Grand Theft Auto IV: Togetherness.

After I spent my first hour with GTA IV I decided I was done. Despite the amazing effort that had been put into world-building - and the pay-off that oozes from the screen - I just wasn't having any fun.

Sure, the city around you seems to live and breathe, and that's spectacular, but all I had managed to do was take a woman bowling and drive my cousin around, all while dealing with some D-grade titty jokes and wishing I could throw my in-game mobile phone in a dam to shut it up.
But some time later Leen and I restarted the game and things started to sing.
It's a unique situation: I don't think either of us would play this game ourselves, but together we're having a blast. My poor, strained eyes are the proof.
See, as a duo this game is perfect. Leen loves maintaining our friendships, buying awesome clothes and performing the more cerebral missions, whereas I love careening around trying to escape cops and performing tasks that require explosions and shooting hundreds of people.

Between the two of us, we wipe the platter clean.

And in giving the game a shot I've grown to enjoy the hell out of it. There's a few missteps in the writing early on that makes it feel heavy on the exploitative, 'offensive for offensive's sake' style of humour. But once they set the tone they're probably locked into by now, the writing is actually really good. It's adult, but the characters are well-drawn, likeable, memorable and distinct.
The writing's a lot more important here than in many games, as Rockstar Games sets this thing up as a playable movie right from the introduction.
The missions are the same old story, but enough is new to freshen up a very good formula.
The use of a mobile phone as the central mechanism for controlling the game is a masterstroke. Really, compiling most menu options into a mobile phone is how we're living our lives anyway.

As with every game though, it all boils down to one question: Am I having fun? The true innovation of this game is in the city around it. People live their lives independently of your actions, and react realistically to the unexpected. At first this felt like empty window-dressing, but when carnage unfolds, it adds to it in unexpected and exciting ways. It provides you with those "Holy shit did you just see that?" moments that give these games reasons to live.

Here's my most memorable example, the moment I decided that yes, I was going to forgo lunch to keep playing [one of the highest honours I bestow upon anything]:

I was on my way to a train station, where a man was waiting on the platform. My mission was to kill him.
On the way there I drove through a toll booth without paying - to my mind a minor infraction - but nonetheless I soon had a police car tailing me, asking me to pull over from a sedate distance.
When I reached the station I called my boss on my mobile, who told me to go ahead despite the police presence. I ditched the car and ran up to the platform.
I spotted the man and opened fire, felling his associates as passengers all around scattered and ran for cover. The target jumped the tracks and sprinted away. I gave chase and sprinted into the street. I placed a bullet in the man's brain as cars sped away and pedestrians screamed. Suddenly there were police everywhere. As a squad car pulled up I shot the driver and jumped behind the wheel. Suddenly I'm screaming through the streets in a stolen police car as six squad cars try to ram me off the road.
Taking a corner at speed I turn onto a highway but oh noes! It's under construction and before I can react I've reached a large gap in the road and I'm flying through space. The car falls and smashes heavily into the opposite edge of the unfinished road - I fly out through the windscreen and land heavily, rolling into a pile of bricks on the otherside of the gap.
As I get unsteadily to my feet I see my car followed into the watery abyss by three of my pursuers. I sprint in the opposite direction as fast and as far as I can. Unable to follow the remaining units give up and leave. I manage to sneak my way back into the general population and escape.

To summarise: I shot a guy, escaped in a police car and escaped only by launching through my windshield during a fatal crash.

Awesome.