Publisher: Rockstar Games

Platform: PS3, Xbox 360 (tested on both for this review)

Rating: 10 out of 10

Somewhere in the world right now, a woman is threatening to break up with her boyfriend and he doesn’t particularly care. Phone calls are going unanswered, homework is going undone and sick days are being used all for the same reason.

Grand Theft Auto IV has arrived, and Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 owners the world over are hypnotized by a fantasy life of crime.

While GTAIV is actually the fifth sequel since 2001’s III, it’s the first to appear on this generation of consoles and incorporate online play (as if GTA wasn’t addicting enough).

Series vets should still feel right at home since the core elements of the game haven’t changed, but there’s new depth added to every element of the game that makes it feel fresh no matter how many hours you logged on previous versions.

The story retains the same biting humor that’s become a series trademark, but this time the protagonist (Eastern European immigrant Niko Bellic) actually has a sense of morality and a complex motivation. You’ll commit your fair share of random acts of violence, but at several points in the story, you’ll have the option of executing or sparing certain characters and your choices affect how Niko’s peers view him.

The grand scheme of the story doesn’t change much depending on your choices, but there are missions that you will or won’t get based on who you kill. At one point, two of your associates will call asking you to take out the other, creating a surprisingly strong moral conflict. Killing one will mean missing out on a big financial benefit, but killing the other just feels wrong.

Will you bite the hand that feeds you to spare the innocent man or push your guilt aside and do the job you’re being paid for? Deciding is harder than you might expect, and the fact that you even have a choice gives the story mode an element of replay value that the past games never had.

To cut down on the tedious legwork for those multiple playthroughs, Rockstar has added a few elements that gamers have been begging for. For starters, you can always catch a cab and have it take you more or less anywhere for a few bucks. That alone is a huge time saver, especially since the more aggressive cops make you think twice about jacking cars that you don’t really need.

In addition, you now have a cell phone that you can use to communicate with your friends, employers and girlfriends. The bad news is that just like in real life, the phone is a huge pain in the ass. You’ll get phone calls fairly frequently (even during other missions) from people who need favors or just want to hang out. It’s always up to you to accept their requests or even answer at all, but every time you ignore a friend, their feelings get hurt and they’ll be less likely to do favors for you down the road.

The game quickly becomes about juggling the needs of your contacts, so get used to your girlfriends calling while you’re across town jacking a motorcycle to sell to a dealer. It feels silly to ignore your real life phone to play a game about a phone that never stops ringing, but your actual friends probably aren’t calling to put a hit out on a crooked coke dealer either.

The individual calls are aggravating at times, but it’s actually a great system that keeps the pace up. Even when you’re just ambling around, you’ll always have something better to do than aimlessly murder citizens, though if that’s what you’re into, you can always turn the phone off and temporarily suspend the story mode.

You can also use the phone at any time to jump right into the new online modes. Like the single-player game, you have free-reign to do whatever you like online so it’s easy to make your own fun and invent things to do with your friends. Just roaming around launching rockets at each other is fun as it is, but there are a ton of creative mission-based modes to participate in when you need a change.

In one particularly creative mode, players choose to either be cops or gangsters in a wild variation of Capture the Flag. One crook is assigned the V.I.P. role and the others have to help him get to a specific point across town while the cop players are tasked with hunting him down.

You can’t win by just running around hurling bullets and it takes a satisfying amount of strategy and teamwork to pull it off. Throw in the variety of races, vehicle fights and custom games and GTAIV online adds up to way more than anyone would’ve expected for their first attempt.

For those that have both systems, choosing which version to buy isn’t simple. On the 360’s side, there will eventually be a few additional missions to purchase that supposedly won’t be available for the PS3. On the other hand, the visuals are more impressive on Sony’s console and the load times are noticeably shorter.

You can’t go wrong either way, but the PS3’s smoother frame rate and quick loading are a bigger long-term benefit than the extra missions, so that version has the edge.

With the exception of some odd adjustments to the driving controls, everything about GTAIV is at least as good as, if not better than, the last major installment. San Andreas was already pretty close to perfect, so while the changes aren’t huge, there was no need to reinvent the wheel.

There’s a reason why everyone you know is talking about this game; Grand Theft Auto IV is probably the most hyped title in recent memory, but it actually lives up to it.