GTA IV pt. 3

More thoughts:

• The misogyny is less common, it seems. Sure, Michelle puts out on the second date, but so does Niko.
• Moreover, Roman two-times his girlfriend, and Niko calls him on it.
  
• Realizing that Vladimir is Russian and Niko and Roman are Serbian (they should really do a better job of showing/explaining this) it makes sense when Vladimir calls Niko "peasant" and "yokel". Although why does he call them this in English rather than Russian?
• GTA IV seems more and more an anti-war game. Niko is so horror-struck by his experiences in the war. His criminal acts aren't excusable, but his experience in the military mitigates his actions in my mind. As he puts it "During the war, I did bad things. After the war, I thought nothing of doing bad things." It'd be too strong to say that military service causes criminality, but having to kill and see his friends killed seems to have put some post-traumatic stress disorder in him.
  
• I love the different carjacking animations depending on the type of gun used. I recall hearing that there was a mini-game, but carjacking remains the same and hot-wiring can be speeded up by jamming on the left and right triggers.
• As in all GTA games, loyalty is a fundamental theme. Niko wants to kill the member of his unit who sold them all out, and he's determinedly loyal to his cousin. He's somewhat loyal to Demitri, only it turns out that Demitri is more loyal to the loan shark Niko originally fled from. I now feel a bit bad about killing whacked out Mikhail, and look forward to killing Demitri and Mr. Bulgarin.
• Another portrayal of drugs being bad: Mikhail was once a great guy, as his wife and Demitri insist. Yet he's an erratic whackjob. Why? Because he snorted Colombia's yearly cocaine in the five minutes of cut-scenes he was in.