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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 more 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.