GTA 4 never once showed me any sign of being perfect throughout the 30 hour single player campaign or multiplayer.
The story begins with the main character Niko Bellic getting off ship in a place called Liberty City. He meets his cousin who has told him all about this giant mansion he has and all these cars, women, and money. Well of course it turns out he's lying and Niko's cousin Roman has been borrowing money and gambling to try and earn money, but has gotten in dept, and is now being hunted by a bunch of people who are basically trying to kill him. Niko soon finds himself right in the middle of this problem. His mission starts out as a mission trying to earn money but soon turns into a revenge mission. The story in Grand Theft Auto is really good, and there are a lot of funny lines and people you meet in the game.
Now I mentioned up above that you meet people and start relationships. This may seem like a cool idea, but it gets really annoying really fast. Some of the people you meet become friends, and you will soon have to start doing things with your friends. Like going bowling or drinking. This seems cool and real, but you will get tired of driving around all the time picking friends. You don't have to take your friends out, but unless you want them to hate you or stop giving you support in later missions, you will have to take them out.
The game play in Grand Theft Auto 4 has changed a bit from previous games in the series. You use a duck and cover mechanic and you come up from cover to fire at your enemies and then you go back in to cover. Now this sounds identical to games such as Gears of War and Uncharted, but it is different here. There is an auto lock on targeting system. You hold a button and the game automatically picks a target and then you press the fire button to come up from cover and you start firing. Now this system is pretty close to broken. Sometimes the system will pick a target that you do not want to shoot at. One time I was pinned down by enemy fire from one guy and the other gut in the fire fight was just hiding behind cover. Well the target system kept on picking over the guy that was actually shooting at me. Know it is possible to pull the target off someone that the targeting system picked for you, but the free aim feels so wonky, that you would almost rather use the targeting system.
Another game play feature in GTA 4 is vehicles. Vehicles control alright with the exception of motorcycles which are really tricky to ride. But driving and shooting out of a vehicle is another challenge. Now this is where the auto lock on system would work well, but now you get the choose to free aim, so you are driving down the street steering a car and trying to avoid crashing into a hundred different things while trying to steer a target around to try a hit another vehicle that is moving and shooting back at you. These parts gets frustrating, and believe me, you will be doing a lot of that in this game.
Now you all know that GTA 4 is built on a lot of repetition, and when I say a lot of repetition, I mean a lot. You will be doing the same thing for about 30 hours of game play if you just go through the main story line. You will get a call to go meet someone. You talk to them, and then you will either have to go kill someone or steel something, which will normally end with being chased by the sops or in a car chase hunting down someone. Now if you know me, my favorite game of 2008 was Far Cry 2, which is very repetitive. But in Far Cry 2 the enemy intelligence is smart and there are so many ways to attack a base or steel something either by stealth or by brute force. But in GTA 4 you will be doing a lot of run down hallways shooting everyone standing between you and your objective. It turns into a random corridor shooter. This is what really got to me. I expected to get in more street fights, and for there to be better combat controls.
Now another big thing in GTA 4 is the cop chases. These can be kind of cool, except for when they last too long. When you get into a cop chase this circle appears on your map and in order to end the chase you have to get out of the circle and hide for a bit. But the problem is that sometimes it seems like cops randomly spawn right when you are about to get out of the circle. This will get really frustrating and if you die during a cop chase at the end of a mission, you have to repeat that mission all over again.
GTA 4's graphics hit right in the middle of "this game looks really good" and "this game looks really bad". While it is pretty amazing how "Rock Star" got so many things on screen at once and how all the character and people have realistic movements and things look good in the shade, it all turns bad really fast. Character models look chunky. Environments have a lot of pop in buildings and textures and jagged textures. Fires and explosions look awful. The game is just an average looking game.
The sound in Grand Theft Auto 4 is superb. The music is a mixture of so many different cultures and you can always find a radio station that you like. The voice acting is awesome and even the small roles have superb lines. The city sounds alive.
Now GTA 4 has multi player, which is actually the best part of the game in my opinion. There are bunch of different modes such as death match, team death match, cops and crooks, a racing mode, and even a free mode. The multi player has a lot of game modes and can be a lot of fun if you have enough people playing in a match. This is because the whole city of Liberty City is open to play run around in and kill your friends and online opponents. If you only five or so people playing in a match, unless you all stay pretty close to each other, be prepared for a really boring round. Now I was able to find some people playing the game, but I have noticed that some of the game modes had no people in the playlists. So the game doesn't really have a very strong community, but just get on at the right and you will find people to play with, and believe me, it is fun to run over other online players in stolen cars.
Overall, Grand Theft Auto 4 for me was an average game. If you are a fan of the series then this is a must play. If you don't like GTA or open world action games in general, then skip this game. It won't change your opinion. My problem was mainly that I just didn't have much fun playing this game. I got a few laughs from the funny dialogue, but the game play wasn't very good. I did find the multi player to be enjoyable but I have played quite a few better multi player games, but there is some fun to be had. Let me just say that I did not think GTA 4 lived up to the hype, but if you are interested in playing this game and you have not played any other GTA games, then I would rent GTA 4. GTA 4 had great ideas but they just weren't executed that well. In my opinion, I think that there are a lot better open world action games out there.