I've been excited about Grand Theft Auto IV for sometime. Long before those first promos were revealed and those early details were released, being honest, it's a game i've been looking forward to for years, and the promise of a then next-gen sequel is something that would presumably get everyone excited about. Naturally as the weeks drew nearer and the hype machine started making more and more noise, it was something that I was anticipating so much. Then the TV promo, then those early across the board ten out of ten reviews, and then finally, the release.

I'm not a fan of numbers in reviews- what's the point in writing all those words and arguments if you're going to degrade it all with a single digit?- but the truth has to be told, this is not a 10-worthy game, despite what the gaming press may have been telling you. To be completely honest, the fourth installment of the series is just that; a sequel, and while it's obvious rather early on that improvements have been made to the gameplay-most noticeably the fantastic new gunplay cover system- the game, as ever, is still plagued with the same problems that it's predecessors before it suffered horrendously from.

Alarmingly, pop-up is still an integral part of the game, with an all manner of in game objects ranging from lone trees to sprawling play-parks randomly appearing before you as you drive. Certainly this is perhaps something that would be expected of the background, but textures loading five seconds after your arrival is not just annoying, but completely off-putting, and certainly not something you expect to see given the already well showcased abilities of this generation through other games. The game feels unnaturally slow, even when you're at your fastest, and the game continues to struggle with having anything near a smooth framerate, evident when there's explosions and onscreen havoc, something I imagine most players will notice given the game's focus and content. The game feels sluggish in places, slow in others, but collectively, incomplete, and certainly far from perfect. In regards to the new-fangled sandbox genre itself, Crackdown seemed like a gigantic leap forward, whereas with GTA IV that forward direction seems merely a small step.

But while pregnated with faults and shortcomings, GTA IV is lots of positive things. It's fun, it's exciting, ambitious, huge, and most of all enjoyable, as long as you pay no heed to the 'revolutionary' adjectives attached to the game reviews and desires for the game in your head. While Rockstar are perhaps already renowned with immersion in their games and the so wildly-designed cities that play host to these games, the Liberty City sets new precedent to the genre in this regard. As with GTA III this isn't a mere city-themed level, it's a gameworld that for once, deserves to be named as such. More than ever this feeling of immersion seems so complete, and the gameworld with it's unique citizens, politics, TV channels, shoe-brands and car companies is an aspirating addition that not only completes the game, but in someway, completes it. While indirectly it doesn't affect the gameplay, that freedom to do whatever you want -whenever you want- is as ever the game's biggest strength, with plenty of more options in here from the previous titles in the franchise.

GTA IV is, depending how you look at it, not exactly innovative. As a game, it contains many of the elements from other genres driving, shooting, platforming et al and combines them to relative success. Obviously if you want a driving game you'd do better to search elsewhere, while, again, if you're after a third-person shooter, there's plenty of better examples out there. That GTA IV -and the series of which it belongs- can combine these elements as one set against a backdrop of a sprawling city backdrop is now the stuff of legend, but it's crucial to remember that GTA IV is a sequel, and that it not only doesn't improve much on previous faults, but also, that it hasn't fixed some of those problems the series is renowned for, just yet.

Maybe next time?