Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was a global phenomenon when it was released for the PlayStation 2 as it offered pretty much everything that you would want to do in a virtual world. The bar set by it was so high that Grand Theft Auto IV had to be an improvement or just as good as San Andreas. There maybe different opinions but GTA IV does end up being another enjoyable addition the series. What really sets apart this game from the other is the level of realism provided in it. While the GTA III canon games only bore a slight resemblance to the intended cities they were modeled after, GTA IV meanwhile is a carbon copy of New York City.
GTA games mainly don’t have a lot of diversity in their story-lines, the basic idea of rising through the ranks of a lowly criminal to eventual control of the city has always been the crux of the story. This game also has the same core plot but there's also some variety, as soon as Niko steps off the boat it becomes clear that he’s in Liberty City for something other than money. The main plot revolves around Niko searching for the man who betrayed him and his team in a war back in his home country which led to Niko being haunted by his past. As he begins his life in Liberty City Niko also makes new enemies as well as new friends on his journey, the main antagonist being the character of Dimitri. The relationship between the character’s is very well built making the story more enjoyable than the previous games in the series. There's a lot of humor included mainly in the form of Niko’s cousin Roman who is a fat drunk and usually cheats on his girlfriend with numerous girls. A bizarre quality in Roman being his loyalty and love for Niko as even after being shot by him he will call back five minutes later inviting Niko to go bowling. For the first time in the franchise there are connections with different story-lines in the game which are further explored in the expansion games The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. All in all GTA IV’s story is the best you’ll find in the series.
Game play in the series has pretty much remained the same through all the games. This one tweaks a few aspects for the players favor. The core feature, however, is the familiar concept of open world game play. Like before you get to roam about Liberty City freely at your own will. There are four islands to explore comprising of Broker, Bohan, Dukes and the main glamorized Alonquin. Another City present is Aldernity City based on New Jersey. As you're hardly a law abiding citizen you get to have your own arsenal of weapons. You could probably buy that stuff off of shops hidden around in corners or you could go the easy way and dial in the cheat code for it in your phone. This time round the former tedious job of hastily tapping away on your controller is removed in favor of certain numbers which you can call to access cheats to help you. After the first time you enter these you get your own "cheats" option to browse through and choose the ones that are needed. These cheats are pretty much the only way to finish the story mode or better yet have fun playing the game.Most of the games jobs revolve around Niko doing odd jobs for the characters in the game, as it progresses the missions gradually diversify as well. Sooner or later the player will realize that the missions mainly involve driving to certain locations so driving skills will have to be improved if you don’t want to redo missions over and over again.
This becomes a bit annoying at first but its easy to get used to it. The bulk of the mission involve shooting down foes, there's an auto shooting feature which makes it easy enough and gives the player the ability to target different parts of the enemy’s body. New to the series is the cover system which allows Niko to conceal himself and target enemies safely. At times when there are way too enemies attacking this is becomes very handy but due to the simple nature of combat odds are you wont need to use it much often. Hand to hand combat is pretty much the same albeit a few extra moves, its just more simple to shoot down opponents. Killing every person you see is fun but it has its downsides as your wanted level starts to increase, committing crimes in GTA IV is a lot more sensitive than in previous games as killing even one person is likely to spark cops to chase you. The easy way to get rid of them is by using the cheat option while the actual way is to lose them on your radar, the higher the wanted level goes the wider the radius becomes as well. You can lose the cops by painting your car a different color unless the police sees you going in.
