Grand Theft Auto IV

Playtime: 35.8 Hours

Finished 10 July 2026.

Played on Steam/PC with a few mods to fix and improve the experience, while keeping it otherwise as vanilla as possible - I used this guide as a reference, following most of the recommendations. I had a small handful of game crashes throughout all of my playtime, but no major functional issues, lost progress, etc. Ended up finishing the base game, The Lost and Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony all in a series (in that order); the story was interesting, but I didn't really care for the side activities and limited NPC interactions so I stuck almost entirely to the main missions. So FWIW I can't say much about the minigames, dating/hangout activities, or the small requests/jobs, but I don't see most of them as having particularly noteworthy content and don't plan on going back to do them.

It's kind of funny playing GTA4 after GTA5 and the Read Dead Redemption games, because I feel like you can really see the different ways that GTA4 influenced both. Fundamentally, the game's atmosphere stands in extremely stark contrast to its successor in GTA5. It's set in Liberty City, the GTA-verse analogue of NYC which is a bit drab, grimy, and desaturated, populated full of cars and fashion seemingly straight from the 1990s, standing in stark contrast to the vibrant colors and modern supercars of Los Santos in GTA5. More importantly, where GTA5 is centered around Franklin's story between the glamour of Michael's life and the chaos of Trevor's, GTA4 is a very serious & dark story of entrapment & revenge, where Niko is haunted by his own demons. While the gameplay is pretty standard Rockstar fare and nothing much to speak of, the tone of the story and the atmosphere of the city really sets it apart.

I think Niko is pretty interesting as a character. He seems to have some sense of morals, or at least a sense of his own history and beaten down by a hunger for revenge against the traitors from his time in the Serbian Army. On the other hand, he's a psychopath just like any of the other characters, killing indiscriminately for money, often without any reason other than a nice small paycheck. Maybe it helps that he's perpetually stuck with the dregs of society, given that it's hard to care about mob bosses that are just as nonchalant about offing a guy or ten, but he seems to have a difficult time grasping his own hypocrisy at times; Roman, Florian, and even Darko call him out on it constantly throughout the story, but Niko can't seem to turn the page. (For what it's worth, comments from characters in GTAV seem to indicate that he has since moved on from the underworld by 2013.) I think it was also a good touch narratively to have Niko eventually lose the diamonds from the deal taking place throughout most of the middle and end of the game. I'm sure this decision was eventually factored into the more "tragic" endings of the Red Dead Redemption games.

Side characters come and go, but I liked quite a few of them in this game, and found several others interesting. Roman is a great foil to Niko, with a more fantastical worldview yet still seemingly a good, decently-adjusted person at heart minus the gambling problem. Throughout the game, he gives Niko a lot of much-needed talks to try to pull him away from his self-destructiveness, and it seems to have made a change in Niko by the end. Little Jacob is another prime character - this barely-intelligible Jamaican boss stands with Niko throughout his entire journey (and helps him kickstart it to boot), and is super entertaining. Not to mention he introduces you to Badman, who is even less intelligible and just as funny in the few scenes he's in. Other characters like Patrick, Manny, or Elizabeta who all demonstrate different aspects of a life of crime - the grittiness of heisters and drug dealers, against the posers that have no business there. But Dwayne Forge's story hit me unexpectedly hard since he feels so real, coming out of prison to a completely unfamiliar LC, without any of his previous friends, connections, or resources and living a daily reminder how he lost everything - just to see Playboy X completely disregarding the connection they once had straight to his face. As much of a stretch as it is, I almost think of him as similar to Brooks from Shawshank, except Niko has a chance to prevent his untimely end (or betray him in the cruelest manner possible).

The tone of this game isn't really nailed perfectly though, at least in my view. GTA is obviously a series about satire, and to some extent about exaggeration - telling a fantasy about crime life. GTAV exemplifies this by turning pretty much everything into a ridiculous parody, with pop culture references, flashy heists, ridiculous narratives that attempt to lampoon real-life institutions with the subtlety of a brick wall. GTA4 doesn't go quite that far, but radio shows and street signs have plenty of this satire. Juxtaposed against the serious missions, this random BS feels quite out of place and kind of hurts the experience a little bit to be honest, at least in the main story. It kind of feels like the writers were too scared to play the serious tone completely straight, and wanted to give the players a little something to lighten the mood a bit. But in this, it's clear to see how Red Dead was spawned; with RDR1 & 2, some of the writers of this game went on to craft amazing experiences in a world that takes itself mostly seriously - an evolution which feels clear even between the two games, but feels much more mature than GTA4 overall.

