This is game really good if you have an AWSOME COMPUTER and that may cost a bit but i can run it great but my comp is really good Intel i5 2.7ghz GTX 260 4gb ddr3. Everything is good except that when you have an sportscar the car you have comes up everywhere but when you change car you just cant find more when you change car idk if thats an bug or something but its bad... And i have a really weird bug cant higher my shadows in graphics or view distance anyone know why?… Expand

Best game ever! Clueless punks giving this game a 0 when they should jsut play it on console then. For real PC gamers that understand the hardware and know how to configure their systems this game is a 10 all the way. I have been playing it since it came out and i will probably still be playing it after 3 years or so when GTA 5 comes out. The DLC pack even finally came out for PC so i hopefully will be experianceing Liberty City again. This game is a technological marvel on all accounts so OFCOURSE you will need a PC capable of running it. This is not the same game as on the consoles! The PC version looks MUCH better even on low settings( i play all high with everything MAXED OUT at HD resolutions) and the CPU power needed is immense. At least a quad is required as this game is higly multithreaded and a decent GPU (video memory is important). My only complain is the lack of Multi-GPU scaling but maybe with a better cpu the scaling would be better. Maybe a x64 bit version of the game could help boost things but perhaps it would just double the memory requirement. Anyways thank you ROCKSTAR for bringing GTA4 to the PC and doing it so that its much much better then the console version.… Expand

This game, regarding game-play only, is a strong 7. That gets halved thanks to the Rockstar "club", Microsoft Live "club", and technical issues. Average, but there are better and more extensive sandbox games out there. The PC implementation of this game is HORRIFIC. Truly terrible in just about every way imaginable.

Completely unplayable out of the box. Required re-installation of video drivers, special tuning and de-tuning just to get textures and shading to look like something half resembling the Xbox 360 version. Frame rates are terrible even on modern high end PCs.

I can see no reason for this to have a metacritic score above 75 for game-play, or above 40 once you account for the failed PC conversion. Unbelievable.… Expand

GTA IV for PC has so many errors its not even worth trying out. I hade over 15 errors in this game and it ended up in me sending this shitty game back to the store saying it was broke. If you whant GTA IV buy it for the PS3 or 360 otherwise its not worth one single penny.

The game is great. It has brilliant graphics, but it is a rubbish port. It doesn't support SLI, and it needs a very high power computer to do what is only above average by modern standards. It's almost as if Rockstar couldn't be bothered with the PC market.

Best video game franchise in history. I cannot name any flaw, complaint, and frustration like in some of my other reviews. I just hope GTA V will be out this year.

horrible horrible horrible (x20) port. My computer meets the recommended requirements, yet when i finally got to play the game (used 2 days to get around different crashbugs) the fps were so low even though i had set the graphics to the lowest (it was first at my 5th try to change them that the game didn't crash here). Seriously i feel cheated like whore who never get paid, for paying for this garbage game. tottally useless… Expand

Absolutely not worth it. The download took a very long time, and unless your PC is running well above the minimum specs (which are already pretty high, and easily knocks out any non-gaming built PCs), then this game will lag terribly with severe glitching and control issues (and yes, I am talking about rock-bottom bare-minimum visual and audio effects). Sadly, I was unable to get past the 4th cutscene before my computer gave in on me.… Expand

Worst PC port ever made. The game runs horrible on my high end desktop. Its unbelievable that a huge company like rockstar could produce something like this.

One of the best games of the year, if you can't install it on your computer somthing is seriousy failing on it. I hvae a 3Ghz Duo Core, 8600GT, 3GB of RAM, and it works PERFECTLY fine. So to all the people that give this game a bad score, stop having a winge because you can't even install it on your fail-computer, and stop saying the c ritics were 'paid' to give it a good review, they obviously know how to build a computer properly.… Expand

Why a 4? I tell you they said in most reveiw That you need a good computer to run well. I dont agree. Since a pc 2.40mhz 4GB ram and 1GB grafic does not help the issues the game has. Small graphic glicthes. They said. Major Graphic problem I say. I say I have seldom got so annoyed when I playd a game. In apartment after save I always have to tab out and in the game again since the screen goes all blur. Same in Internet cafe, some times under the bridges and I think it is the wheater motor in the game, its when its raining and sunset time. And the game lag if I have more then 1600-1200 and max out on the rest. And the fact no patch for dual graphic cards its s big time. And the game play. Sorry I'm not in to have to play some one that cant even speak proper English I'm a Swede but playing a Bos-Serb does not make me goo Who! And have to look like potato nose guy. Give me a plastic surgen in the game, and not have the good stuff to look forward in the old games like buying property. What is this? Its not GTA. … Expand

I'm not a very technical person, but my computer IS above average and yet it still ran into many issues. Liberty City is undeniably beautiful, you can't find a more realistic city in any video game. The story is also a good strong point, for while in a lot of the other games I found a few plot holes and other events that don't make sense, I couldn't find any of that in GTA 4. However, Rockstar failed at the very core, the gameplay. This *isn't* a fun game, but more worringly still is that you are denied most of the freedom a sandbox game is supposed to give. For instance, you are denied about 3/4 of the whole map until you completed a certain amount of missions, and that certain amount is a LOT(and even then, you still have a third denied until you do some more). It also seems that no matter how long you wait the weapon stores never sell any new guns. But the greatest flaw is that GTA is *too* realistic. The average gamer doesn't want something completely realistic, he plays games because he wants to escape reality for a while. On one mission for instance, you need to approach a target by a job interview. To do so, you need to send a job application by email, get an answer by phone, receive a time for the interview, and be there on time. It's completely unnecessary and many other aspects of the game (such as the social interactions) are a chore. In the end, after my game crashed oh-so-many times while I was trying to finish a very exciting mission, I said to myself "do I really care about what happens next?" As soon as I thought "No", I disinstalled it immediately and now its new job consists of being a dust accumulator.… Expand

