I decided to check out GTA4 on the PS3 and have just finished playing it for about a week. As I mentioned before, I am new to GTA. This is the second game I have purchased but the first one I have tried to play.

My verdict so far? It is nowhere near as fun as Oblivion but I keep playing it so that must mean something.

the good

I give them props for building a modern virtual world. Modern worlds are harder to make because there is so much detail we expect and they did a great job. Some have said that they have raised the bar.

The buildings look good, the city has lots of details and plenty of virtual people walking around and doing stuff. The dialog is terrific with a large variety. The TV shows are good ("Republicans In Space!!") and the talk-radio is hilarious. There is a lot of good humor here and the voice-acting is top-notch. Brucie and Manny are fantastic.

the frustrating

The problem with the game is that there is a lot of frustration too. The game was easy to start but it didnt take long before I was swearing and throwing my controller around the room.

Take the first combat mission for instance. Instead of kicking the guy, I would jump past him and turn. I could never land a punch and kept ending up in the hospital.

Turns out I missed a critical control - the left trigger. You have to hold the left trigger to target someone. Once I figured out the missing control, combat was pretty straight forward and reasonably fun. But my experience illustrates that there are a LOT of controls in this game. It takes several hours to learn how to interact properly.

But I never got any guns or any cool missions. I kept going on dates with Michelle and Roman but nothing happened in the story. Is this Grand Theft Auto or 50 First Dates? I dont know if I was bugged or just missed a mission trigger but I never got any more missions and I restarted the game.

My second time through was much better. I was already familiar with some of the controls and this time I found the drug-dealer missions and was able to continue with the story.

Unfortunately, the frustration keeps popping up, mainly in the driving missions. The next time I tried to break the controller was a motorcycle chase. Then again in a car race.

The driving is frustrating enough but the save-game system only makes it worse. I just dont understand the craptastic design philosophy for console save games. Even through there is an autosave system, no matter where you were when you turned off the system, you restart in your apartment. The only place to save a game? In your apartment. You apartment isnt close to anything and saving the game advances the time 7 hours.

If you fail missions, there is a retry option but you have to retry the ENTIRE mission, including getting there. For the race mission that means every time I fail the race, I have to start all over again including a LONG drive and diatribe from Brucie (which makes it seem even longer after hearing it 5 times) before starting the race again... the race wouldn't have been as frustrating if the restart just let me restart the race.

Another frustration is that my cars keep disappearing. I drive up to a mission, start it, see the cut-scene, and then the first step of the mission is "get a car" but my car is gone. Or I retry a mission and this time my car is gone. This behavior is minorly annoying most times but majorly annoying when you actually had a car you wanted to keep. One goes through a LOT of cars in this game.

The subway system seems cool but it is not marked on the map so I never use it. The game includes a paper map but that isn't much good for me since I play in the dark. Anything that makes travel faster would be appreciated so this seems like a missed opportunity.

Another problem is that you cannot leave notes on the map. This city is huge! I will do a mission and drive by a cool neighborhood or a jump - something I want to come back to. But without a mark on my map, I will never find it again or even think to look for it again. The game already has an in-game map - I would have enjoyed the game more if the map was more interactive.

While the city looks good, a lot of dumb stuff happens. Perhaps they are hitting an uncanny valley situation. Traffic often comes to a stop for no reason. Cars run over pedestrians. Once I heard a huge noise and turned around to see a gas station behind me exploded as two cars inside crashed and burned.. a minute later the cars were fine and drove off. Or you look down a street that is totally empty, turn your head and suddenly a car drives by. Lots of quirky little details that damage the immersive feeling.

the flaw

GTA is fun and they clearly spent a lot of time adding details to the world. The newspapers, the radio news that reports ingame events, the character dialogs, the phony websites and TV shows.

But this is no Oblivion. For me at least, role playing in a real city just isn't that much fun. In particular, random carjackings and killing innocent bystanders just isnt that fun after the first day. I had more relaxing fun riding my horse through the woods and picking flowers than I do making drug deliveries or running people over. The last thing I want to do after a long day at work is come home and get on their fake internet to do fake online dating...

Although there are minor complaints and frustrations, the main problem with the game is the narrative. You want to like Nico. He has had a hard life and comes to America for a second chance. You want to give him that chance and see him redeem himself. Instead you are forced to do all kinds of random violence to people you dont even know. Killing random drug dealers is ok but killing complete strangers just because someone tells you to? Nico wouldn't do that. Killing police or witnesses? The game really hurts itself by drawing you in and then forcing you to do incongruous acts.

But perhaps that is what makes it GTA - pointless sex and violence designed to titillate and amuse the very people the game mocks. Less of a social satire and more of Idiocracy - the game.

Metal Gear Solid 4 just arrived and my new HDTV shows up on Wednesday. While I have enjoyed my GTA experience, I am curious if I will still be playing GTA in a week.