Adding to the realism in the game is the choices that the player has this time, at crucial story points Niko has the option to either kill his enemy or reprimand him. The basis of the story forms due to these choices so what you choose to do is very important and it also adds to the replay value as the player would want to see what the scenario would have been had they chosen the alternative choice. Of course these features are mostly used when playing through the story line. Most gamers usually play GTA games just for the fun of the open world at their disposal. So when you’re not blowing peoples brains out you can go to a comedy show to watch Ricky Gervais make his inappropriate jokes about cancer kids or you could go bowling, helicopter or boat riding, to the strip club or for a bite to eat in the multiple restaurants available in the city with your friends. To kill time the player can either choose to go to the TW@ internet café and check their email or if you’re crazy enough, browse through the highly detailed websites which pretty much sum up what the type of people Liberty City has. Whereas previous games in the series frequently used public telephones to relay missions to the player, in GTA IV a "Whiz"-brand mobile phone is used. It has several uses, including viewing text messages and appointments, arranging to meet friends for activities, and also for choosing to retry failed missions. The player can also take photos for certain missions, and call 911 to summon the emergency services. The police will arrest felons, and paramedics are able to restore Niko's health. You even have the option of dating in GTA IV, it’s a good way to polish off your dating skills for your real life (That’s just a joke by the way). You can do pretty much the same thing with your dates as with friends with added bonus of getting “lucky” at the end of it, while its fun at first interacting with these people in basically the same way will prove to be boring eventually in the long run but its fun while it lasts.
A variety of cars are available for the player in the game, but the easiest and most convenient way to get to the destination is by taking the taxi which will get you there in literally a second. A weird glitch present since GTA III is when you acquire a certain car and as soon as you drive about two blocks you’ll notice a bunch of the exact same model in every street, this isn’t necessarily a problem but getting your hands on the most luxurious sports car wont make you feel like royalty. The multiplayer mode can be found in Niko’s phone and is one of the most fun part of the game with 15 modes of play available, the best feature being the Deathmatch in which the player will be dropped in Liberty city along with numerous weapons scattered around everywhere which have to be used to kill the other players around or you could just run them over with the car you drive. There are objective-based games in which you're tasked with completing missions similar to those in the single-player game: a team-based Cops 'n Crooks mode, a Turf War mode in which teams compete for control of territories, a carjacking mode, three cooperative missions. All of these modes ensure that you’ll continue to play the game long after finishing the story which itself would take more than 30 hours in the first playthrough.
The GTA series has never had great graphics perhaps as compensation for the huge cities or features included. GTA IV’s graphics while easily the best ones in the series aren’t all that great compared to other games. The lighting is the worst part because it just is way too dark in the evening times or when its cloudy, even when it’s sunny the shadows from the buildings block your view. In game the game is pretty sharp but the cutscenes are bit jaggy, voice acting is top notch with special praise for the voice work of Niko whose emotional pieces had to be done with careful consideration and were delivered extremely well. The other voice actors also did a commendable job to make the story much more enjoyable.
Liberty City definitely comes to life in Grand Theft Auto IV making it another great entry in the controversial yet extremely fun franchise. There's a lot of stuff to do to keep the players happy for about 40-50 hours in the single player mode while the multiplayer adds many more. It’s a great game for any gamer should have and deserves to be in your collection and makes everyone anticipate the next entry even more than before.
Grand Theft Auto 4 is an important game for Rockstar, not least because it was the first title in the franchise to use the newly created RAGE engine.
There’s never a bad time to relive its magic, and with rumours of a potential Grand Theft Auto IV remaster making the rounds, why wouldn’t you?
Not sure tbh.. I'd say 3 was the most overrated. It's pretty rough to go back to, it was quite rough even trying it just after Vice City. Lack of humour and vehicles that had the weight of polystyrene with top speeds to match.
VC & the stories games (even LCS) were all fun. I remember there being a lot of praise for GTA 3 on TV and in game mags, saying it was a Dreamcast killer of a game or words to that effect, and honestly after playing it on PC I didn't think it was that special and kind of dull, had the odd moment of fun but hardly anything. I heard they cut online multiplayer at the last moment for PC, shame because it could've made all the difference.
Would've loved to have seen what kind of cartoony GTA style game they could've done on Dreamcast as a competitor, I bet something along the lines of Simpsons Hit & Run would've worked well.
@numberz How can the game that defined a generation and was copied by everyone be overrated? Was a asinine comment
For me 4 was better than 5 was more realistic and the physics was on another level! 5 was a major let down in that department!
@blacktar you have your opinion i have mine. I found the game dull, and it is for the most part. It set the foundation for the much superior SA and VC however.