WARNING: REQUIRES A LIGHTNING-SPEED COMPUTER. I have a Windows 7 from a few months ago. It came with a great video card, which could run almost every game I put on it, like Bad Company 2, COD, and Mafia 2. Every game, except, GTA IV. The file size is like 14GB, and it runs slow as a bad server on COD Black Ops, even on the lowest settings. What's even worse is that you need to get a Windows Live account in order to SAVE. The Windows Live thing hasn't been fixed in over 4 years, and Microsoft doesn't even care about it anymore. DON'T GET THIS ON PC. GET IT ON PS3 OR XBOX 360… Expand

After buying this game on Steam, i was really looking forward to playing it.. .. only.. no matter how many times i tried, it just wouldnt login so i could play it.. after trawling the forums, i eventually found out why, it needs an xbox live account to play it, and a games for windows live account, getting these setup took a considerable amount of time, and more than a few hours later, the game finally finished patching.. and i tried to login.. only. it wouldnt.. some kind of problem with the xbox live servers perhaps, but when it eventually did manage to login.. it played fine.. until i wanted to save the game, because of some kind of server problem at xbox live.. again.. i couldnt save the game. fortunately i had managed to save the game earlier.. but it meant a whole hour or so of progress.. had been lost. in the end, i uninstalled the game.. i just wish i hadnt bought the tales from liberty city module too.. i doubt i've ever regretted buying a game so much before.. when it worked it was fine.. but the xbox live thing just totally spoiled the game, all i can say is im not going to make that mistake ever again, i don't care how good the game is.. if it has xbox live as a requirement.. then i am definitely not buying it.… Expand

The game is a total waste of money. If your Rig costs less than 5000 bucks don't bother. I play Crysis on Med-High with around 20-25 fps on my laptop. I can't run this game in LOW with more than 8 fps, it is so buggy it is not even funny. Rockstar, this is a BIG dissapointment, it is one of the worst, or even THE worst game ever ported to the PC. I can say even the port of Resident Evil 4 was better. The graphics s****** big time BUT at least I could PLAY the game FFS!!!!… Expand

I usually find it unfair for a game to receive "0" because it rarely deserves such a rating but for this game, I'll gladly make an exception. Why? Because of the way Rockstar have been treating us PC gamers from day 1. First of all, they kept us hanging, hoping we'd buy the console version first which I did. When they thought most people had already bought it, they announced the PC version, knowing that die hard PC gamers would want the PC version next to the console version. A dirty move if ever I saw one. But now that it's finally here, it's even WORSE than the horrible launch of GTA3 which was bugged and failed to run on many PCs as well. Have they learned NOTHING? No, they have learned something: they have learned that crappy, buggy, crash-prone ports sell regardless of their problems. And GTAIV is the pinacle of crappy ports. Horrible performance on top end systems, instability, many people being unable to load the game, graphical errors, tons and tons of bugs, etc. etc. This is UNACCEPTABLE. I don't give a damn about the game behind this when the attitude of Rockstar is so smug, so arrogant, as to admit spending $200k on copy protection instead of getting the thing beta tested! Not that you'll give a damn after having paid off all those reviewers to give you high scores.… Expand

I like the game the gameplay is realy nice and it makes lot of fun Its a nice map , nice and dinamic story / world and the multiplayer is fuckng nice too
I know there are lot ofs proplem with instaling the gam and and and.... but thats has nothing to do with the gameplay so 9 points - and I didnt had any proplems with the installing and I didnt get One error message

Yes graphics and physics good, but ability, scenario much worse than SA, never buy this game, do not made the same mistake! Try pirated version at least, there is nice working crack with some bugs if you want!(AND majka not mother in russian LOL(you dumb polska) there are no NO problems(in word translate)"without problems in russian" either!).

The graphics are amazing. The music is amazing. The game itself? It's awful. Terrible. Horrible. Here's a summary of the missions. Spoilers ahead: Mission 1: drive to forgettable dirty city area, kill some people. Mission 2: drive to forgettable dirty city area, kill a person Mission 7: drive to forgettable dirty city area, kill some people Mission 29: drive to forgettable dirty city area, kill some people
Mission 72: drive to forgettable dirty city area, kill person

That is the entire game. I am trying to play through it for the second time, and I just can not make myself finish. I'm at the last sequence of missions, and it's miserably boring due to the repetition. They made a beautiful game. A masterpiece of videogame art. But they forgot to make it fun.… Expand

I held off for a long time before buying this game. I must say that after 2 years of waiting. I wish I would not have bothered buying GTA 4. First off It took 2 days just to get Microshaft live to work properly just so I could save. I cant even use my Philips gamepad, because MS basically paid R* to monopolize on full support for xbox controller for pc ONLY. I am almost done with the game (mission 85), and I am flat out bored of the same thing over and over again. All missions are the same. If this is the direction R* is taking GTA then count me out for future releases. On a score of 1 - 10 I give it a 1.5, and that is being fair. It seems R* now has a trademark. Every GTA game I have played I would find this http://www.drxdesigns.com/screenshots/rstrademark.jpg I am a freelance 3d graphic artist, so it is easy for me to find these faults. VC, SA both had texture stretching. Of course all this is just my opinion, just the same as everyone else, and I am entitled to that! R* use to be my favorite game company, now very bottom of the list. 2 Thumbs down to GTA 4, and Rockstar.… Expand

