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Well done. Looks great, plays great.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: August 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This edition of GTA will live up to your expectations for the series.

It looks great - buildings, cars, car damage, character motion, etc. It all makes great eye-candy.

Sounds - the music is awesome on the radio, voice work by the characters is perfect. Niko's voice is awesome.

Playability: It's the same as the previous versions. No learning curve here. It's great - the mini-games are nicely tweaked too: bowling and darts in particular.

Plot: Confusing at times. You end up for several people silmutaneously and at times you must make a "choice" about what to do - which helps with the replayability issue. But I can't say I remember why I'm doing something - only that I'm told to and it's fun.

Great game. I've just about won it. I'd say it's shorter than the other games but now I can go back and explore the other "options" based on those choices they give you.

Another GTA

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Its the same old boring mission based game-I only baught it for the possible fun there could be online.Online its fun for team deathmatch but that gets boring after a few hours.Its a fun game if you have never played GTA before-But if you have a 360 and never bought Halo 3 get that instead.

Unfortunately, it got overhyped

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

the pros:
-finally, GTA built for next gen systems
-impressive story development
-has that "epic" feel
-some of the eye rolling aspects of previous GTA games have been tweaked for a more realistic approach (cop interactions, driving)

cons:
-simply not as fun as the older games
-all those 10/10 and 5 star reviews got everyone overhyped
-sadly, not as good as "offshoots" like Vice City and San Andreas

Next Generation polish, Dated Gameplay

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Having just beaten the single-player portion of GTA IV, I am having a hard time sorting out my feelings for the game. On one hand, it's a blast to play, and you can easily lose 30-60 hours of your life to the streets of liberty city. On the other hand, there really isn't anything here that you haven't seen before.

PROS: Terrific graphics, awesome "sandbox" (I'm starting to hate that term) gameplay, the most realistic city ever rendered. Tons of game content, great voice acting and production values, tons of cool music to listen to, and the deepest and most mature GTA game yet.

CONS: Underneath the next-gen looks... it's the same game. The control, which had supposedly been revamped, still stinks. You spend tons of time battling the camera (especially in close-quarters combat and when driving). The new aiming system works pretty well, though it's not foolproof. The biggest problem I had, however, was the canned, cliched and repetitive mission formats. Virtually all of the missions follow one of three structures: 1)Nikko must kill someone. Drive to where they are, shoot them. 2)Nikko must chase someone, THEN kill them. Get in your car, get really frustrated at the unrealistic physics, kill the target. 3)Nikko must recover drugs/guns/etc from bad guy. The chase scenes are particularly annoying, as run-of-the-mill cars will suddenly outrun your high-end sports car. The new car physics model is a case of overcompensation- in trying to make it less arcady, the developers have made it unrealistically floaty.

The interpersonal relationships is another gimmick (much like altering your body type in San Andreas) which gets old really quick. There are no properties to buy, meaning you can expect to do a lot of driving between safehouses the game gives you. There are no checkpoints, meaning that many longer missions will have you throwing the controller at the wall when you fail and have to repeat them from the very beginning (though Roman's taxi service does help a bit).

Conclusion: I still had a lot of fun with this GTA, but it also became readily apparent how the core gameplay has NOT evolved since GTA III. Rockstar adds little tweaks, which is great, but the missions feel like deja vu. Why is it so hard to make a character control scheme that doesn't have the character feel like he's on rails?

Not what I expected.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The Grand Theft Auto series has always been a mixed bag for me. I really enjoyed GTA3, and played it nonstop until I finished it. I then moved to Vice City and couldn't have been more disappointed by a sequel; I only played it for a couple of days before I moved on to other games. Then GTA San Andreas came out and I again was hooked again. My only issues with GTA: San Andreas was that it was entirely too long, I spent A LOT of time playing it, but it just seemed like the amount of missions were endless. After a while I got an XBOX 360, so eventually I stopped playing the XBOX altogether, leaving San Andreas unfinished. Fast forward a few years and now we are at one of the most anticipated games for quite a while. GTA IV. While the game is not really that bad, not nearly as bad as Vice City, it still is not as good as San Andreas or even GTA 3.

Without boring you with the storyline behind the game, I will just say that in this edition of the series, you are Niko Bellic a Russian immigrant now living in Liberty City (New York City).

