Sombre, atmospheric and political, GTA 4 hosted one of the best missions in the series' history and paved the way for GTA 5's multiple protagonists
The strongest reminder that GTA 4 is now an old game is that Niko Bellic’s phone has buttons on it. Somehow that one detail – and the fact his mobile can’t access the internet – makes this game feel like it came out 10,000 years ago.
It’s actually been an entire decade since the release of the first HD GTA, though, and you can sense that in the slightly blurry visage of Rockstar’s hyper detailed version of New York. Like early HD games Gears Of War and Oblivion, it showed a true generational leap was happening. GTA 4 essentially ended the era of clones that followed GTA 3, simply because no one else could make an open world that looked and sounded as good as Liberty City.
Read more: Red Dead Redemption 2 review: “When the credits roll, you’ll have created enough incredible memories to fill ten lesser games” GTA 4 is the story of Niko Bellic, a Serbian war veteran who comes to the city to start a new life. He doesn’t try that hard to stay out of trouble, however, and soon he’s popping heads on behalf of Russian gangsters and his well-meaning cousin, Roman. While I remembered Niko as being the reluctant criminal pulled back into a life he never asked for, a closer examination in most cutscenes suggests he enjoys it on some level, or at least understands it’s what he’s made for, which is arguably the real tragedy of the character. It was a little earnest as an attempt to infuse extra drama into the series, but Niko is still a lot easier to like than GTA 5’s three protagonists.
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These sincere attempts at character development were certainly not wasted. While GTA 4's cast is still rife with loudmouthed criminals, you get to see a lot more sides to Niko than you did to previous GTA protagonists, brought out by his involved relationships with other characters.
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While there’s inevitably no happy ending for Niko, his is not the only story that GTA 4 tells. The game’s brilliant expansion packs, The Lost And Damned and The Ballad Of Gay Tony, were way better value than anyone could really have anticipated, possibly as a result of Microsoft paying a reported $50 million for their temporary exclusivity.
Each introduces a new protagonist – biker Johnny Klebitz and jack-of-all-trades Luis Lopez respectively – and their individual eight-hour campaigns are unquestionably superior to GTA 4 itself. Both characters had previously appeared briefly in GTA 4 cutscenes, encountering Niko Bellic, which is a nice connection when you later come across that while playing. Collectively, these stories offer a fairly deep portrayal of Liberty City, enhancing its credibility as a place where everyone has a story, and it likely sowed the seeds for the three playable characters idea in GTA 5. They each offer a different prism through which to experience the city: the night life in Ballad of Gay Tony, and the fraught world of Alderney biker wars in The Lost and Damned.
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Playing GTA 4 now shows how much Rockstar learned in the 5.5 years leading up to 5’s release. This was the first GTA to introduce cover shooting, since combat was the main weakness of the original Xbox games. It was a decent solution for the time, but the gunplay feels outdated now – it’s not very slick to control, and it was never a match for the refined combat in Gears. The melee fights, where characters ludicrously dance around each other like they’re two posh English gentlemen having a boxing match in the 18th century, aren’t exactly Arkham Knight. The driving, meanwhile, is a little too stiff and punishing for car chases – GTA 5 got it just right, but some purists might consider 4's steering more realistic.
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Password: GTAModMafia.CoM
Size: 184MB
File Name: GTA SA IV Graphics Mode Pack (GTAModMafiaCoM)