Dear Grand Taxicab Auto, please, please, stop with the cut-scenes already! Give your script editor a red pen and ask him/her to "X" out big chunks of dialog next time, won't you? And won't my darn phone ever stop ringing? Especially when I answer it and then I can't run but instead have to walk... slowly... oh so very slowly....? I play games to escape from everyday chores such as deleting texts, ignoring emails and pointlessly driving across town during rush hour with a car load of social lowlifes. Only to arrive at my destination and be served a mediocre third person shooter. I never finished GTA San Treadmill for much the same reasons, and I was hoping your older siblings would've taught you a few lessons, but alas, I guess not. At least you let me hail taxis to skip the Auto part and get right to the Theft bits, but why oh why isn't there a cab around when you really, really need one? All said, you're a pretty game to look at and even to play sometimes, but only when you'll stop boring me with mundane tasks and actually let me escape with you, that is.… Expand

i don't know if the game is good or not becouse simply I cannot play with my computer. and actually i can play to any other game,it's not a bad computer. i would like to know what machines did the people use that sored it as a 10 (or magazines with 100).

this is not a game, is a no-game.

First of all how come this game is rated with a solid "9"? No doubt, rockstar gave them a pile of money to do so. This game is utterly crap on the PC. I mean, i rarely rate a game with a 0, but this game sux so much that I stoped playing it after 30 minutes. everytime you start the game you get all that highly annoying windows Live crap + you it is mandatory to create an Live account where you have to give your email and personal info. I mean seriously... I bought the freaking game and just want to play it without all that stuff. Also you have to first start the story mode before you can go in MP mode, don't get that really... why not just give that option on the main page. It plays like crap on my decent dual core, controls are retarded, driving is a load of bull with these controls + you constantly adjust your camera with the mouse with every corner...so no auto camera lock, sux too. I tried MP, but the game freezes half the time + I have to wait like 10 minutes or more for other people in the lobby. Securom is also freaking annoying and unwanted... I mean you can't stop pirating so don't try, securom only makes it annoying for the people that actually bought the game............. I really liked san andreas on the PC, well it had issues as well, but it still was an enjoyable game, with GTA4 they made it 10 times worse.... So 1, I will never buy a game anymore with that windows live crap and securom and 2, I will think 3 times before I buy an other Rockstar game. Like many big game (infinity ward for example) companies they went in the wrong direction and made games that could gave cool sequels that are even better... they made it 10 times worse. I'm getting sick of buying games where I feel ripped of and let down.… Expand

This game is so bad... Its just a port from Xbox to PC thats why it ran so badly, my PC was way above the requirements and the worst part is, I completed the game with insanely bad framerate. The missions are repetative, your meant to do this or kill someone but its an ambush. Just a flatout horrible game.

When I first bought the game, it ran like a dog on lowest setting using a fairly high-end pc set up. If you're not buying the latest gear, don't even bother.
A new graphics card later it ran, but the terrible, console style controls force you to use a game controller. Don't have an x-box game controller? Don't bother trying to drive anywhere. Or turn corners while walking.
Since I always like their stories, I tried coming back to it after months (and probably win7 service pack 3) to find it won't load past the logo screens. I've tried everything I've found online to try to solve the issue with no success.
R* can jump off a cliff. I am done with their bs, and despite owning pretty much everything they've made to date (bugs and all), I will never buy from them again. I feel like the entire package was a bait and switch for pc owners - Thanks for your $50, did you actually want to play that? Oh sorry, we haven't implemented that feature yet.
Don't even bother buying it on special. Chances are it won't load at all. Go to a movie instead and save yourself days of screwing around.… Expand

It beats me how this game received a metascore of 90. It seems to have potential, I'll give it that, but the abysmal controls, bad dialog, and boring starter missions made me drop it after 2 hours. I might have been a bit annoyed with it to start with, because their lame attempt to market that windows gaming platform with the saving mechanism and random crashes.
Sad thing is, they emulate the cars physics pretty well, which unfortunately is completely pointless with digital 0/1 controls. Again, there seems to be potential, but for me it had way too many flaws to get that far.
P.S.: Hardware requirements are a bit ridiculous considering the release date and the eye candy you get for it, but for a modern (2011) gaming rig it's very playable.… Expand

A game that you can't play, is worth nothing. And GTAIV PC is a game that you can't play. It requires a credit card to register GFWL, requires registering Social Club & has other annoyances like Securom, and yes that's when you got it from Steam - buying a game on Steam and having to register GFWL, find the error. I'm glad I didn't pay too much for it. It's possibly a good game, on consoles that is. From what I read it's also full of bugs, that I will never know. GTA3 was already a very bad PC port so I wouldn't be surprised. Another game that looks like a huge amount of work, ruined by abuse of marketing.… Expand

A decent game, but marred by bugs, graphics glitches and a STUPID anti-piracy system that punishes the customers rather than the pirates. I don't want to have to register and log in to several services just to play a game - it was cracked a few days after release anyway and, of course, those who pirate the game don't have to jump through all of the hoops that the honest customers do...

