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Must have played for nearly fifty hours now and still haven’t finished the story.

I’m really liking the missions still. They’re not too hard or unfair and they’re not annoying. Which is a GTA first.

I love this game.

Game progress – 32.34%
Playing time – 24:02:28
Longest non-stop game – 06:06:06

Hooray!

Last night I had an excellent shoot out. That’s never really been possible in GTA games before. In the past, I’ve always ended up running around desperately hitting in the Lock On button and spraying fire in roughly the right direction. In GTA IV, though, it’s different. I was in a park, in a thunderstorm, taking cover behind trees, sprinting from cover to cover, popping out to shoot bad guys, all that. A proper gun fight. I won with a tiny sliver of health left and it was amazing.

Bit of a shame that by the time I ran over to where the bad guys had been most of their corpses had disappeared and I could only tell where they’d fallen by their dropped guns, but you can’t have everything I suppose.

Apart from that, it was mostly more of the same. A few missions and lots of socialising. Roman and I had an epic trip to a strip club. Left about 8:30pm and got home at 5:30am after some lap dancing and police chases.

The only big new feature I think I found last night was the Internet cafe. I didn’t investigate it much, though, just got a mission and went off to steal a bike.

So yesterday evening I raided my TARDIS money bank and got out the coins I’d been saving since January for this day. My wife and I left home at about half past ten and by a quarter past eleven we were in a queue outside the Game on Week Street in Maidstone. There were at that time three people in front of us. I’d expected more. My wife played Pokemon on her DS while I rocked back and forth on a loose paving stone, counting the minutes. A minute before midnight I was standing at the counter; the shop assistant had my copy of GTA IV in his hands. When the clock changed he swiped it, I refused the offer of a £12.99 strategy guide and handed over my cash. On the way out my wife grabbed a free poster and we left.

Despite being the only car in the car park outside the Archbishop’s Palace The General hadn’t been broken into or stolen – which would have been ironic and upsetting in equal measure. We were blessed on the way home – for the first time in my entire life I managed to get out of Maidstone without having to stop at a single traffic light.

By half past twelve I was sitting on the sofa with a huge grin, watching the opening cut scene and credits. I only played for an hour and fifteen minutes, because I had to be at work the next morning, but that was enough to form some first impressions.

The main shock was that this is definitely a 3D GTA game. That may not sound like it should be in the least surprising, but I was expecting it to be very different, somehow. But, no. It’s got the same type of look, the same kind of structure. The cars have GTA-style handling, though it’s now weightier and meatier. In fact, that probably applies to the game as a whole. It’s GTA, but more solid.

I’ve never known a game before where I looked forward to cut scenes so much. They’re superbly done, with great direction and voice acting. One character stood out to be as being voiced by bad actor, but after finding out more about them I’m beginning to think that it’s not the voice actor that’s bad – I think the character is a bad actor. That may sound like trying to paper over the cracks in an otherwise great game – which is always a temptation when a game I love does something badly – but, trust me, I don’t think it is in this case. You’ll see what I mean.

Graphics? Well, they’re a mixed bag. Stunning lighting and a world of extraordinary character, but it’s all a bit muddy. The details can be hard to see at times, and not only when it’s dark. (According to forum reports, people have achieved great things with messing with the display sliders in the Options menu – I’ll try that out tonight.)

It’s got some lovely touches that make the world feel more real – mainly to do with the random street characters actually doing things other than milling around. A homeless man shuffles past, someone reads a newspaper, a nurse leans against the hospital having a smoke. (The last one I noticed after attempting to get into a fist fight with a random passerby, just because I could. Someone else joined the fight and they beat me into unconsciousness. That didn’t happen in previous GTAs. Yes, other people may have joined the fight, but there was never a problem with putting them down. Either I’m out of practice, or things are harder now.)

As for sound, it’s great. But it always has been. My favourite radio station so far is called, I think, San Juan Sounds. Never heard any of the tracks on there before, but it’s great stuff. I was especially impressed with the gunfire the one time I was shot at. It sounded terrifying. Sharp cracks and pops and dings as bullets hit metal.

I’ve not got my hands on a gun yet myself. And I’ve only been in one cop chase. (I sped down a hill, slammed into a police car and managed to turn my car over a couple of streets away trying to escape. Managed to avoid the cops, but wrecked the car I was in and failed the mission I was doing.)

There’s a lot left to do and I’ve only seen a few streets in the city. I’m already recognising places, though. Not just the obvious things, like the huge roller coaster seen in the first GTA IV trailer way back when. I found my way to a character’s house not through use of the GPS system, but because I recognised the building at the end of her street.

So, I’ve not scratched the surface yet. At all. But what I’ve seen I really do love. There’s a real world there, with characters I want to see more of – and the tools are there to really enjoy it. Tonight, hopefully, I’ll get my hands on a gun. Gunplay was always GTA’s biggest weakness, so I’m interested to see how it is now.

It’s going to be a long day in work.