Yesterday (Thursday April 10) Rockstar Australia invited AusGamers and a few other publications out to Microsoft’s games room to finally get some hands-on time with Grand Theft Auto 4’s multiplayer. While there are more than 10 modes on offer, we were only privy to three – standard Deathmatching, a racing mode called GTA Race and the coolest of the lot, Cops n’ Crooks. Despite only being shown three modes, each one gave a pretty clear indication of the level of focus and strong development Rockstar North have injected into this portion of the game; each one an indication of a need and want for as much diversity in the multiplayer realm as possible while maximising the strength of the sandbox environment. All in all, I walked away utterly impressed.

Deathmatching

Of all three modes I thought this would end up being the most fun (and likely the one I would be best at). I’ve mentioned in my hands-on reports in the past how much of an issue I used to have with the combat system in the GTA games and how, this time around, Rockstar North have utterly nailed it.

While it translates incredibly well to the deathmatching mode, I kind of got annoyed at some of the gameplay rules. I realise you can pretty much tweak any facet of your match, in the games we played it didn’t overly matter how good you were at taking people out – the person at the end of the game with the most money won the round, which meant, theoretically, you could kill a few people, pick up a wad of cash and just hide for the entire round, or, lay in wait until close to the end and ambush a group of people to pick up all their money meaning you might only have a handful of kills versus someone else’s massive kill-count, but still win because you have more money.

You can call me kooky, but it seemed unfair and ill-balanced. On top of all this, it turns out head-shots in multiplayer are an instant kill, which again just seems unbalanced. Campers could ultimately take advantage of this and simply pick people off, collect their cash then camp again. The control style doesn't necessarily lend itself to easy head-shots though, so scoring them consistently is a matter of skill - but this could be something newb players will end up resenting, so hopefully the game's match-making system balances skills and player stats to keep everything nice and fair.

That said, I won the second round for one of the latter reasons; I found myself in the right spot at the right time where three people crashed in cars and I picked them all off one by one, only to pick up their money and win the round as a result. It’ll be good to be able to play with the tweaking features, but after these two rounds, I wasn’t so convinced it was going to be great.

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GTA Race

Thankfully the next multiplayer mode I jumped into, GTA Race, rekindled my interest in the game as we all jumped into our choice of modern car with a two-lap streak around a massive number of blocks ripped right from the game-world. In this mode you can pick up weapons along the way which include any number of firearms alongside the likes of Molotov cocktails and grenades. Moreover, aside from starting and finishing the race, you also need to hit checkpoint gates to be eligible to win (these can be hit from any direction though).

What is interesting about this is, despite having any rules at all, in keeping with the sandbox ethos of the single-player game, any player can get out of their car and pretty much mess shit up as they please. Case in point: As the round started I could hear Steve from ABC’s Good Game yell from one of the stations behind me "I’m getting out and looking for the Rocket Launcher", which he did (and I just narrowly missed) with every intention of just messing up everyone’s race line.

I was holding it together pretty well in first place for awhile, avoiding too much to do with the other cats who were destroying each other before I clipped a NPC vehicle, careened out of control and hit a cement wall head-on. The front of my car was absolutely written off and as I tried to start her up again I could even see my driver making the motions at the ignition, but the car was just rolling under its own weight – time to get out and find a new one. I did, but this car handled completely different to the one I just wasted, and so I had to adjust my race style. Moreover, the other guys had now caught up to me and I was immediately thrust into their gang war. Time to fight fire with grenades (and little exploding bottles that make fire, too).

Hooning off in my new ride I smashed the window and started dropping Molotov’s behind me, followed by grenades. I few lucky strikes and I manages to *just* come in second – but it was a tight one. What did I learn? Anything goes in this game, despite mode guidelines; something to be utterly aware of.

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Cops n Crooks

Finally, the cream of the crop. We had six people in our group and so played some three on three here. Basically the rules of this engagement see two teams of whatever number – one Cops, the others Crooks – attempting to catch and escape one another respectively.

Each round the teams change sides until a set number is reached (kind of like Search and Destroy rules in Call of Duty 4) and a winner is declared. Crooks start out on foot and have to protect the boss (a player controls him also), while the cops are all in a cop car with one person driving and the others shooting out the window. Cops can only see the location of the crooks and their boss on their map, while crooks can set a waypoint for their goal on the map (Cops don’t know where that destination is). Cops will continually respawn, while crooks will also, unless you’re the boss at which point you dying means cops win the round. Crooks win when they reach their desired destination without losing their boss.

Again, as seems to be the backbone of all of this, the open-world city is yours to use as you please to ensure your goal is met. And it’s all random, as was demonstrated with the first round of the match where we, the Cops, spawned right next to the Crooks (even to the surprise of our host) – taking them out in an instant meant we won the round. Next time over, however, as the Crooks we spawned ages away; the first thing on the agenda, get into a car with the boss and set a waypoint. Check.

In the background you can hear the Cops’ siren as they close in on you and unfortunately for them, I missed my ride with the other Crook and Boss and so waited for the cops to arrive. Taking careful aim, I shot them all through the window until all dead, found my own car and then went after my team.

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We never quite managed to make it to the goal (apparently no other journo groups had either, but we were closest) because I fell off the boat. But of the three rounds we played, Cops n Crooks ultimately presented itself as the mode with the most imagination, though, as mentioned in my intro there are a stack more modes to look forward to, so I can’t make final judgement until I have a final copy of the game in my hands (which really isn’t too far off). The level of polish in the multiplayer from my experience was as close to the single-player game as you’re going to get and my hat is off to Rockstar North for giving this game all the love it deserves on every level.

Here’s hoping I’ll see one of you on Xbox Live for some GTA IV multiplayer in just over three weeks.