Rockstar, if you're going to treat paying PC customers like criminals and then give them **** ports then don't bother.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. While playing the game under a GTS450 and an Athlon II X2 260 (Nowhere near the best PC) The game went smoothly, no fps drops nor lags. The controls for the cellphone are awful, in fact. How many times haven't I rejected a call due to be pressing the reject button (that's shared with 2 other commands). Other than that, the movement controls on it's predecessor SA are way better than this one, still the GTA IV movement is more realistic. As I don't really play GTA thinking of realism, the bad movement controls are a problem. Nice hidden content. When I first played GTA III and save the girl, GTA Vice City and you own the world or GTA San Andreas and luck you tempenny! GTA IV makes you wish you hadn't finish the game, the usually warm fuzzy feeling of putting everything in place was ripped from the game. The friends minigames, Ok on the beginning, start to get bad as the game goes on and your phone list increases in size. The graphical quality improved, the radios are still funny, the "friends missions" found throughout the map are the best addition of GTA IV. --TLDR-- Bad Movement controls, boring "relationship quests" and awful story endings kill a good part of playing through GTA IV; But it may still be worthy buying if you find it used for U$15 or less.… Expand

decent console game but what the **** its kind of insulting that they would release a game that performs this poorly, i have a very capable system i7, AMD HD 7770 graphics card, 12 gb's of ram, i can get it to run somewhat smoothly but using only 700 Mb of Vram, i feel completely cheated.

Nicely done but becomes a little repetitive after a while. There should be more around the story, or more interesting missions than just go and shoot a bunch of people to steal something. Yet, it's addictive and characters are quite developed with clear cut personalities (Little Jacob is AWESOME!).
However, after playing for 60 hours, I'm struggling real bad with some missions, after retrying them for like 20 times. No way to skip them, no help, it SUCKS! I'm so fed up to redo the same things again and again and have Nicko not respond to what I ask him to do, ending up dying in the most retarded ways ever. I give up. It ruined my game experience so bad that I now hate the game. Well done Rockstar for not putting any save-points for the long missions and force the player to do the same things during 30 minutes every time, again and again, for nothing.… Expand

Ok. This is a major step in the GTA series. The graphics are amazing and the storyline is actually quite good. The missions are fun, and randomly blowing up stuff around liberty city is amazing.

But there's a HUGE downside. Optimization, very demanding on your system, not that enjoyable unless you have a new and expensive computer.

You have to have a top-of-the-range computer to be able to run this game properly. When running it on medium to low settings, it looks like you're running GTA san andreas with slightly improved graphics. This game just has to have high settings to be played properly (IMO.) Rockstar rushed this, and just forgot about making it playable for people who don't have an Intel Core i7 and a 4870 X2… Expand

The storyline and gameplay are amazing, but once you include all the some times extreme glitches, stuttering framerates in certain areas, and terrible load times, the PC version really failed. Even with a high-end PC, you are doomed to +/-25fps, and it drops severely in multiplayer, rendering it unplayable at times. All in all, a great but horribly put together port put together by a team that takes weeks to respond to support issues.… Expand

First, I'd like to point out you need a good PC to run this game well. Please, do not attempt to run this on your GeForce 5200FX and then complain about how the game crashes. Most minor issues with this PC game can be easily fixed; just search on Google and I assure you 95% of the time you'll find a fix. Also, make sure you have the most up-to-date version of the game, as Rockstar has fixed plenty of bugs and glitches with their latest 1.0.7.0 patch. It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

As for the game itself, it's incredible. Best storyline in the GTA series, gorgeous graphics, very likeable and memorable characters, great gameplay, fun multiplayer modes, and an incredibly well-desinged city. Not to mention, the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV has some exclusive features which the consoles do not have. Such as the in-game video editor, which is amazing. It allows to take clips you've captured during gameplay and edit them. You can create a simple stunt video or an incredible machinima with it. It's a wonderful tool. Overall, I think quite a few people fail to realize just how 'big' Grand Theft Auto IV really is. I mean, there's literally thousands of recorded dialogue clips in this game just for the pedestrians. There's a ton of hilarious and well written radio station, TV, and in-game internet content. Hundreds of unique character models, props, animations, and vehicles. So, if you do have a good PC I think you should definitely give this game a try.… Expand

Grand Theft Auto IV is a game I can respect but not appreciate. The enormous sandbox city and lifelike interaction are definitely impressive, but much of what I loved about GTA San Andreas was lost to me here. The game shifts very far from cars now as you no longer have a garage and customization is limited if not completely removed. Fortunately the graphics are fantastic, especially with a good PC, and the story is pretty good. I hope to see more of an automobile focus in GTA V, because c'mon, the game is named Grand Theft Auto!… Expand

Great game but my computer is pretty close to top of the line and has problems with this. I know how to configure it to work optimally but really this game must have some poor programming. Kind of sad as it could have been much better.

good game, even on pc i still find it very enjoyable compared to console, the only problem i have is with crossfire support, the game wont allow you to use dual graphics cards and thus making me change it back to use of one graphics card everytime i want to play it.

This game was a disappointment to me. I really enjoyed GTA III and GTA:San Andreas, but just couldn't get into this one. The characters weren't as interesting to me, and the missions where just not as fun as some of the earlier GTA games. Hopefully the next installment of GTA improves upon this.

Is Grand Theft Auto IV a good game? Absolutely. Was it a good PC port? Absolutely not. Rockstar failed horrendously on this game. It takes too much to run it. I have a high end PC that will run Crysis maxed, no issues, yet GTA IV will give me low frame rate, instability, missing textures, and some crashing.

