A preview of April’s “Grand Theft Auto 4″ at VideoGamer.com shows a departure from the almost cartoony gameplay of the past few iterations in the series.

Damage to cars affects their performance: get in a head-on collision and your car will slowly grind to a halt. Tanks, airplanes and bicycles are cut in the interest of realism. Niko, the game’s protagonist, gets text messages when he fails a mission. The world itself is more realistic, with destructible environments and animated crowds of pedestrians who do more than walk up and down the street.

A lot of what made the previous GTA games so fun and engaging were devices like the star count that could be called unrealistic, but the article is quick to point out that these aren’t being left out.

Still though, GTA 4 is no Holodeck. During my few hours of hands-on time I experienced plenty “oh yeah, this is still a game” moments that reminded me that, despite Rockstar North’s efforts, Liberty City still plays by virtual rules.

Pull a gun on a random bystander, perhaps someone casually walking down a street, or withdrawing money from a cash machine, or sitting on a bench reading a newspaper, and they’ll either run away or cower - and that’s it. Cause death-filled carnage in an area, drive the cops absolutely crazy, escape their line of sight and search radius (visible in the mini-map in the bottom left hand corner of the screen) and then return to that area, and everything will be returned to normal. Fail a mission and you’ll be sent a text message offering you the chance to reset and retry. I’m not criticising the game here. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t expect a virtual world simulation. Liberty City is quick to react, but it has a hard time remembering.

Liberty City is still a world open to experimentation. The violence is over-the-top, and satire and humor are ever-present.

It remains to be seen how much of the game will be influenced by this struggle for realism. Hopefully we’ll see a good modern crime story instead of a retelling of “Scarface” or a rap-infused gangbanger mess. Either way, I think the added realism will make what has already proven to be an incredibly immersive series even more so.

Also, Rockstar will be careful to not include a scrapped sex game in “GTA4.”