Just started playing GTA IV on the Steam Deck after having it sitting in my Steam library for years. It’s really fun. I really like the protagonist, the setting, and it’s openness. It’s a bit more tame than GTA V which I have played as well and I prefer the more subdued tone.
I just started playing this for the first time a few weeks ago on my series X via backwards compatibility. It’s a shame that a lot of the “simulation” features were dropped in V
If you caught a car on fire an ambulance and fire truck would show up. They would load the victim into the ambulance and the fire truck would put the fire out. Then the ambulance drive to a hospital and the fire truck would return to the fire station. It was just one small thing. In 5 an ambulance would spawn drive to the victim and run up to them and resurrect them. The fire truck would spawn and put the fire out then drive away and despawn.
The car physics were more realistic. It had vertices deformation. You could also mod the car damage and car physics. People reacted to where they got shot. It used the old euphoria physics engine for ragdolls. So you could have NPCs grab onto your car as you hit them (ie hold onto your hood or door handle). Water physics were a lot better. NPCs reactions to things around them were much better and more varied. Police would stop crime without shooting. IE they’d arrest people or give tickets etc. You could climb things (not just ledges but like scale up a building via the pipes and hvac). The phone and computer were a lot more interactive. You could call up any number you find even if it was written on a bathroom door.
GTA5 was a drastic step backwards in it’s implementation. after GTA4.
Having been a fan since the very first game, I always found 4 to be the black sheep of the series. It’s tone is so far removed from every other GTA that if not for the gameplay being identical, it could have been something other than GTA. I am absolutely a fan of the more comic, over-the-top film genre love letters that the other games deliver. The goofier missions, the demented humor, even the god damn color palette is brighter and poppier in every GTA that isn’t 4.
That said, I didn’t dislike it at all. It’s got one of the best stories in a game. It makes you feel things other than anger and catharsis (IE anger at Tenpenny for being a bastard man, carthisis when you finally kill him). It’s deeper in that regard. The physics are also more realistic, and while I do appreciate this for the on-foot combat, GTA5 absolutely nails the balance between real and fun with vehicles so I find driving much less fun in 4.
Absolutely, it’s my favorite GTA.
My only issue with IV is that Niko’s constant agonising over not wanting to kill people anymore is at odds with the general gameplay of GTA; a game where you’ll probably end up killing at least one innocent person on your way to the mission, let alone the dozen or so cops/criminals you’ll kill during the mission.
The ending really got me though. On my first playthrough I drove around the city for at least an hour real-time trying to decide what to do.
I really dislike Niko as a character due to that hypocrisy, but it’s 100% intentional. The guy he’s trying to find throughout the game calls him out on it when they finally meet. I’m unsure if deliberately making the protagonist unlikable is artsy or pretentious.
My main issue with IV is that the driving camera is too damn low. My abiding memory of IV’s gameplay is having to constantly manually adjust the camera while driving, otherwise I’d crash into obstacles my own car obscured from view. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking when they made that or how it got past the first round of playtesting.
Niko! It’s Roman, lets go bowling!
And let’s get drunk and go a rock A rolling!
