Like Manchester United, Roger Federer and Tiger Woods, the GTA series stands alone as the only example of its genre worth bothering with. Like every undisputed champ, it attracts a vortex of jealous hate that forces critics to run it through with a finetoothed comb, searching for the one gust of wind that would somehow send its tower of cards crumbling to the ground. Of course, for the same reason opposing fans can only limply claim Cristiano Ronaldo ‘is a bit of a pretty boy’, the Swiss tennis ace has stupid floppy hair and Tiger wouldn’t have signed a sponsorship deal if it didn’t include a cap, GTA’s position is unassailable. When things get personal, you know the argument is lost. It was therefore in a spirit of fair criticism that we headed off to Rockstar’s London offices, performing the ceremonial ‘boo’ at Stamford Bridge as we passed through (naturally), only to discover our desire to find practically any fault whatsoever melted away like the survival hopes of our opponents. To continue our metaphor for a few sentences further, perhaps only each new football season can prove so familiar, yet so unquestionably thrilling and dulled in any way. Well, apart from phases of play in the offside rule, but that’s an argument for another mag...

Getting on with it, the multiplayer functions of Rockstar’s upcoming epic were the order of the day, all accessible from the D-pad mobile phone menu through which Niko will run his life. Bringing up the regular lobby system will reveal a list of modes comfortably in the mid-teens, stretching far beyond the simple all-out deathmatch (itself, of course, a novelty in the ultimate urban videogame setting). By far the most interesting of those we got our hands on, though, was Cops ‘n’ Crooks, for which the phrase ‘cut to the chase’ was invented. Starting at a number of spawn points on one island (which are essentially random, but unerringly quiet and bereft of traffic), your team of four suited mafia henchmen overseen by a wobbly kingpin figure will be tasked with making their escape.

Obviously enough, each player will control one man, so all have a turn being chauffeured around like precious gold bullion. It’s the job of the other three to secure one or more vehicles (with adequate seating arrangements) to ferry the boss to a waiting getaway vehicle, indicated on your map. From such simple beginnings, things can get as chaotic as you’re willing to make them. For example, there’s no reason why the nearest fourdoor saloon won’t fit the bill, if your driver is nervous and has the directional awareness of a guinea fowl. However, if breeding confusion should the cops arrive is more your game, why not stick the boss in a two-door and take a motorbike as well? Hovering around your lead vehicle dodging the hail of bullets looks set to be one of this generation’s greatest thrill rides. Until it’s decided simply running into you is the best way to divert your attentions, obviously.

As for who’ll be doing the running, the other team of four starts out chomping on proverbial doughnuts in a similarly randomly positioned panda car. Once word comes in of the perps their positions become marked on the radar, ready to be hunted down for their crimes. Again, what happens next is limited only by the imagination. The obvious call is to stay where you are, but a multi-pronged approach can also bring success. Either way, your squad alone must take down the little problem, without the aid of tanks, SWAT teams or even a sign with the word ‘stop’ written on it. It’s challenging stuff, that’s for sure, and plays very much like a set of tennis (bear with us), the overall winner often being determined by whoever breaks ‘serve’ (aka actually manages to haul incompetent police ass quickly enough to intercept the bad guys). There’s a nice balance struck here, too, between teamwork and the ability to shoot off on your own to perform heroic acts.

When both sides are in the initial vehicle being driven by the one man, you can’t help but be reminded of the episode of Red Dwarf where the crew are in the midst of a total immersion videogame, rocking backwards as they fly over some opening bridge. How our mid-Nineties selves laughed and yet, as often happens, time has returned to bite us on the ass. The scope for shenanigans between friends is immense – virtual back-seat driving, gunning down innocent pedestrians in the street as you ride past because you’re the police and who are they going to call, all four jumping out of the car en masse in an attempt to use your car as a battering ram. This being GTA, the list of potentially noteworthy moments that will be populating YouTube, forum signatures and so on over the coming months is immense. Heck, there were three or four in the few hours we had at the pad.

Playing as the criminals, your community guy caught the getaway vehicle out the corner of his eye after an intense chase. Not wanting to become Swiss cheese with any great passion he lowered himself onto the pontoon, into a waiting speedboat. Making a swift escape, the game appeared to be up, only for his entire team to start screaming as if they’d just been revealed as informants. Turns out instead of boarding the boat, he’d merely boarded a boat. What followed was a comical docking process as the real getaway vehicle sped into open water away from the cops’ weaponry, ready for the boss to ruin his Armani suit jumping into it. Time for the navigator to receive an offer he can’t refuse.

