An amazing attention to realism, graphic fidelity, and a character driven story detract from the sandbox spirit of GTA.
GTAIV makes a new landmark in the series for its graphic and physics engine, Different times of day cast realistic shadows by the position of the sun's east-west journey from buildings, elevated trains, cars, and people. The morning is pink, the noon sun is blinding on the concrete, and the sunset is orange. Explosions and bullets knock people around. Vehicles feel like they have weight and friction on the tires, and will make you fly accross the street if you happen to stand in front of a moving one. As someone who has played all the last five entries into the GTAIII series (PSP included), it did take some getting used to the new physics engine, but once getting used to it has made the game more realistic and natural, and now going back to the old games would make them feel simple and arcadey.
The story of GTAIV is its most focused point. In past GTA's story was always important, but was just as much an inertial placeholder or excuse for a new mission to introduce new gameplay. GTAIV is all about it's new character Niko Bellic, his cousin Roman, and the other friends Niko meets along the way. The story, the characters, and the choices you have to make within the story are phenomenal and some of the best the GTA series has come up with to date. Massive amounts of voicework and cinematic sequences round up almost every single misssion, both during gameplay and in scripted sequences.
This spectacular story has come with a price though. Much of the random sandbox minigames that have evolved through the GTA universe have been scrapped. No more Top Fun vans and no exploding RC cars (III), no skydiving or rocketpacks (SA), no Sanchez dirbike races (that I haven't found yet, I'm hopeful) or , no property management (VCS), Ammunation is now a back alley black market, no fricken jet planes... or ANY fricken diveable plane (that I found, I'm hopeful for a least Dodo like in III), the only heli I found is in one spot and has to be stolen, no golf driving range (VC) even though there is one on the map, no car or motorcycle driving schools, no gang wars, no city bus driving (VC), no rythm game dance club, and even some silly but included anyway stuff like driving a train (SA) that could have been added to the subway system but hasn't. The worst part of the new GTAs universe is that it doesn't hark back to any of the previous GTAs. Other than Lazlow, some of the vehicles, and a few satirized products, there is no connection with the GTAIV universe and its past, other than references to Vice City or Las Venturas.
Fortunately not everything has been scrapped. GTAIV puts a lot of attention on making successful friendships with the main game characters. This has played out fairly similar to the process of getting girlfriends in SA. In IV instead of Hot Coffee you get bonuses like purchasing guns, quick transportation, or the urban racing events the GTA series has done so well. The best thing that GTAIV does new is the taxi system. Taxi's were fairly pointless in past GTA games other than to get in your way or take you to restart a mission after you died and lost all your weapons. Now you can hop in a cab anywhere and have it take you wherever you want. It cost a small realistic amount of your cash, but can take you instantly (like no time has past) to meet that time sensitive destination. I have spent more time in cabs in this game than a stolen car. If anything hit on NY realism it was this dependency on the cabbies to get you around. Sadly the taxi fare missions were also scrapped, but I don't care now because they actually get me to where I need to go.
Out of the Taxi Fare, FIre Dept, Amblulance, and Vigilante missions the only one left is Vigilante. I feel bad as a reviewer that I hadn't actually tried Vigilante to date, but will edit this review with my comments once I get to it, which will be soon now that I beat the main story.
Thankfully some of the tedious elements of GTASA are left out for the more comfortable and simple GTAness. All the bodyweight, muscle, and hunger is gone. One just has to eat a weiner or a sack of nuts and you are healthy again. Plus as a boon from past GTAs you no longer get tired from sprinting-AT ALL!-which of course is a relief.
The most depressing thing about GTAIV is the variety of the main storyline missions. 95% percent of the missions involve, "go to point A, goto or follow someone to point B, kill everyone, and loose your wanted level". This is a definite step backwards from past GTAs that have introduced so many different gameplay elements to make missions varied and interesting, for example in VC guiding an RC heli with bombs to blow up a buliding, or chasing a freight train with a dirtbike as in SA. Thankfully the new combat system GTAIV introduces keeps this repetative gameplay mechanic fun, and is short of getting old before the storyline is completed.
The wanted level system in GTAIV is the way I always wish it should have been. No longer one has to fight to get to that Pay'n'Spray or find a star hidden in a bush. Now, depending on how many stars you have, one has to fight their way out of a search radius. How you are able to do it adds into a lot of the fun in evading the cops. You can jump into other cars, you can take alleyways, change clothes, and if you make a scene by driving too erratic and making an explosive mess they'll be back onto you. This new system makes sense now, and is exhilerating and fun.
Multiplayer should take a lot of note because the loss of all the minigame goodness of past GTAs now resides here. Of course it relies on its fun factor by the chodes you end up playing with, but there are a lot of good game types that are varied and purposefull and all have a fun mechanic about it. This wont take over COD4, but it will give a lot of people a lot of good online fun. MP doesn't really connect much to the SP experience, but it uses the actual maps from the SP game. Item locations are changed and bolstered to enhance the MP experience, and the cars and peds are still just as random and as frequent as the host wants them to be.
Ok... Thats my review....
There's so much to be said for GTA to warrant and extensive long and boring review, but this is what I had to say as a fan of the series.