As a giant, evolutionary leap in "sandbox" gameplay the GTA series is single-handedly responsible for creating in the first place, i.e. a game where you can verily go anywhere, do just about anything, talk to/beat-up/murder anybody you come across, jack any vehicle, open innocuous doors to maybe-meaningless rooms, cruise the whole city, get your bearings, go bowling..., it does not get any better than Grand Theft Auto IV, and probably won't for this entire console generation (though it'll doubtless be matched).

As it happens, a great many of the people and places you engage are entirely innocent or immaterial, others key, but you won't know that right away, so developing character relationships and geographical familiarity is integral from the get-go -- and an amazingly complex process of chatting up, wining and dining here and there, tag-along showboating, pleasing her, infuriating him, deception and double cross (lots of crafty dialogue and subterfuge in GTA IV; it's not all car stealing and cop killing), which is exactly why GTA is renowned as immersive. The world is your sandbox, go play. Just bear in mind that cats and certain senators make no distinction between sand and kitty litter.

While that may sound like an overwhelming handful of a game, one that perhaps only ardent fans of the series will be able to play (sickos, all of them, by some accounts), GTA IV is designed from the outset to slowly introduce its innumerable, nuanced gameplay mechanics. Thus, it's a game anybody can pick up and learn to play, though not everybody should, depending on the sensibilities and, more plainly, the legal age of the every/any body.

You control Niko, a literally "fresh off the boat" ex-military type looking to live the American dream, fast-tracked via a life of crime. From there you learn the basics: drive a car from A to B, punch out those guys (kick 'em while they're down, if you like), check phone messages, follow instructions, avoid the cops, engage the thugs, get a gun and learn to fire it, contravene instruction, engage the cops, learn to fire your gun from cover, get the cops to engage the thugs and so on and so on. Though you can't actually "do anything," the scope is so unparalleled that "anything" applies for the game's intents and purposes. There are missions Niko must fulfill before the story unfolds, but that story is not set in stone as Niko, living the seedy life that he is -- somewhat reluctantly at that --, is not obliged to follow mandates to the letter, which makes the story less of a crime spree narrative and more a "hypothetical criminal situation" simulator. Niko is not a sociopathic cop killer by default, he's actually a rather normal guy... one about to become a product of his environment, and his environment happens to be somewhat sandbox-crappy. That said, the characters and situations of GTA IV are all flagrant stereotypes and hyperbole; a malevolent fantasy, warped and defiantly satirical, but never to be confused with real life.

Still, within those expansive confines, what GTA IV offers is virtual free will, and that's what has naysayers up in arms, so to speak. However, there's still a huge disconnect that most detractors either fail to recognize or twist erringly to suit their own argument: GTA offers free will without meaningful consequence beyond the on/off button. Free will in a cage beset by finite programming code on a disc in a box at a store by a rack of potato chips.

Funny, but for all the "cop killer" and "murder simulator" flack GTA IV deservedly attracts, its gameplay is not really conducive to desensitizing or brainwashing anyone, kids or otherwise, into thinking said simulated cop murdering is okay or even fun for real. Unlike any number of army-flavored first-person shooter games where there is no separation of player's-eye-view and the character being played, you are not so much play acting a sociopath in GTA IV, not really engaging in a murderous life a crime, you are directing it.

Semantics, maybe, but in a society that nets Javier Bardem an Academy Award for his portrayal of a remorseless, unconflicted, sadistic, impartial murderer, it makes little sense to decry a game that allows one's thumbs on a controller to actuate similar -- and simulated -- behavior... though the fact that you can do so for 50+ hours straight might make a dent in one's moral compass.

In fact, and more than any previous game in the series -- unlike them, in fact -- GTA IV goes out of its way to covey a life of crime as something ugly, greasy, disturbing, vile, exceedingly lewd, forlorn and generally miserable (but what's a hapless immigrant to do, eh?). There's nothing sun-drenched and bikini-sexy about Liberty City, a stand-in for New York. The decisions you make are usually of the evil/lesser-evil variety and when they're key decisions, they always come back to haunt you -- again, that's a triumph of technical complexity for a videogame, but also an elevation of the interactive art form, one where you are the painter, the game your canvass, the pallet courtesy of Rockstar, and the net result ephemeral. That's assuming art doesn't have to be pretty or soothing to be considered art, can be the glaring inverse, in fact, though the liberal peppering of (very) dark humor and self-deprecating, insider jabs are always there to remind the player that, art form or no, GTA IV is a game.. go play.

Yes, watching a graphically disturbing film like No Country for Old Men is a passive experience, one to be enjoyed unapologetically because of it, but we also don't revile Joel and Ethan Coen for directing a movie about a remorseless, sadistic, bipartisan murderer, (nor Cormac McCarthy for possessing the dark mind that wrote the original story), we applaud them, maybe even cheer when Javier's cattlegun toting Anton makes his audacious exit, living to murder another day. The Brothers Coen collective interactively engaged in the creation of simulated wantonness and murder and they were rewarded for it. GTA IV just removes the Coens and the two-hour theater seat rental from the equation.

Needless to say (perhaps not); GTA IV is No Game for Young Kids, and categorically way too harsh for pre-teens specifically. Read the label, the ESRB Rating and that long string of descriptors that refers to the likes of Intense Violence, Blood, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Partial Nudity, Use of Drugs and Alcohol. Doi.

That said, if your teen finds the opportunity to surreptitiously borrow dad's copy of No Country for Old Men on Blu-ray to go watch at buddy's house, then GTA IV is likely pilferable too. It's what teens do, a right of passage -- what self-respecting male Gen-Xer can't recite every single f-bombed quip from Scarface even though they were legally too young to see Al Pacino's little friend saying hello when it first came out on Betamax? Hmm? Hmmmmm?! --, and it's what parents are responsible for thwarting. Get on that.