The baseline of the Grand Theft Auto games, with the bare minimum and some surface level polishing. The only improvement from the previous installments are the covering system, vaulting over obstacle animations, controlling vehicles, and overall graphics.

Other than that: expect less weapons, less vehicles, and many more tutorials. Rock Star has an annoying amount of tutorials.

You also will have more dinner dates with "friends." The dinner dates amount to short and forced mini games of darts and bowling. Throughout the game you can spot go-kart tracks and mini golf courses, but none of those are accessible, leading to me wonder if Rock Star released an unfinished game.

Along with these dinner dates comes the story. It's sadly a very emotional affair, and we end up with a character that whines about how hard life is. This is hardly the Niko that I want. I mean, I bought this game hoping to find someone between a Terminator and Neo. Rock Star ended giving us a bunny who needs tutorials and has a limited weapon selection. Niko is a confused, emotionally broken, and in need of Prozac type of character, which is not a character you can easily fall in love with. There are quite a few times during the story where we see the GTA charm shine through, but those are far and between. My guess is that most people will get bored of the story before they complete it, which will be especially true for the GTA veterans who already know the story before ever buying this game.

This is a rather short review because you can read the old PS2 reviews to get a sense of the game; it's the same engine. If this game was the first in the series, it may have received a 4 stars from me. However, the switch from generations did not bring the improvements of the previous installments and the game often "feels" incomplete.

Let me start off by saying that Grand Theft Auto IV is one of the greatest video games of all time!. Period!, the gameplay is excellent, the graphics are top notch, the storyline is pure classic Grand Theft Auto. But, in the realm of Grand Theft Auto games itself, it is one of the greats, but in my own opinion it does not beat Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. But it is a strong 2nd place.

GTA 4 is a great game huge gameplay areas great control and good stores the only problem is that I excepted it to be longer and the multiplayer to be better but other then tahat it's a great game

game is ok good but not the best i bought it and beat it in 3days flat its a little hard but over all good

This game is so different from the other GTA games. I found myself actually caring if i killed somebody or if i let them lived. One of the downsides i have found with this game is that once you beat the game, their really is not a reason to replay. You know its there, and you want to play it, but you already know everything that has happened. Online play is great, as long as you have allot of friends on the PSN.