Game play is very similar to previous installments, so if you are familiar with the other games in the series, then you will be able to pick this one up right away. In addition to what you already know about the game there are some additions.

You have a Cell Phone, in which you can actually call your in game buddies and girlfriends to go on dates and/or to the bowling, strip clubs, etc. They will also call you if you ignore them for too long.
Instead of being able to just walk up to a parked car open the door and drive away, this time around you actually have to break the window first, then hot wire it before you are able to drive away. This stuff is done automatically by the game, but it takes time, and with the very high police presence in this game, you really have to pick the cars you want to take to avoid an annoying police chase.

Another addition is that you can actually watch TV while you're in your safe house. There are about 4 or 5 different channels, and there are actually different shows that you watch, it starts to repeat after a while, but it is still a cool addition if you really just want to waste time without having to do something all the time.

Finally, you can also go to an internet café and surf the internet, receive emails (including SPAM) and read hilarious news stories.
The graphics in the game are ok, but it seems like one is looking through a brownish film. The graphics are comparatively much better than San Andreas, but not as good as I have seen in other games. I can easily look past this however, considering the fact that there are always a lot of things going on the screen at one time.

My biggest complaint about the game are the absurdly poor controls and slow character movement. Game play to me is what makes a game and sadly GTA IV's controls are not very good. As another reviewer already stated, one of the most annoying type of mission are missions in which you have to kill 23,478 guys by yourself. Just the simple task of killing one person is more difficult than it really has to be. First of all the buttons are very difficult to use during intense fire fights. By the time you get the cover button to work properly, you would have already lost 25% of your energy, and by the time you are able to move to another place, another 10 - 15% of your energy is gone. All of this and you haven't even begun shooting yet! If you are lucky enough to have enough energy left to put up a good fire fight, you then have to worry about your bullets not even hitting the guy you are shooting at. I have been in situations where I was literally two feet away from a guy, and my gun shots did NOTHING to him. Yet he turns around and kills me with 3 shots. After I died I was given the option to start the mission over, but then I had to go through the tedious process of driving there first. I seem to remember San Andreas allowing you to skip the driving part if you have already done it, but I don't see any kind of option like this in GTAIV.

Another annoying type of mission are the car chase missions. There are three levels when it comes to car handling cars in GTA IV: bad, worse, and terrible. NONE of the cars handle great and a simple left or right turns sends your car sliding and spinning out of control giving the guy you are chasing ample time to get away. You can always turn slower but then the enemy will still get away because you are not moving fast enough. In addition to this, I have noticed some car chase missions are completely scripted in which the same type of road hazards occur every single time. For example I had to chase down and kill this guy and while I was chasing him he causes a truck to spill pipes all over the road, then later on causing a taxi to spin out of control heading straight towards me. I failed the mission the first time, so when I tried again, the EXACT same things happened again!

The game controls alone are enough to make me not want to play the game anymore or at least not as much as I played GTA3, or San Andreas, but then I run into the problem of the new features of the game become more annoying than enjoyable. A prime example is your cell phone. If you are like me and just spent an hour or so beating a couple of missions, all you want to do is save the game, but while you are going to your safe house to save, you get a call from one of your many friends asking to do something. You can always ignore them or say no, but then that hurts your friendship rating. So either you lose your friendship rating or reluctantly do something, spending more time playing the game. You can always turn stealth mode on, to stop people from calling, you but it seems to turn off by itself and you have to set it back to stealth mode again every time you load a game.

I haven't played this game in about a month. There are a good number of other games that I have that are more enjoyable than GTAIV and I probably won't ever beat it if it turns out to be very long. I give it 3 stars overall and 3 stars for fun. It's not as bad as Vice City, it just SHOULD have been much better, considering all the hype surrounding it.

GTA IV exceeds expectations

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game has a lot of content on it that will keep you busy for many many many hours. GTA IV is without a doubt the best in the series. There is so much detail in Liberty city, you will constantly be amazed at how lively and realistic Liberty City looks. Gameplay is great and the plot is very interesting, which will keep you addicted and coming back for more. I still have yet to beat the game and I had it for a month! Maybe I should play more single player and less multiplayer. Yup, this game has many multiplayer options on Xbox Live, from deathmatches to races or even just free roaming. If you are old enough and have an Xbox 360, then GTA IV is a must-have!

