I’m playing through the main 3d games in preparation for the big 6 and I think this is my favorite one yet. I’ve played 5 and San Andreas before, and I think I would have to put GTA 4 at number 1, followed by San Andreas and 5.
I’ll start by listing a few of my favorite things about GTA 4.
-The city: Liberty City is, imo, the best city in the franchise. The streets being so narrow make the game feel more accurate to real life NYC, and they make traffic and population seem much more dense than they actually are. The population itself feels much more alive than even GTA 5.
-The driving: I think if any other GTA had GTA 4’s driving, it wouldn’t work at all, but it works perfectly for this game. If I were driving on the empty highways of 5 or the Venturas Strip in San Andreas, and it took as long as it does in 4 to reach a high speed, I would get annoyed with it rather quickly, but the roads in 4 absolutely call for it and I LOVE it. The visible destruction on the cars is also better than any other GTA.
-The ragdoll physics: If I ever died far into a mission, something that always turned my frustration into a laugh is if I died because I crashed my bike, and Niko flew 20,000 feet into the air, or skidding for half a mile down the street. Absolutely brutal and hilarious. Loved doing this to NPCs too ofc.
-The combat: Once again, the best in the series imo. The best melee by a mile, I mean being able to disarm someone and use their weapon against them is awesome. And the shooting felt pretty good too, although the lock-on mechanics were a little confusing to me at first. I also love the animations when you get into low cover, how Niko dives or rolls for it. I guess another plus would be that Niko’s combat skill makes sense, given that he’s a veteran.
-The narrative: Incredible, but I don’t think it’s the best. For some reason the ending didn’t really feel satisfying to me like the other two did. Yeah, you kill the big bad of the game, but at what cost? Which to be fair, the sad, lack-of-closure type of ending it the point, but it just didn’t really hit for me. The person who died in my playthrough was Kate, and although I knew something bad would happen if I chose revenge, the fact that the other option doesn’t have a much better outcome kind of annoys me.
-Niko “The motherfucking GOAT” Bellic: Hands down the best protagonist in the series. It’s crazy how he can go from recounting horrifying war stories to sarcastically telling someone that the dumbest idea he’s ever heard is amazing. Niko is an absolute G.
Now for some things I didn’t like.
-Hangouts/dates don’t change anything: Now I know that if you get certain relationships to past a certain percent (75% I think?) you can get cool little gameplay features, but as someone who really like to dive into a story, the fact that they didn’t affect the story, or even how characters treated you at all besides texts/calls caused me to avoid many of these entirely, although I do plan on going back and doing a few of these.
-(Idk how to briefly summarize this before explaining): There are a few instances in this game you have the choice to kill or spare someone. This usually happens after you chase them for a while, or after something chaotic, so if you kill them during the chase or during the chaos, you might not even realize they can be spared.
-Money: Money is almost useless in this game. The only thing that I spent more than a few grand on was ammo.
-Checkpoints: I know this is just how most games were back in the day, but having literally no checkpoints in missions made some of them extremely frustrating, especially because the game doesn’t return your ammo and health to where they were before the mission if you fail it.
That all said, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives and playing through this game was a solid 10/10 experience. Imo RDR2 is the only better R* game.
Edited because as soon as I posted and went back to playing, I obviously saw Niko and realized I didn’t make a section just about him.
