Little Jacob hooked Niko up with another contact, Elizabeta. Knowing Niko’s growing reputation for reliability in such matters, she asked him to watch over a drug deal and make sure her man didn’t get jacked. A quick car ride later, Niko was taking up a tactical position on a rooftop over the alley meet, sniper rifle in hand. The thugs walk up. You can tell they’re not happy. Niko can’t hear them from his position, but sure enough, the main guy starts waving his arms and is looking agitated. I direct Niko to ready his sight, just as the dirtbag predictably flashes his piece. Bang – there goes his forehead. Instantly gunfire erupts from everywhere, reinforcements pouring in from the back alley and taking cover behind dumpsters and cars. More than I thought. Three more go down in a pink mist. Someone screams for help, and Niko looks down on Elizabeta’s man locked in a melee grapple with one of the hoods. Niko vaporizes his kneecap. Now there’s one baddie left and he’s climbed into a panel van, trying to make a break for it up the street. Niko has two bullets left. A careful aim, a trigger squeeze and the windshield goes red-beige. The horn sounds for a quarter-second as what’s left of the thug’s face bounces off the steering column, then he rolls out the door and onto the road. The interior light in the car goes on. A blood trail starts to roll downhill from the fallen man. Niko fires once more to be sure, but it’s not necessary: this guy is deader than disco. The last shot connects with the door and slams it shut again, and the interior light goes off. I say to myself – this game is awesome.
Tooling around town on a motorcycle, liberated from one of LC’s less motivated denizens. Niko flips on the radio and there’s a report of an absurd high speed chase culminating in a homicide outside the giant downtown arcade. The populace is outraged by the brash mid-day violence. I wonder if the perp is anyone Niko knows… just then a text message appears. Brucie, that ridiculous juicer, is offering me commissioned auto theft jobs, and tells Niko to get on his neglected email. The TW@ cafe is nearby so I direct Niko to stop in and log on. Again, on the web portal page, there’s that story about the arcade shooting, and a photo… oh. That was me. And I say to myself – this game is awesome.
A massive firefight in the downtown core. What should have been a simple hit job quickly mushrooms into a full-on conflagration; one of the guys Niko was after managed to catch some gang member with a stray bullet, which of course brought in even more thugs. The cops are going apeshit. Niko kicks the last of his quarrey onto the subway tracks and turns just in time to hear the meaty thud. More screaming, more running. Send Niko in the direction of what looks like an obscure back-entrace. As he sneaks around the corner, hugging the wall with a tec-9 in hand, I catch sight of the cops, setting up a barrier on the street outside. The NOOSE team has been called, and the helicopters are drumming their way to us in the distance. As I continue to watch I see the NOOSE troops take up flaking positions on either side of the main entrance. One of them makes a hand-signal, taps a shoulder and a scout runs in. Rather than just running in a straight line towards their prey, these cops are actually trying to flank Niko. And I say to myself – this game is awesome.
