For more GTA IV, check out Liberty City Central.

I recently overheard two immigrants from Eastern Europe discussing the American experience. One was thrilled to be in our country, enthralled by the opportunities and possibilities that he saw as his for the taking. The other, his cousin, saw our country as being all glitz and no substance, a land built on empty promises and slick advertising. I took a moment to ponder the surprising sagacity of their comments, but my musings were cut short when the duo popped into a strip club and indulged in several lap dances.

Did I mention I was playing Grand Theft Auto IV at the time?

GTA IV tells the story of Niko Bellic, who has been lured to Liberty City by the grand tales of his cousin Roman, who believes in the American dream the way young children believe in Santa Claus. As is typical of GTA protagonists, Niko is no stranger to man's darker nature and has done his fair share of bad deeds. He's in the States for all of a day before he finds himself doing the dirty work for Liberty City's criminal caste.

What follows is the mission-based structure that has become a familiar staple of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. You start off doing small jobs for low-level crooks, which attracts the notice of increasingly important bad guys, until you're finally in the good graces of the shining stars of Liberty City's criminalazzi. Missions might be as simple as giving someone a lift home from the train station, but more frequently require Niko to deal out some death in one way or another.

The missions are the backbone of GTA IV's excellent and involving story, but they're just a small portion of what you can do in the game. You can run drugs for the hilariously unintelligible Jamaican pair of Little Jacob and Badman, you can assist Roman by driving one of his cabs, or you can help Liberty City's finest hunt down wanted criminals. Those with an appreciation for the ladies can either pay for their attentions at a strip club or maintain a relationship with a girlfriend (also by paying for her attention, but in a less seedy way). You can play darts, you can shoot pool. You can see a show or eat a burger. You can even shoot pigeons and drive your car up stunt ramps, provided you can find them. When all else fails, you can always just head back to your crib and catch some TV.

You may also just want to take the opportunity to simply drive around Liberty City and marvel at the amount of attention that went into its creation. It doesn't feel like a construct, a mere backdrop for your activities; it's a living, breathing city, and it's going to do its thing whether you're paying attention or not. The area you can cover without a hint of load times is simply astonishing, and you can get out wherever you like and interact with members of the populace -- who will, more often than not, get pissed at you and try to punch you in the face, but what do you expect? They are based on New Yorkers, after all.

GTA IV certainly isn't a dramatic departure from previous installments in the series. The names may have changed, but the core game mechanics remain the same. That said, GTA IV has a maturity that its predecessors lacked, a wisdom that perhaps comes from Rockstar's years in the GTA-creating trenches. Niko is not your typical hired thug, not some gangster wannabe itching for a fight. He's a world-weary soldier who's learned that almost any situation boils down to some sort of show of force. Even as Niko steadily works his way up the criminal corporate ladder, you get the feeling he'd happily chuck it all and work a regular day job, if he could. He has no burning desire to be a master criminal, but violence is the life he knows, and he's good at it. He could walk away from the illegal life, but where would he go? He accepts his fate with a shrug and a resigned shake of the head, casually killing those in his way -- not because he enjoys it, but because it's what has to be done.

GTA IV is a huge and sprawling masterpiece, at times both wildly irreverent and profoundly moving, spinning sharp satire one moment and cheap laughs the next. It is brilliant, but it is also flawed. As you might expect from a game with "Auto" right in the name, you'll spend a lot of time in the cars of Liberty City, which is unfortunate given the game's gimpy driving controls. The camera can't quite keep up with you as you take corners and it's far too easy to overcompensate, sending your car into a flailing fishtail. The fighting is equally hobbled and irritating. Niko can be quite formidable with just his fists, but the lag between your hitting the button and him actually throwing a punch makes the fights sloppy, ill-timed exercises in frustration.

Although the gunplay in GTA IV is an improvement over previous installments, it's still not great. It works well enough when you're standing still, but even with the lock-on feature, running and gunning is a bit of a mess. Perhaps in acknowledgement of this, you can now take choose to take cover during shootouts by hitting the right shoulder button when you're near a convenient wall, car or doorway. Sometimes it works well, making gun fights feel more strategic and less frantic. Other times it doesn't, and your enemies fill you with lead as you tap wildly on R1.