I bought this game for 8 Euro on Steam and it was worth it. Many people here say they have FPS drops, bugs, etc... But I didn't have any of these problems. The game is fun and for me the story is somehow exiting and if you have already done the singleplayer, go on multiplayer. Bored with multiplayer? Get a trailer get some friends and do **** No internet? Go on singleplayer and do **** I've played this game for 187 hours.… Expand

What Cool-Aid are all of these reviewers drinking? Did they have to fuddle with the install like everyone else? People who meet the recommended system requirements subjected to watching Niko do the herky-jerk all over Liberty City. The game in this state eats my CPU for breakfast and all it can display is a stuttering slideshow. Do you want to play online? Well then you have to install the R* social app and Games for Windows Live if you intend on doing so. More process going on in the background are always a plus! I would rather wait longer to have a playable game over just shipping in out the door and fixing it later because of the holiday season frenzy. The game will be fine, come six months and a couple of patches later.… Expand

I was tempted to go on an angry rant, but I want to be objective and fair here. Overall, there will be one thing I will *never* forget and always associate with this game. It has one supercritical flaw: -It runs like sh*t- I'm not exaggerating one bit. Ive been building and repairing pc hardware for over 10 years now, and have always been an avid gamer. I play many brand new titles and have few problems, often able to play 1900x1200 with every option enabled including antialiasing and plenty of texture post-processing on other new titles such as All source games (including L4D, TF2 etc.), Fallout3, Mirror's Edge and the list goes on... Obviously this is not because my hardware is not up to task. This is one of the worst pieces of software I've ever encountered. The game is very, very, VERY poorly programed. To boot, GTA IV doesn't even look good. The graphics look very dated in comparison with titles released recently. It crashes... alot. This program has managed to generate more faults and errors than any other application I have ever installed. I'd even go so far as to say known malware runs more stably. I wish I was exaggerating, but this is the sad, sad truth that is GTA IV for PC. I attempted for days to improve the performance and stability of this program using every workaround and trick I know of including: 1) trying over a dozen different combinations of drivers 2) both versions of the game 3) manually editing nearly every configuration in the program directory 4) multiple OS's (vista and XP pro) 5) multiple bios and firmware combinations 6) alteration of my OS (killing services, disabling/enabling access, security, automatic memory remapping apps, cache utilities) 7) I even cleared out enough room on my scsi 15k rpm HDD... No effect on performance. (Oh let me add that the install directory is rediculous. 15 gigs!? of *what* may I ask?) 8)multiple brand new graphics cards including an ATI 4850 overclock addition (asus) and XFX nvidia geforce 9800. Did any of this work, at all? Actually, somewhat. But the performance is unbelievably bad even when I take the best results from all of the above. Given the Xbox 360's hardware, (http://hardware.teamxbox.com/articles/xbox/1144/The-Xbox-360-System-Specifications/p1 if you're curious) most modern PC gaming rigs shouldn't break a sweat running this software. However, my problems with this awfully coded mess are not isolated, but rather the typical experience. Ludicrous. How did rockstar miss these problems? Greater than 50% of users are having awful issues, how many different pcs did they playtest this on? One? None? Grand Theft is an apt title. I feel no better than grifted, swindled and conned for purchasing this garbage. The programmers should be truly ashamed. Rockstar has also made no attempt to repair their broken software nor have they even *acknowledged* that these severe issues exist to this degree. The finale of this ridiculum is that once I was able to stabilize the software to the point that I could play through an appreciable portion of the game, it was really pretty average. The gameplay is alright... Pretty similar to san-andreas, with the notable exception that the animations are vastly superior. You are able to traverse objects a little better, and the cover system does add some substance to combat. I'd give the gameplay a 7/10, its decent, but still sort of the same old thing. Vehicle mechanics are really very good, with notable attention to realistic traction, but the general physics still have a very toy like, very poor quality. They really didn't think outside the box too much, alot of the mission content is completely rehashed from the original GTA III engine titles. The plot is actually pretty good, and the voice actors seem to be above average. Its pretty entertaining plot wise. Nearly all of the new content additions are terrible though. The cellphone is an abomination. People bother you on your cellphone too much. I hate this in reality, let alone in a leisure activity. I don't want people calling me all the time and being obligated to do what they ask me. I can only play the stupid ingame pool once or twice before it becomes extremely tiresome. To make it worse, you're punished for not doing this by losing reputation. Dating a computer character? Give me a break, this doen't even resemble fun. A virtual internet complete with virtual spam? What the hell did they bother spending time on this for? Does anyone actually appreciate this? Its really *not* clever, I wish they would have spent this time play testing this garbled up mess of code. -Bottom Line- This software is almost completely broken, and riddled with issues. It barely works. To quote the great philosopher James Rolf (AVGN), "What a sh*tload of f*ck" It comes packaged with all this bloatware that makes irritated as well. I don't use 'windows live' for anything, and its nothing but a marketing ploy with no substance. 'Rockstar Social Club' is equally useless or worse, as I suspect these applications present very serious security flaws. They run scripts and leave open ports, and I feel there is a high likelyhood that these applications will be exploited as entry points. Its really just the insult added to injury.… Expand

What a shame! I have a i7 oc to 4.4ghz and a gtx295 oc by 24% and the game graphics glitchy, the only game I have that does this. Even if I reduce the oc's or remove them altogether its still the same but worse. Nice idea, controls are poor and very clunky. Its as if you were a puppet master controlling strings that actually control the controls....if that makes sense, as if you are far removed. Not so bad when you're walking but fighting is a joke and driving is unrealistic. Completed 4 missions then deleted it, waste of £5.… Expand

Using the steam version, I have an Nvidia GEForce 9500 card with 512 MB (Min is listed as 256) I have 2 gigs system memory, an ASUS motherboard and a 3.2 Ghz Pentium D chip. I was under the impression that qualifies as a dual core. THIS game runs like crap. The graphics are flat, and frankly a step back from San Andreas which I loved, and still load on occasion. The entire half life franchise runs brilliantly, any number of online games and other high graphics application run fine. None of this, however, compares to the aggravation of both the Rock Star Social Club and being forced to sign on to a Windows Live account. I could swear up a blue streak about being forced to pay $50 for the game AND be forced to take their version of "community" with it regardless of what I want, but..... suffice it to say I neither need nor want anything else trying to force it's way into my start up menu, and if I wanted to engage in social interaction with my gaming I would get world of warcraft. GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas all had me anticipating GTA 4 when it was announced. I don't think I'll be very interested in GTA 5.… Expand

