I keep hearing something in the GTA community. People seem to put GTA IV as the best GTA and I have to strongly disagree with that. In many respects, I consider GTA IV to be overrated and a downgrade. They did make the gunplay better but there was a lot of downgrades.

Cars handle awfully, there’s always sliding and floating. It’s easy to crash chasing people and get mission failed. The cars managed to feel worse than San Andreas and Vice City. They stopped you from using bicycles and skateboards. Quirky bits like the fire engine missions were removed and it felt watered down and trying to be serious. The games were always serious.

Vice City and San Andreas both captured the 80s Miami drug and 90s west coast scenes perfectly. Now we’ve been moved into this generic modern day New York. The city just doesn’t really have a personality like the others. Having a generic city isn’t the best thing but looks worse when the last game had 3 cities and 4 locations in it.

I was also excited when I saw it was coming to X360. I remembered when San Andreas had the rpg-ish elements on them, like haircuts and if you eat too much fast food, you’d get fat if you didn’t workout. Got the game and it wasn’t in there. You could go to the store and buy clothes. They had skate park, you had to use a motorcycle or scooter on it.

Story wise I didn’t really find Niko that interesting. I admit I’ve never finished it because I didn’t think it was that compelling. I feel the game could of been so much if the character changed.

To me The Ballad of Gay Tony was better than the main game. It’s the only reason I went back to the game. Luis and Tony are great characters and should have been the games main character. They play so well off each other.

Having Luis and Tony as the main characters could’ve changed the story for the good. You could take a unique approach to the game, exploring the nightlife and club scene. This would’ve been to also have a game where majority takes place at night. This would fit with each GTA having a unique personality.

When I think of GTA IV, I think of a missed opportunity. A mainstream series that didn’t know it was mainstream, then dumbed itself down to be mainstream.