You do eventually get (sort of) used to the driving and the gunplay, but there's just no remedy for the way GTA IV handles failed missions. When you fail a mission, you are, thankfully, given the chance to repeat it immediately if you like. Unfortunately, you have to redo the entire mission, no matter how much progress you made in your previous attempt. That may sound perfectly reasonable, but most missions start with Niko driving to a particular location, and as the game world expands, that location can be very far away. Unless the mission specifically outfits you with a set of wheels at the start, you're also going to have to find a way to get where you're going. So it's get a car, take several minutes to drive to your destination, attempt the mission, and if you fail ... it's back to getting a car again.

It's a feedback loop of tedium that's especially frustrating because you can fail missions for any number of reasons. Bump into the wrong guy on the street -- very easy to do, given the game's haphazard collision detection -- and he might start a fight that lands you in jail. Perhaps your car takes too much damage en route and you wind up in the hospital after it explodes. Or maybe you just simply don't figure out what you're supposed to be doing in time. Regardless of what makes you fail, spending several minutes to get back to, let's face it, the real starting point of the mission is a drag that could have been avoided if Rockstar had simply peppered missions with success checkpoints.

Much of the fun derived from previous installments in the Grand Theft Auto franchise has come from simply running around the city, wreaking random havoc. Many GTA fans have never come anywhere near finishing the story mode, and prefer to simply steal cars, evade police, and mix it up with random passersby. As fun as that is, it's always been a bit lonely, but GTA IV solves that by being the first in its line to include online multiplayer. It could've been a disaster, but fortunately it's a well-done and welcome addition.

Getting online is as easy as whipping out Niko's cell phone and selecting the Multiplayer option. Up to 16 players can compete in more than a dozen different multiplayer games, either individually or as teams. Free Mode lets you run around Liberty City, causing trouble as you see fit. Hunt other players down and shoot them, steal a car and run them down, climb a building and snipe from cover.

My personal favorite is GTA Race, which is, as its name implies, just a race -- except in this race, you can use whatever transportation you can steal, including that of your opponents. You can high-tail it on foot, steal a sports car, carjack your pal -- whatever it takes to get to the finish line. Usually the point of a race is to get there first, and if you don't, you feel as though you've completely wasted your time by competing. In GTA Race, it's all about the journey. The victory is almost incidental to the event.

Many of the multiplayer modes are team-based, such as Cops 'n' Crooks, in which the team of Crooks is trying to get to a randomly-generated extraction point, while the Cops try to prevent them from making a getaway. Not only does this mode lend itself well to teamwork, it also takes advantage of GTA IV's environments in a more fun and creative way than the expected Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch do.

Grand Theft Auto IV is a thing of beauty, flaws and all, and would be a wise addition to any Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 owner's library. It's not too difficult to figure out which version to get if you only own one machine or the other, but gamers lucky enough to have both should be aware that although the games are on par with each other in most respects, each does have one or two advantages over the other.

GTA IV for the PlayStation 3 version looks slightly better than the version for the 360, especially on high-definition TVs. The anti-aliasing is better, the animation runs a bit more smoothly, and the text and maps are a bit easier to read. The difference isn't startling or dramatic, but it is there. The 360 version gets its edge from the exclusive GTA IV downloadable content that will be released for it later this year, more than likely in the form of new multiplayer modes. The game has plenty to offer even without this boost, but fans of GTA IV's excellent multiplayer will almost assuredly appreciate the extended life new content will give their game.

Both games have been suffering from random lockups and freezes, with problems reportedly occurring more frequently and severely on the PS3. Rockstar recently released a patch for GTA IV on PS3 that should remedy those issues.

One last warning to the GTA newbies in the audience: This game earns every last bit of its M rating. It's brutal, violent, has enough sex and swearing to make a sailor blush, and is therefore best avoided if you find such shenanigans offensive. If you're made of sterner stuff, get on the freeway and head for Liberty City with all due speed -- just watch out for the cops.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.