The good? Compelling story, awesome voice acting, realistic physics, superb audio on 5.1 speakers, attention to detail, Liberty City is big! The bad? DRM, RockStar Social Club (mandatory sign-up), Windows Live (mandatory log-in), shoddy PC port and coding, runs like crap on my high-end computer, subpar graphics, overly realistic car physics, unintuitive and unchangeable gamepad controls (possibly the worst I've ever experienced), lengthy learning curve, bugs & glitches galore (even after latest patch), the radio stations are entirely uninspired, horribly implemented camera modes, sparse documentation, etc. etc. etc. I could go on and on. It looks like RockStar have gotten way too big for their britches. They obviously don't give a fig about the PC market, so why bother releasing atrocious console-to-PC ports anymore? Spare us computer owners the pain, please!… Expand

I have been waiting to install this.Believe me! Its a crap.I dont care what others say.Car Control is awful.I dont know why they dint give an option to turn off steering with mouse.Bloody thing. I wonder why this game uses much resources.I admit the physics is unimaginable and excellent.I experienced this myself.Why do they add much small details?so that it resembles the living?But this is pain in the butt.It has an excellent graphics.But at what cost?Completely buying a new PC?… Expand

I feel sorry for the poeple who have paid for this game (like my friend Steve). They are the only ones penalised by the DRM. Visuals are a bit better than San Andreas, but its a con. All of the great features of San Andreas were removed (no training, no silent kill). Too dumbed down.

really badly coded... horrible graphic glitches game runs bad even when PC and game are configured correctly. Multiplayer is extremely poor, the modding community on gta:sa managed to make a perfectly good multiplayer mod, that outshines Gta4 by far. Singleplayer is boring and repetitive, doing exactly the same thing over and over again, while spending 3/4 of the total time just driving to the locations.… Expand

Great game, story and all that stuff is good, but it's just unplayable. They really, really screwed up the optimization. I'm running a quad core with an 8800GT graphics card. I can run UT3 at 1280x960 max settings and get 40 frames minimum on the most resource-heavy maps. Call of Duty 4 max settings, I never go under 50 frames. This game? Lowest settings, same resolution, I get 24 frames in the safehouse. I get no more than 18 frames in the city.… Expand

I would right a nice review, I am sure, if the game actually worked. Have heard it is a great game when working, but I have failed to get it to do so. Have tried numerous different things to get it work and nothing has helped. I have finally given up.

I've had no problems running the game - and I thought the graphics looked pretty good. That's the only good thing about the game though - well, that and Nicko intimidating his enemies all the time.. playing through it felt more like performing a chore than actually playing. Sure, cars react more realistically. Not a good feature if you ask me - I want to have fun, not play a crappy real-life simulator where you drive around crappy cars that spin out of control if you're making a 90 degree turn while driving 40 kmh... As I said, the gfx looks good, but the environment is gritty and colorless. You have to maintain social relationships all the time, which is a complete downer - yet the game expects you to go bowling, darting, dating and all manner of lame, dumb things, just to keep your friends (of which you soon get way too much) interested in you. The motivation of the main protagonist is vague at best; he keeps trying to get money, but you can't do much with it... there goes too much time in learning how to play, how to operate vehicles, guns, phones, etc... it's not intuitive. I didn't have much fun playing this game, but I still played it just to see the storyline unfold and because I have some weird completion phobia - the reward, seeing the story unfold, certainly didn't justify the playthrough. I advice the shoddy buggy pc version of Saints Row 2 over this game a millions times over this sorry excuse for a game. At least Saints Row 2 was fun. And isn't that what a game's supposed to be, fun?… Expand

This was an amazing game, but rockstar and microsoft made this PC port a nightmare. You have to sign up to their ridiculous "clubs" and the performance is absolutely shameful. If you want to play this game, play it on the Xbox 360.

The game presents inferior quality compared to the ones prior to him. There is a feel of emptyness from the start to the end. You dont have half the choices you had in San Andreas, the world is smaller, more boring, the story is far worse, there are so many characters that you end up forgeting who is who and missing half of it. It feels like San Andreas story is more non-linear than IV�39;s, even though IV's is supposed to be made non-linear in some way. It is incredibly repetitive. The whole game end up being "going from point A to point B", there is no other reason to do anything else. Graphics are good, but at what cost? hell, they are not only incredibly heavy but also incredibly buggy! The radios are awful, they cannot be compared to any of those of any GTA that came before this one. Another thing that is just outrageous is the quantity of stereotipes there are in the game. From the main character, a russian immigrant, to radio programs talking about terrorism and stuff and the "american dream". Also, DRM protection ends up screwing up all the rest of the things the game had. Let alone all the things you have to do in order to play it (*cough social club and windows live cough*). The only thing done right in this game are the little details. Cars not turning on, deformable cars, etc. Although as i said, some of them are absolutly useless. (like taking a cab, the stupid shows you can go watching, etc). However this is not nearly enough to make IV a good game. All of what this game is made of is hype. A major step back from San Andreas.… Expand

The game itself simply amazing, as anyone who has played it for 10 minutes should know. However, PC user have again been screwed over. The late release, the mountains and mountains of bugs and glitches along with the terrible frame rates and useless patches really give a bad edge to the PC version of GTAIV.

