So GTA IV has been out about 10 days now and a slew of people are suddenly finishing the main campaign. Some are emerging from their man caves for the first time, others are just slithering back to their computers and onto the internets and every day more opinions are starting to surface.

Then there's me. I've played GTA IV maybe a total of 4 hours since it came out. Hey, I've had a busy schedule lately and women will always trump gaming. I have had a good amount of time to listen to the soundtrack of GTA though, even if I'm not playing the game and I've made my final verdict:

Vice City > San Andreas > GTA IV

I've mentioned before that I highly doubt any GTA soundtrack will EVER beat Vice City. The 80s were just so nostalgic and the number of "hits" they had on every station was pretty damn amazing. While I didn't love San Andreas as much as a game, (the engine improvements were very welcome, as was the fact you didn't DROWN in the water anymore), the soundtrack was still pretty solid.

They totally nailed the 90s feel in SA though, and every radio station had a distinctly awesome feel. You had iconic rap from the decade, a countryish/oldies station, great rock station, hilarious talk radio as always, House music, and even PlaybackFM which was rap songs that sampled old classics. You could actually hear a good deal of the original recordings they were sampled from on other stations. I got into a LOT of new music as a result of that soundtrack, notably stuff I typically didn't listen to but really meshed with the feel of the game.

Now the biggest qualm I think people have with GTA IV is that the game has been touted over and over again to be "current" and in the now. If it TRULY was set in the 2000s, wouldn't we hear things like Foo Fighters, Fall Out Boy, Kanye West, Eminem etc? (I know Kanye has a song in the game but no one gives a (@#*@ about "Flashing Lights") If there ARE big name artists in the station play lists they're songs no one cares about or that are really obscure. It almost feels like the people in charge of the music for the last few games were all fired and someone new was brought in.

For instance taking Rock into account, a quick look at FM WXRK, 92.3 KROCK's past hourly playlist yielded:

Metallica - Fade To Black
Foo Fighters - My Hero
Guns 'n Roses - Welcome TO The Jungle
Finger Eleven - Paralyzer
Nirvana - In Bloom
Led Zeppelin - Kashmir
Black sabbath - Iron Man
The Clash - London Calling
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under The Bridge
Queen - Under Pressure
Peal Jam - Jeremy
Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
Linkin' Park - In the End

Out of this list one song is on Liberty Rock Radio. (Smashing Pumpkins) I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would rather have heard the Black Crowes' "Hard To Handle" instead of "Remedy," or anything else by Queen and Genesis as opposed to what was used. The "ethnic" or "mood" stations are always great; I loved the Jazz and Russian stations, and we all know the talk radio will always rule, but it feels almost like one of two things happened with GTA IV:

1. Rockstar spent so much money on the engine, promotion and dual-platform development there wasn't enough money left in their "song allocation" funds to land the rights to big hit songs.

2. They decided to go the "really urban route" and put a wide variety of radio stations with a lot of underground or upcoming artists.

Perhaps there's other reasons at play here, (such as artists or music labels not wanting to associate with the GTA franchine), but I'm a bit surprised because it almost feels like the song-choice quality is lowered in this game while everything else went through the roof. You would think tons of artists would want in on something like this and be chomping at the bit to license their music...especially with the past 2 years success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. A lot of new fans were produced simply by the publicity those games created, and with a platform like Grand Theft Auto it's only positive.

What are your thoughts and opinions on the track list for GTA IV? Hit it up in the comments.