Sloppy Potatoes

GTA IV and Great characters

Grand Theft Auto IV’s Niko Bellic:
The start of something new (and great)

Surfing the Web, I stopped at www.giantbomb.com. It’ a cool site that shows a couple journalist’s and their quest to create their own gaming site. The process has been interesting to watch, but their most recent post shows that their database will hold a page for every video game character ever, eventually.

This will obviously be a work in progress forever, but it’s a cool thought. That got me thinking about the great video game characters throughout this age of gaming, which brought me to Grand Theft Auto IV’s Niko Bellic.

I’ve played this game for about and this character is already one of the most interesting I’ve controlled. The shooting mechanic is phenomenal and as usual, GTA’s unique storytelling is awesome. You also get to lead his personal life — I’ve taken Michelle bowling twice, to dinner at a diner and have been invited back to her place twice now.

Throughout the different missions and the side missions, like the dating sim, some of Niko’s backstory is revealed. He’s fought in a war, done things in his past he won’t talk about. While these are common gaming conventions, it comes across differently in a game with scope and storytelling like this one.

He’s also Serbian, and a fresh off the boat immigrant in Liberty City, a modified and completely awesome doppelganger of New York City. He’s in a new country, doing crazy things but for the first time in the GTA series, the lead character feels like a real person.

I don’t want to ruin anything for anyone who hasn’t played it yet, but a certain early mission involving Ivan already stands out as a benchmark for the series. The second half of the mission is spent in a construction area and plays atypical to GTA. And I’m still sitting her contemplating the finale. This is not the GTA we all remember, it is so much more and it easily makes Niko the most outstanding lead character in the series and, when the dust settles, possibly in the history of games.

– Thanks Giant Bomb for a great idea: Consider this the first of many character articles. Video games characters, sports characters, whatever characters — they’ll get their own page, too. What do you think? Who do you think should be the next featured character? Who’s your favorite character? Leave a message below or contact Sloppy Potatoes through the