Annoying and boring missions, that try to draw you in, but fail and little action, the story falls flat. The mechanics are not very good either, but that what makes this game fun because of the goofy mechanics. Only buy at a low price.

I just can't believe that users are giving this game a low rating. Yes there are some bugs with getting the game running on your pc. Yes it comes with an intrusive and slow game launcher. Yes it forces you to use games for Windows Live. Does it have high minimum specs to play at a smooth frame rate? Sure does. Are these issues a major pain in the butt? Sure they are. But none of those issues changes the fact that this is one of the best games ever to come to a PC. If you are looking for a PC game for the holiday season - this is it. Period. This game is incredible, it offers dozens of hours of gameplay - and because of its scalability, it will look even more incredible on your next PC. It would be a shame if someone didnt buy this game because of all the whiners taking out their frustation by giving it a low score. If you are smart enough to read and know how to use google- you should be able to get this game running in a few minutes without any problems. One of the best games I have ever played on the PC. Right up there with Bioshock, Half Life series, Crysis, and Doom series. Just buy it now and be happy.… Expand

The port is not so good as it is on ps3, well yeah. but still it's one of the most breathtaking games. i love it. rockstar, failing too much can cause you out of business, next gta will not be wanted so much as this one, this is for sure now.

I feel I have to defend against some of the negative views here - I'll try to present a more balanced review. In short, GTAIV, if you get it running, is a fantastic game, and I would rate it 9/10+ if it were not for the technical issues. The city is amazing, the cars handle brilliantly, the story is interesting, the characters are entertaining and the humorous dialogue regularly has me laughing out loud. There are bugs, but nothing close to game breaking for me. The bad: Fortunately I upgraded not long after getting this, but my old PC (1.86GHz Core 2) would not run it in any playable way. My new comp (3GHz core 2, HD 4870) runs it at 1680x1050 without any problems. So basically, unless you are well above the min specs, or are planning to upgrade, it's probably not worth getting just now. To me the worst thing is having to sign in to windows live (horrible system, doesn't always connect - and why should i have to always be onl) and rockstar social club to play. It is a rubbish system and I hope sales are hurt by it and rockstar seriously revamp things for their next release. So there you are, I'm sure it could have been many times better than it is had more time/resources been spent on the port than on the copy protection, but if you can get it running, it's a great game.… Expand

I heard nothing but bad things about this game. I have a pretty high end computer and it runs like crap at medium high settings. You have to have a card with 6846541867MB of texture memory to max out the draw distance. The install took years, even compared to GoW(one of the longest game install I have had). Your graphics card almost has no effect on the gameplay, no SLI/X-Fire support, more bugs than an insect exhibit at a zoo and needs a 12GHz quad core to handle the terrible excuse for a port of sloppy coding that was likely done overnight. I could only get ~20 fps on mediums settings with a 3.2GHz quad core at 1024*768. This game is terrible. I was so disappointed by the game performance, install time, size and 1300 things I had to sign up for I uninstalled the game the same day. I might consider purchasing it later if they can fix the bugs, add multi GPU support, fit it on one disk and clean up the sloppy code. Just because people are using quads and 4+GB of RAM is no excuse to make sloppy pitiful ports. Rockstar has lost a lot of support from this port. I think they should have not have hired chimps to code the game. The graphics are nice and that is all I can say positive bout the game.… Expand

I dont know if the professional critics actually played the game or just copied their reviews from the consoles. Or if they got some magical copy that wasn´t the worst optimized game in history of mankind. When I bought this game I had the second fastest single GPU on the planet and I got a fps between 18-28. The only game I cant max is Crysis but this is not even close to Crysis on the Graphic department or Physic. And Crysis I can paly on much higher settings, then this broken game. And all the people who think they play this on high settings have probably no checked their fps or screen resolution. + it´s still GTA + it looks okej for a GTA game + the cabs are great - Worst optimized game ever released - I hate the friend/ girlfriend thing - All the bloatware - The cars are handeling like crap A game that is broken cant get higher then 5. I give it a 3 because it´s not even close to the other GTA games and because of the bloatware.… Expand

Basically? It's a slap in the face. Even with an outstanding rig the graphics look like something I'd expect from a game more than a half a decade old, Rockstar continually tries to shove its Social Club down your throat, and basic game functionality such as saving your game requires you to have a Microsoft Live for PC account. Trust me folks, the user ratings don't lie on this one. Pass it by.… Expand

I really enjoyed the other grand theft auto games, i had high hopes for this one, but as it turns out, I ended up purchasing a poorly optimized slap in the face from Rockstar games. I have a computer more than capable of playing Crysis and Crysis Warhead, maxed out with at least 40 fps! I have a Q9550 @ 4 Ghz, and Two GTX 260's in sli, and it tells me that i can't max it out, so i turned down the settings, tried to start the game, wont let me, apparently my computer isn't good enough for the dickheads at rockstar, you think they would test this sort of thing, but obviously they don't, it's frustrating. and with the number of other quality games out there, i wouldn't waste my time with this one, move on, it's just not worth it.… Expand

Quote "All real PC games have save states but not this one, you need to go in a crap house and sleep for 6 hours.... =/ I don't care if save states makes game easier, that's how PC gamers play, we can't be bothered to replay something we've already done, that kind of crap is OK for crap consoles, but not in my PC!! NEVER!!." Focus on this bit we can't be bothered to replay something we've already done, that kind of crap is OK for crap consoles, A PC gamer with common sense who was not born yesterday has voted ZERO.… Expand

