In all fairness there are so many things wrong with this game yet so many things right. Once again just like Front line: fuel of war I'll go down a list.Weapons always first.
Weapons- Alright there are many guns but they fall under category fists,melee,pistols,shotguns,sub machine guns,assault rifles,rpgs,grenades. Each category has two weapons in them to choose from. One is better then the other in various ways. The weapons are pretty well powered balanced out well. Example. In the sub machine guns category you can choose between two guns MP5 or UZI. MP5 has more accuracy but the UZI has more ammo per clip. Goes for awhile sometimes just power difference.

Graphics-Well now here's a nice twist.A grand theft auto with good graphics. yes they are good and yes the shading and tint and perfect for all of their clothing. Cars are perfect to every aspect. Not much to say but it could look even more life like if that's even possible. Well buildings were a little off. But Still convincing. Now I had some beef with the loading. Altogether fast or none at all but i noticed sometimes all the textures and that took a few seconds to overlap and come to the finish.

Physics- what can i say their good. Although you can encounter parts were what the hell just went flying by me.(a car just blew up and flew right by me from a block away)Well speaking of cars they dent realistically or close to. I spent many hours jumping off things(including buildings) to see my car become half a car. With motorcycling you can fall off a bit too easily. And the landings suck. The physics engine Euphoria did a good job but sometimes even though it may not seem like it, it had caused a rag doll impact. It basically says that your protagonists body doesn't exert a force. Newtons law of motion states that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. And obviously Euphoria doesn't get that. But hey it keeps it close to my expectations.

Content- There's a lot of stuff in this game. Even an in game website. But not enough well freedom wise everything else rocks. I would kindly prefer to be able to go into any house in the game and blow the heads off of the owners heads but hey wait till next one right.(if there is a next one) Anyway me and my friend hoped for a butt load of freedom do anything you want right. But Sadly they went for the realistic route unlike Saints Row 2 which i hear took the route i wanted for GTA4. I wanted to explore rooftops and go into office buildings and take people hostage. But you can't. Though Make my fun doing Parkour between buildings as best as i could.

Now bringing it down lets do a round up. It's a good game butt load of stuff to do. But not much free roaming as i had hoped. Altogether i would recommend this to about 10/10 of every Shooter fan. And give it a 4/5.

It was good but I felt it was just the same basic story different guy. The new features are nice but they get old to fast for me. Still good game but for me I'm bored with the series.

Being a person that has never really gotten into the other games in this series, I decided to get this game with all the hype that surrounded it. I bought it the day it came out, and I have some mixed thoughts on this game.

From a technical standpoint, the city is pretty big, and the graphics look amazing. Lots of weapons to choose from, tons of cars, and pedestrians with the new Euphoria engine are always doing and saying random things. The story that revolves around Niko and the things he goes through are more realistic then the other games. The game is fairly long, and it doesn't get too confusing.

There are a few problems with this game, however. On the 360 version, there are constant pop-in issues whenever you enter a building, framerate drops in points of the game, and the missions really start to get repetitive. The controls are real iffy, and its difficult sometimes to guide Niko through the city. You have a cell phone in the game, which your friends call constantly wanting to hang out. If you decline, you lose points, and it gets real frustrating. Once the game is complete, you have tons of money, but nothing to do with it. They wanted to go with the realistic approach to this game, and stripped it bare with every over-the-top missions and sidequests you could do in other GTA's. The online features feel like it was tacked on as a last decision, and wasn't fully fleshed out. It definately did not deserve all the perfect scores it received.

I completed the game with 100%, but didn't feel satisfied. And I didn't want to play through the game again. I believe this game was more of a test for the new software it was running on, and the next one should be a lot better.

Now my title suggest that this game isn't any good. This of course, is just another GTA with fancier graphics, which, isn't a bad thing. The mission line up is just so damn repetitive that it sucks the fun right out of the game. Don't get me wrong, running around causing chaos is just as fun as ever, but sadly alot of the unique weapons are missing. No more katans or chainsaws. This game only uses much more conventional weapons.

Graphics: Not anything to make you gasp over, but it is a significant boost for the GTA series. Highly detailed environments with so much going on that it feels real. It can be a little dark in some areas though.

Sound: great voice acting with some hilarious lines. Tons of little noises everywhere that make the city come to life.

Gameplay: Classic GTA, which unfortunately, is repetition over and over. It's fun,until about the half way mark in which you realize you've been doing the same thing the entire game. Online can be a blast multplayer.

Story: It can be engaging at times, but it's iffy at points. It's mainly Niko trying to make a living in America and get rid of his life of crime, but he just can't seem to stop killing.

Overall: I give it a 3/5. It's fun while it lasts, but damn it's repetitive.

Grand theft auto IV was great perfect graphics good story the game was all out fun niko is one crazy dude