Great Game But Too Much Sex and Violence

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 61
Date: May 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Overall, this is a great game. It's the most interactive game I've ever played. And the city scenery is amazing. There's so much to do and see. And the car chases are thrilling and fun.

However, I'm giving it fewer than 5 stars because of the blatant sex throughout the game. Sex is everywhere in this game and the player is forced to participate in it from the dialogue between characters, to dating, to the prostitutes on the street. It's so unfortunate that a game of this quality is about sex. And I find this not only offensive, but a bad example to the young people (and old) who play this game. I suppose the people who programmed this never heard of a sexual addiction. Well this game reeks of it and makes it seem that it's okay to visit prostitutes, date multiple woman, visit dating sites, watch porn, and put sex as a top priority in life. That's a very sad and sorry message to lend to the public at a time when morals are already severely wanting.

Of course, the violence is also extreme and it's a bad influence too. It tells the young folks out there that they can do anything they want and there are no or few consequences.

I'm not done playing the game yet but was extremely upset about the scene where Niko takes out a crime leader and kills him merely because he's dating Niko's cousin. I wish they would have made Niko less of a sociopathic mafioso character and more of a misdirected good guy who is fighting crime rather than participating in it.

I wouldn't recommend this game for anyone under 18. My sons are all grown and they also play it,(and they also find the sex and violence offensive, thank God) but if they were younger, it would be off limits in this household.

Best GTA experience yet

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: May 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is very violent but there is something about it that I simply cannot resist. It is chock full of swearing and drugs and alcohol and prostitution, but these things are all optional. It is entirely up to you what Nico Bellic (the main character) does in his existence in Liberty City. On every street there is a plethora of options. Need something to do? Pop in to multiplayer for online mayhem over Xbox Live. Great game.

Almost Flawless But Only Minor Gripes

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: May 03, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I purchased GTA4 on the day it came out. I had reserved it two weeks prior but so did every other person so there was a line. I was a little shocked that an elderly grandmother was purchasing it for her 12 year old grandson. This game ain't for kids. There isn't a "hot coffee" mod yet but there's enough adult stuff going on in this game to well earn it's M rating. That being said now to the actual review.

This is a fantastic game. The graphics aren't as sharp as say Gears of War but it's pretty close. The story is like an episode out of the Sopranos meets Eastern Promises. It's good for a gangster story and has surprising depth while playing through it. Some of the characters are a bit cliched though. The missions are of medium to hard difficulty. The harder missions involve driving which is the first gripe I've got with an otherwise perfect game. It's harder to make fast turns now and easier to flip over. When you're chasing somebody to complete a mission it gets a little frustrating. I like the targeting system in shootouts though there are times when it's not so easy to flow with taking out targets, the first Playboy X mission got complicated in this regard but all the missions are passible without using codes. Getting away from the cops seems difficult at first but after a few times it gets easier. I'm only about 7 hours into the game but after playing for a while you get better at driving for one and shooting. The soundtrack is pretty decent, though I would've omitted a few song selections, the entire electric radio station.

This game lives up to the hype. It's different from the other GTA's in the series however not so different that you won't be able to pick up on it right away. It would've been nice to at least hear about some of the past characters in the GTA series. What happened to Cipriani and the Bistro, and the entire Leone family? Still a definite buy.

This Game Is Simply A Masterpiece

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: May 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

There is simply too much great things to say about this game. I can talk much on how realistic it feels. I can go on about how fun it is to listen to the dialogue between characters. I can write extensively how so much effort was put into the details of the environment and creating the TV shows in the game. There would be great things to be said about how cool and likeable the main character, Nico, is and the wonderful voice-acting that goes along with him and other characters. If I wrote about all of these things, I still don't think my words could express just how great the gameplay experience is.

One thing that would always stick out in my mind many years from now when recalling fond memories of playing Grand Theft Auto IV is one particular time when I was driving around Liberty City erunning errands with a "partner in crime" sitting in the passenger seat of the car with music playing on my favorite in-game radio station. I will remember how real that moment felt. It almost felt like I was riding along in that car as those two characters were talking. Now any game that can do that alone deserves the hype & praise that it gets because one knows that it took much effort & care from some very talented folks to create such an atmosphere as that. That is just the tip of the iceberg. This game is just pure fun.

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