You say GTA III is overrated because it's rough to go back to and rough to play after Vice City. Your entire opinion is in hindsight. Of course it's rough going back to it today. It came out over 20 years ago. That doesn't take away from the fact that it pioneered a lot and was a paradigm shift for a lot of trends in game development today. Vice City in a lot of ways is just a more refined version of III. It was San Andreas that took the big leap forward from a design perspective. If III doesn't release, who knows if the open world genre would be what it is now. How can that be overrated?
Not at all. My most played game of all time. Truly stunning accomplishment in gaming and with PC graphics mods it just took it to levels beyond anything that came before and possibly even after.
People who moan about it generally tend to be people who played it on under powered consoles and couldn’t handle the more realistic car physics. It was the slightly more realistic approach that made it stand out more. Absolutely love it. In fact I always said Vice city was my favourite of all time. But after going back to the remaster I realised 4 was actually the best.
I'm no critic and I consider it the best games in the franchise after recently replaying every entry it's story when paired in conjunction with it's DLC was and still is amazing.
Lol. Fun fact. That dlc cost a certain green colored console 50 million for exclusiveness. Un heard of back then. Just to point out the hypocrisy of the 3rd party exclusive agenda going on.
Anyway how the dlc better then the base game by a mile. Lol imo
San Andreas holds a special place in my heart. Honestly, I couldn't get into IV at all. Didn't even finish it. I had some pride in playing it at first because I'm originally a New Yorker, but it just didn't do it for me.
To each their own.
Gta sa for sure. To this day my favorite. My least fav is gta 4 easily. Gta 4 made me feel like the dude in next friday trying to take the cd back talking about i cant get jiggy wit this.
Maybe looking back it would be 3 but 3 did so damn much for gaming in general. . My first gta was of course the top downs so the series has came a long way.
Yeah I remembered falling asleep playing the last mission in GTA4.. the most boring protagonist (out of all the voiced protag), and the town is too small.
Not really
Overrated
Boring
Liberty City despite being a reimagined version for the HD era lacked any variety
Lacked the GTA fun charm overall
Niko was bland compared to past protagonists like Tommy, CJ or Victor
GTA 2 was the best, lol my only owned GTA game. Vice city was alright when I rented it back then. I cant really say which is the best cause those the only 2 games i played but GTA 2 was fun on PC back in the day. Closes game to it that I enjoyed was SR3 and I dont care what people say. That none serious tone was fun enjoyable.
Like hell it is. San Andreas was far better, much more fun and a better game overall.
Nah, it's a masterpiece in attention to detail and the amount of immersive systems at play. But it really isn't very fun, ESPECIALLY when compared to the previous games in the series. Like tons of things are just wonky and actively kneecap lots of experimentation, or is just lame. Like why do I take huge damage when falling into water, why can I only stand in very specific large trucks when they are moving but not smaller trucks and vehicles, why is the melee combat such a massive down grade from GTA SA and GTA IV, why is the euphoria nowhere near as reactive, why is being drunk using a rasterized animation of staggering rather than the far more entertaining euphoria GTAIV and RDR used when you were drunk, why do npc vehicles barely react to you popping there tires even at high speed, etc etc.
I've always loved playing around in GTA games world. Like the campaigns are great but the majority of my time was always spent just playing in the open world. Yet GTAV is the only game in the series I never really returned to after beating it, it just lacks that fun factor the others have, I spent more time in GTA SA remastered than GTAV
It's one of my least favourite GTA games. It's clunky, the ai is exploitable, it's far too long and the writing is absolutely awful.
On the GTA 4 15th anniversary we look back at the Rockstar Games open-world opus and how GTA 4's radio stations showed Liberty City in a special light.
Insane rockstar hasn't remastered this gem. Still stuck on PS3 and 360. How is that even possible?
GTA 5...
Rockstar have let so many games slide so that GTA 5 can be put on a new console
Very nice review, my friend. It was a fantastic read.
Average graphics? I actually thought they were phenomenal back in 2008 when the game came out but even today they're still better than 90% of the rivals...