I know I said the gameplay wasn't really worth mentioning, but one thing that stood out to me the entire game was how absolutely terrible vehicle controls are. Cars control like shit, with a turning radius larger than the Sun when driving at any speed, and with brakes and traction equivalent to a never-serviced million-mile beater car. They don't even feel good in a straight line, given that any small deviation like a lane change instantly threatens to flip the car completely over. Helicopters are even worse, with the jankiest controls I've ever seen on keyboard and a completely non-functional mouse control interface (which results in a lot of glitchy camera behavior). Helicopter combat, which mercifully is needed for only a few missions, is basically unplayable and non-functional - I only finished those sections from pure luck and a lot of retries. My only comfort is that every driver on the road seems to be as shitty as I am in a GTA4 car; when driving on any road, especially the expressways between the different LC boroughs, you constantly see cars crashing into each other, flipping over, or otherwise getting stuck in the most awkward positions. Maybe all of this has something to do with physics or frames? I can't imagine anyone taking the game seriously if the streets were as rife with these dumbass drivers back when the game released in 2008.

While the actual gameplay experience wasn't anything special (and is quite inferior to the other Rockstar games I've played in all honesty), I do appreciate this game a lot given that I can see how deeply it influenced the other games I've played - and how many of the elements that I liked were sourced from here. Probably wouldn't play it again though, the cars and gameplay are just too jank for me.

Liberty City Stories

The DLC for GTA4 came in a series of 2 side-stories starring two other characters with independent plotlines, intersecting around the diamond deal for which all 3 parties are present. The first is The Lost and Damned, centered around a motorcycle gang (The Lost) as it falls apart from internal conflicts, drugs and gang wars. Johnny Klebitz is a pretty interesting character, but I honestly found all of the motorcycle club culture stuff to be insanely lame, with these overgrown toddlers jerking each other off pretending they're badasses that own the town, rather than the middle-aged junkies they actually are. The inter-gang bullshit feels like elementary school turf wars, and the most interesting parts of the DLC all come from Johnny finding jobs to do outside of the random trash fire the gang decides to congregate around. It's not like the DLC wasn't fun, but it was devoid of anything particularly interesting.

The second story is The Ballad of Gay Tony, which is centered around a known Liberty City gay bar & club owner (the titular "Gay Tony") who slips into trouble as he starts to lose business and begins to make some bad financial and life decisions, tying him in with the Mafia and all kinds of undesirable characters. Rather than playing directly as Tony, you play as his enforcer and confidant Luis, who is probably the most well-adjusted protagonist in the game (or at least the least poorly adjusted - given you spend most of your time shooting people). This one was way better, showing an interesting contrast between the vibrant club life against a bleak financial outlook, accelerating drug problems and desperate chances to return a debt to the mob. The conflict that Luis has between trying to prevent Gay Tony from offing himself (or doing other monumentally stupid things) while doing some insane things himself (usually in Tony's stead) creates a really interesting dynamic where you can see the hypocrisy on full display, yet I honestly wanted Tony & Luis to get out the other side.

Plus, Gay Tony also introduces Yusuf Amir, who's basically the best character in the game - only partially joking. The tone of the DLC isn't actually as serious as I'm making it out to be, and this lighthearted Arab Money playboy really helps lift the energy in all of the missions he's on. It's probably the closest you get to some of the wild things you do in GTAV - he has you steal trains, prototype attack helicopters, and even a tank, all just for fun! The best part it he's actually completely straight with you the entire time, coming to help Luis in his time of need and generously giving him all kinds of stuff, like his car, a golden SMG, access to the aforementioned attack helicopter, etc. I feel like he's probably a legitimately decent person who just happens to like saying a certain word a bit too much, thankfully without the hard R.

I can't say I liked TLAD much but TBoGT was very solid. That said, neither one of them quite manages to capture the atmosphere of Niko's story.