There's not much new I can tell about Grand Theft Auto IV. It's still all about Nico Bellic, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union. Liberty City offers him a way out of life as well as a chance to avenge his life. ”We’re all looking for that special someone.” What starts as doing some side-jobs to help your cousin Roman quickly turns into a bloody spiral of crime which you cannot avoid. The game steps away from the previous standard formula consisting of territoria of different cime lords and making alliances and tries to emphasize on a grown-up story - maybe a bit too grown up? - that should convince you to go to the bitter ending with Nico.

Not only the story has matured in the third edition but also the gameplay. The controls of the cars has had quite some work: stearing isn't as simple as it used to be, but once you understand the physics it feels a lot more natural than most racing games of the previous years. Also Nico and the other characters move completely different than before. Next to fluid animations and even a ragdoll system for pedestrians - really, a smile will appear on your face when you softly collide with one to see him drop his Starbucks coffee and run away - Nico no longer is a sitting duck. With a push of a button he hides behind a wall or a car to return fire towards the enemy from his entrenched position.

Those that want to read more about the game itself I will gladly point them to my original review as I'll only be talking about changes and additions for the PC from now on.

Graphically on PC it is a pearl. Ok, I'm fortunate enough to have a nice system in place but the game can really display large pieces of vivid city. The grain that we could see on console is completely gone and it allowed me to see a lot more of the city and appreciate the details: graffiti on walls, posters, certain smoke effects. A lot got lost due to the hardware limitations of the console.

While playing I noticed changes that were made here and there without being really noticeable. The first that comes to mind is when getting out of a car: on console I always bumped against the door while I never experienced this on PC, even when I tried to do so.

Also the multiplayer mode has received an update. This time we can get going in the same city with up to 32 players and participate in about 20 different events. This guarantees true mayhem and unfortunately the game also has some bullies who like nothing better than *not* follow the rules. Although it may sound crude - and believe me, I certainly find it positive to see a multiplayer portion - I found it to be more of the same with the same shitty interface. It for instance annoys me that starting a multiplayer game takes too long, especially seeing the PC has a mouse. Also the interface as such is hard to master and user-unfriendly in general. Rockstar, next time please think twice.

Completely new and something that surprised just about everyone is the video editor that's integrated. Not exactly the most user-friendly for newbies but it does allow to record fun moments, edit and publish them. With a push on the button the continuously filled buffer gets read (don't ask how this influences performance) and you get the chance to edit about the last thirty seconds from the game. A nice gadget if you ask me but it adds too little real value to the game to gloom about it.

Don't get me wrong. Grand Theft Auto IV is certainly a good game. Damn, it's the best game I played in 2008 but the PC version didn't manage to convince me; either that or my expectations were too high. My biggest annoyance however is the pile of extra software that gets shafted up our virtual throat and which is required to fully enjoy this game. There's Rockstar Social Club (for keeping your GTA profile), Games for Windows LIVE (as alternative for user profiles and required to play online) and finally some copy protection and activation over the internet. I could cmoplain longer than that this review is overdue but it took me five hours of configuring before I could connect with GfWL to test the multiplayer mode, with corrupt achievements as result. I didn't experience random crashes but overall I find the support by Rockstar and Microsoft below standard for a game of this size.