Remember your childhood days? You never were just a kid bouncing a ball around. Hell no, you were Michael Jordan, shooting a dagger into the Utah Jazz as time ran out in the finals. You weren't just throwing that cricket ball around, you were charging in at the MCG ready to unleash the perfect delivery at a hapless English batsman. The soccer ball you spent ages booting around was you channelling Beckham, Kewell or Ronaldinho. Balls, bats, hoops, boots - all merely props. It was your imagination that painted the picture. All that other stuff was framework.

Think of GTA IV as a next generation framework. When you're living Niko Bellic's story, Rockstar gives you abundant detail, but few games encourage you to fully flesh out their protagonist's persona like this one does. In the tradition of your epic childhood sporting victories, you are Niko, not just someone sitting on a couch. When the game is on-song, you'll not just be immersed in being watching what Niko is doing, you'll interpret motive and attribute emotions to him whilst the game unfolds - the very highest form of attachment we can achieve in our storytelling experience.

Suspension of disbelief in games has always been a tough job, but the way GTA has traditionally managed this better than others is simple: it doesn't hold your hand or think for you. It makes no moral judgments. It leaves that to you. So 'my' Niko is a considered thug who gets the job done out of necessity. 'Your' Niko may be a bull-in-a-china shop guy bent on stomping anyone who crosses him. Neither one is the 'right' Niko - it's your Niko. And while they share the same story - its our values; our mindset going into the game that will affect how our Niko makes his way through Liberty City. You're not merely along for the ride here.

Inspired by New York and given the satirical touch that is as much a Rockstar trademark as overwrought controversy and big dollars, Liberty City is now a sprawling, high def extravaganza. As story backdrops go, it's the perfect foil for the character-based drama Grand Theft Auto IV is promising to deliver. In GTA IV, Niko's tether to the plotline isn't merely the commodities of phone and messaging, but rather the design of the game itself. You're not here to straight line the game. You're here to sample criminal life, not tick the boxes to get to ending A, B or C in the shortest time possible.

There's nothing routine about what Rockstar North (with Rockstar San Diego kicking in the glossy RAGE visual engine) are doing here. Once again if you're looking for uber-dorks, gaming apologists, or fawning developers who hide behind the Hollywood formula to paper over their limited vision, you're barking up the wrong tree. Rockstar North has always been about using games as a true creative medium, not just another check on the grand global marketing checklist, to be flung out alongside the downloadable soundtrack, t-shirt and action figures.

Your objective isn't to 'finish' GTA IV - it's to live it. The oppressiveness of the American dream in the world's most happening city, the make-or-break life humming under a celebrity skin that's long been the setting for some of the world's most compelling stories and music - this is where you'll live. So you'll find yourself more than ever assessing your actions. You'll take the taxi rather than ripping off every handy car and hightailing it away from the cops. You'll proceed at a deliberate pace, because back in the day when film was the be-all and end-all, you didn't just fast forward through the story. And critical to GTA IV, you'll respect the consequences of your actions more than in previous titles.

The more deliberate pace on offer - the encouragement to live the life, not take the Cliff's Notes - means the story hits that much harder. Criminal acts have stern outcomes in GTA IV. Smart criminals rarely beat up innocent bystanders. Smart criminals don't indiscriminately kill. Smart criminals don't get around the city by leaving a trail of wrecked, stolen cars behind them. The game allows you to do this kind of thing, because the question of how smart Niko is - how smart you are - remains in your hands. But if criminal life isn't easy in past GTA titles, here it's even less so. The game aims to have you feeling like you're in his shoes, not just running frantically for long enough for your 'wanted stars' to disappear.

What's especially interesting is this time we're strongly suspect we're getting an insight into what makes the Rockstar guys - oft reported about, but rarely in any depth - tick. Like GTA IV protagonist, Russian migrant Niko Bellic, the Houser guys hit 'Liberty City' - New York - looking to make it. And while they didn't resort to standover tactics and major felonies to get their way, you get the strong impression that Niko's experiences - your experiences in the game - are derived in part from the brother's accumulated bites of the Big Apple. This is not the New York of the Rat Pack. It's not the Brooklyn of Styron, with Nathan Landau hurling toasts from the signature bridge. It's not the Wu's five boroughs. Rather it's the collaborative effort of two sets of imaginations: Rockstar's and yours.

What makes GTA tick? What mystique does it possess that allows the series to endure in the face of an army of clones and pundits determined to homogenise every game experience and pigeonhole the art form into a neat set of categories? Perhaps the short answer is belief and commitment. Belief that at its highest forms gaming can be a transcendental storytelling experience that can affect us as much as any other form. Commitment to the concept of games as art - where the pursuit of a vision overshadows the grey race that seeks to convert your entertainment medium into terms like profit and loss; risk vs reward.

What we've seen is evidence GTA IV continues the tradition - coupled with the Rockstar team's dedication to providing their definition of next generation gaming, we're hoping for a powerful proposition when the time comes for us to walk in Niko's shoes. Just bring your imagination with you.