Moving on, another of the more spectacular modes on offer was Hangman’s NOOSE, so called due to the name of the notorious SWAT team that will constantly be on your tail. The scene opens as your Russian mobster arrives at Liberty City airport in a private jet. Not the most inconspicuous entrance that, and sure enough minutes later the place is swarming with armed police trying to take him down. This is where you come in. Camping around the landing gear of his transportation, your first task will be to keep a lightning finger on the trigger, again as a group of four, tactically positioning yourselves to take down an absolute torrent of foes hiding behind the many baggage crates. When the tide is stemmed, one of you will be able to sneak off and secure a security van casually lying about the place, which can then be used to transport our decidedly illegal friend to another escape vehicle. This time though it isn’t some floatation device bought for £7.99 from Toys R Us, but a fully fledged helicopter. Knowing the controls isn’t important. Anyway, once you’ve escaped the attentions of the law, it’s generally a simple matter to ascend and glide across the cityscape to your final destination.

As a point of issue, this was one of the moments we might have expected some dent in GTA’s graphical armoury, some sign that recreating what is basically one of the world’s most populous cities might put a teensy weensy bit of pressure on the 360’s middleaged processors. Not a jot of it. The sunlight catching the sharp edges of Liberty City’s financial district was almost enough to hide the corruption contained within. From a technical standpoint, there simply wasn’t any evidence of pop-up or unloaded textures at all, the city appearing just as bustling and alive from half a mile up as it does when your head’s in the gutter. In fact the only weaknesses we could find in this regard at all was slight evidence of slowdown when basically the entire world’s looking to put you away, and a few fairly unimpressive walls, close up. When you’re looking down on Rockstar’s creation from the eagle’s eye though, none of this will matter. It’ll also bear no significance whatsoever as, when riding pillion sniping pedestrians down below, you’ll think ‘surely they can’t let me decide to just jump out at this height?’ before plummeting over half a mile to your inevitable death. While the GTA series has often had to sacrifice minute detail for the greater good of its simulation, this really is looking like such compromise will become a thing of the past.

Further variety from the simple yet graceful act of blowing chunks out of each other using whatever you can find comes Mafia Work and Team Mafia Work. As the name implies, this will see your unseen co-ordinator hand out tasks on a familiar theme via your mobile phone, allowing the winner to take all rewards on completing them first. Obviously enough, this is played either as individuals or as part of a four (or more) person team. The group variant trumps the free-for-all however, as there’s a small conceptual error at the heart of the mode. Most tasks will be attached to some physical thing, be it a location or some vehicle moving through Liberty City. If your orders come through at a point you’re near whatever that person, place or thing is, then you’re handed a massive advantage.

When playing as a team, of course, there’s always the chance to sabotage your opponents’ path to sweet, sweet victory. For example, at one point we were asked to destroy a supply of illegal home-brewed booze that would ‘flood’ the market of our Eastern European friends. Rather strangely, it was lying in the driveway of a suburban house, completely unguarded, not 200 yards down the road from X360’s pimped out ride (a scooter). Within ten seconds the game was up, as the mystery tipple burnt with all the fury of Simon’s back pain remedies. T’was a bit of a hollow victory though, given the complete nocontest it clearly represented. Still, clan-on-clan contests should make for a competitive, largely fair and deceptively chilled-out experience.

Moving on to some slightly more obscure treats GTA IV will hold in store, we come across GTA Race. This is distinct from a regular point A to point B dash insofar as it’s possible, nay desirable, to bring your opposition down with weaponry. You’re provided with numerous Molotov cocktails earned by driving through icons between your checkpoints, which can be thrown wherever you choose. Added to this is the same ability to smash windows and fire from the windows found when Niko’s by himself. What’s more, should someone manage to make your sweet ride fit for the knacker’s yard, jumping out and claiming whatever vehicle’s closest to you becomes the only option. Sadly, if the car category is set to sports there’s little chance of catching up and the race will soon deteriorate into a load of backmarkers having a fight at the track’s opening while half the competitors race to the finish line. Still, it’s about the most amusing game failure mechanic we can think of.

The final pair of modes we got to run the rule over were deathmatch and team deathmatch. Pretty unremarkable in concept maybe, but they at least gave us another chance to get to grips with GTA IV’s borrowed gameplay mechanics. Snapping to and between covers is mapped to a bumper, bypassing those frantic Gears Of War moments where Marcus’ shoulder seemed to contain some kind of wall magnet. There never seems a point at which the activation of it causes you to duck behind something smaller than you, nor does picking people off from behind your refuge prove anything other than slick. While our match-up pitting players against each other armed only with rocket launchers wasn’t exactly what you’d call an Olympian display of marksmanship, seeing a man blown 30 feet into the air without being killed by the impact or the flame is strangely compelling viewing.

To sum up, the very second Rockstar prised the controllers from our hands we hankered for a return to Liberty City. Like the greatest of friends, the experience seemed at once familiar and totally comfortable. Starting essentially from scratch as far as multiplayer goes this is a truly incredible achievement and one that we can’t wait to get our hands on for a longer time period. Lucky the release date’s so close, then. Seriously, anyone not looking forward to GTA IV like the birth of their first born either has no imagination or is the most law-abiding soul ever to have lived. Or maybe they just smell. Either way, we can safely declare that the summer of 2008 will be a mystery to us, like so many others before it, and we’re fully prepared to emerge from our dark, litter-strewn basements come late August, rubbing our eyes in the bothersome sunlight.

Dave Shaw