TheodoreMaximusExtremicus Grand Theft Auto IV Review

Some spoilers in this review, so watch out for that. I've basically just finished the main story for GTA 4 a couple of minutes ago, and the ending is still making me feel something that the more recent GTA 5 hasn't made me feel in a while: sadness. While the ending itself is hopeful, as you get revenge on the person that killed the person you loved the most, you still feel empty. Killing this guy doesn't really solve anything in the long run; it's disappointing in a good way. You feel the exact way Niko feels. Sure, you get a couple of bucks and are free to do endgame content, the DLCs, and anything now, but the person Niko loved and you probably grew to also love is still gone. Now I do have some complaints. Depending on choosing between greed or revenge earlier in the game, a different person gets killed. I chose revenge, which killed Kate. My biggest issue with this is Rockstar didn't force you to do anything with Kate outside of cutscenes and some small things unless you went out of your way to do the dates before the final mission, which I didn't do sadly. Now this complaint is game-wide because during the start of the game another one of your girlfriends betrays you, but you really feel nothing because again, Rockstar didn't force you to do anything with her, and you don't really see her again; she was basically just an excuse so you could find and work with agent ULP and continue the story. That's another complaint I have. There are a lot of characters who seemingly just exist to exist. You don't really see them again; you get like 3 or 5 missions with them, and then you either kill them or they disappear and barely push the story, which I understand with Stranger and Freak characters, but you shouldn't do that with main game characters. I also wish the driving was more arcade-like. While I don't mind it being realistic and weight-based, it was a real shock to play San Andreas and 5 and then do 4 and have it be completely different. I crashed and slid a lot, which I did get used to (so not a big complaint) but was very, very annoying at the start of the game. Here's something more personal which isn't really a complaint or anything; I wish Rockstar went all out on the choices. There are a lot of characters you can spare and a lot of choices you can make, but they don't really do much besides giving you some money and don't really affect the story except the one at the very end. I wish it was more like Red Dead 2, where instead of one choice, the culmination of your choices chose the ending. Those are just my thoughts anyway; I will always love GTA 4, probably my favourite besides SA. I hope GTA 6 can bring me the same emotions as 4 while fixing the problems of both this game and 5.