Rate top gamesI finally revisited the series since I played San Andreas ten years ago! GTA IV is a good game, and it's definitely worth your time even if you are a Japanese indie-strategy lover or worse. I won't touch upon the subjects that was discussed through and through such as the gameplay (you kill and steal, duh) or the soundtrack (brilliant and authentic as always) or anything like that.
My personal experince was that in this GTA I really loved shooting. Never before assaults in the series have felt so good. Which is probably why there are lots of missions involving assaults in some form. The weapons felt different and guns make you change the playing style. This was the first game where I loved to shoot the pistol, the weapon that is usually regarded as the lamest one. Mastering the pistol is very rewarding in some sense, because when you finish storming the building full of gangsters wielding AK47s or M16s, you feel like a bad ass antihero that Niko really is.
In some sense, the game is truer-to-life than San Andreas, since there are no jetpacks or easily-stealable tanks or spy-planes. In some sense, it is not, since you can't work out to fight or run more effectively and you can't put on weight either.
As for the story, I demote the overall score from Exceptional to Recommended because of it. The story is sometimes not logical and sometimes too predictive (something like a bad action B-movie), some really interesting characters that you meet don't develop at all and die quickly. In this sense GTA IV really make you revisit Liberty City, since GTA III also suffered from the bad story (but it was kinda the first game in the series, so it was justifiable back then).
My personal experince was that in this GTA I really loved shooting. Never before assaults in the series have felt so good. Which is probably why there are lots of missions involving assaults in some form. The weapons felt different and guns make you change the playing style. This was the first game where I loved to shoot the pistol, the weapon that is usually regarded as the lamest one. Mastering the pistol is very rewarding in some sense, because when you finish storming the building full of gangsters wielding AK47s or M16s, you feel like a bad ass antihero that Niko really is.
In some sense, the game is truer-to-life than San Andreas, since there are no jetpacks or easily-stealable tanks or spy-planes. In some sense, it is not, since you can't work out to fight or run more effectively and you can't put on weight either.
As for the story, I demote the overall score from Exceptional to Recommended because of it. The story is sometimes not logical and sometimes too predictive (something like a bad action B-movie), some really interesting characters that you meet don't develop at all and die quickly. In this sense GTA IV really make you revisit Liberty City, since GTA III also suffered from the bad story (but it was kinda the first game in the series, so it was justifiable back then).