started I have a little stickler moment and point out that I would have expected two apostrophes for that title to go with the two missing letters and, for the second time that day, I feel guilty as I stare upwards at this loveable giant of a Rockstar rep. I then feel obliged to tell him a hitherto guarded secret – that I carry Tippex and a marker pen at all times (I do have a professional excuse) and have been known to correct signs and labels where I see mistakes.

He smiles one of the most complex smiles I’ve ever seen which combined an equal proportion of “She’s mad” with “That means I’m not”. Cops ‘n Crooks is over very quickly! We all play six or seven games, winning almost all of them whether playing as the cops (you get to see the crooks on your radar and have to take the head honcho out – easy as we have some super sharp shooters on our team) or as the crooks (no radar, just a fierce will to get past the cops and out onto the boat in the bay and off Liberty City soil). I manage to hold up our team of crooks for a good five minutes by propelling my car into the water and then having to swim out to the boat and we still win!

Lastly we play The Hangman’s Noose on co-op mode, but I think my tactics have lapsed to the point of non-existence. As the Mafiya boss lands at Francis, the police close in and I do my usual kamikaze run into battle as the others usher him into a bullet-proof security van and drive him away. It’s at this point that I realise there are only three seats in the van and my covering fire has merely angered the respawning policemen. I die my allotted five times and then spend the rest of the game watching as the rest of the team one-by-one run out of lives leaving Craig to complete the game on his own, to the sounds of our comradely cheers as he takes down police from a helicopter and zooms the boss to freedom.

Massive hugs are given to all the lovely people I’ve met and, professionalism secured, it’s time to leave. On the tube home, as I watch the drooping lids of commuters, JLR and I are buzzing, our zeal causing smiles of surprise from those one-arm swingers too close to avoid overhearing our embargo-shrouded gibberings:

“How about when someone threw that grenade and totalled six of our cars, and then we were all scattering looking for anything to get back in the race!”

“Yeah! Then I did that barrel-roll over two cars and onto the other side of the motorway.”

“That was so cool! Oh god, d’you remember that race where I went through three cars in three checkpoints and landed them all in the ocean?”

Yes, this game has the ability to turn loquacious twenty-somethings into garrulous, slang-speaking imbeciles. GOTY? Well, it certainly won’t disappoint you, no matter how high your expectations.