First things first, I *have* a high end computer - 9GB DDR3, i7 processor, and GTX 260. And this game simply FAILS to run on my machine. Everything is up to date, and even their benchmark tool cannot run as (as far as I can tell) the loading screens were corrupted upon installation. Options menus tell me that I cannot use more than 850 MB of my RAM and are simply the most atrocious thing I've ever seen for a major release. Lucky me that I got it on a Steam sale and have only lost about $8 from this absolute, throw away piece of trash. So now, here I sit, redownloading the entire 16GB game because Rockstar has failed to put everything together correctly, and now wtih my Rockstar Socail Club, Windows Live, and apparently Securom all built-in to a game that I purcheased through Steam, why should I bother to look into buying ANY other Rockstar releases? BTW - The only reason the PC version got such a high score is that Metacritic is pulling reviews from the console version of the game, since most reviewers didn't bother to install the PC release, since they were 7 months apart.… Expand

GTA IV on the PC could have had the potential to be an amazing game, but there are a slew of problems that prevent it from reaching classic status. I'll only bother to list my biggest gripe about this game: the controls, whether you're playing with a keyboard or gamepad, are easily the most poorly implemented I've ever seen in a computer game. Unresponsive and needlessly complex, they are an invitation to a migraine headache every time I try to play. Want to explore Liberty City? Good luck with that if you're using a gamepad. The camera scheme (auto-follow) prohibits you from viewing the surroundings by instantly snapping back to the default position unless your character or vehicle is standing still. And you can't change any of the camera options or buttons if you're playing on an XBox controller. WTF were RockStar thinking? Follow my advice and purchase Saint's Row 2 instead. Even with its faults, at least that game is playable.… Expand

I should have read some opinions before buy. NEVER BELIEVE CRITICS REVIEWS. BELIEVE THE USERS. look at the difference: 9 and 4.5 ! I just installed in my core 2 duo Geforce 8600GT, 4GB RAM. Game runs slow as hell. Full of desapearing textures, unplayable. Just like other million players. DON'T BUY IT until Rockstar release some real fixing patch.

I've played every GTA game since GTA London and this is the only one I've disliked. The biggest problem i encountered with this game was that the buildings started to disappear within about 15 minutes of gameplay(and the poor frame rate), and its not as though i have an old computer(2.8Ghz quad, 2GB ram, Radeon 4850). The only way to get around that problem is to have a memory optimizer running at the same time. That said, if i were to consider the gameplay alone, i would give it a 2 or 3, its not like i didnt have at least a few minutes of fun smashing the cars up in a variety of ways, but due to the "clown car" handling and the astounding lack of variety in the missions,aircraft(not one plane it would seem!) and environment i got bored within a couple of days. Maybe its just that R* spoiled us with the excellence of San Andreas and its epic range of activities, so, to finish i would say - DONT BUY IT! try mercs 2 instead.… Expand

THIS GAME IS TERRIBLE! Now listen, ignore the critics giving it 100 because they got a magical GTA 4 pc to play it on. Now my pc is pretty good but I didn't even have a chance to do the first mission, why? Well because I got a stupid runtime error and GTA IV has stopped working and this is with the steam version guys. It took almost 20 hrs to download on steam and you have to sign up for some stupid Rockstar social club to save your game! wtf?! also windows live is added to it which makes multiplayer 49x worse. It is good for the console as I have heard from others but not the pc. This has been the worst GTA of all time for the pc.… Expand

This game simply sucks. I could ignore the bad port but the gameplay and graphics simply sucks! All you have to do is drive from point A to point B with slow cars! The graphics look like god itself has shitted on the game, everything is so freakin' brown, all the colors + bloom are just killing my eyes. I simply can't play this game. And I doubt that anyone would like to pay 50$ for a horrible techdemo engine (gameplay doesn't count). People, there are better games in the world, why do you have to hype crap like this?… Expand

Gameplay, storyline, and multiplay is incredible. Graphics...well I suppose they COULD be good, but this game was coded SO poorly, it's impossible to tell. With a computer that surpasses the minimum requirements 10-fold, I was still forced to put all of the graphics settings on LOW in order to play with minimal lag. Keep in mind, there was STILL lag, and the low settings made graphics look like utter sh*t. Had Rockstar put more effort in perfecting the coding, this game would have been amazing. Looks to me like another rushed out pile of ...… Expand

Horribly ported to pc. Good luck getting it to work. I finally got mine to run fine but the thing continuously kicks me because "Your computer is running too slow". Rockstar is obviously trolling the pc community with this mess.

this game is simply a piece of **** but it's not just regular **** it's that kind of **** that sticks in your toilet and remains there after flushing it 2000 times! it's by far the worst PC port of a console game i've ever seen.
after trying the game on 4 different high-end computer, i still haven't been able to finish the first mission, because rockstar's "advanced" (i've put those quotation marks on purpuse) game engine is simply the worst looking, most buggy next-gen game engine. horrible textures, missing 3d models, object that pop out when you crash on them with your car, massive memory leaks, and so on. after playing it on my friend's xbox 360 i have to say that the story is the only thing that saves this game from being one of the worst games ever. it's actually a good game from that point of view. but please god tell me, why can i run 4 instances of unreal tournament 3 or crysis on ultra-high specs getting really good performance, but when i run gta4, i NEVER get more than 35 fps, with an averege of **** 20! that's UNPLAYABLE! and what i just don't understand, is why the **** do buildings, trees, and even STREETS pop out of nowhere when i move the camera? WHY??? THE GRAPHICS ARE SO ****TY IT SHULD RUN AT 200 FPS!!!
and what can i say about the sound effects? try shooting a gun in real life, and tell me if the sound it makes is the same as the one you hear in this crap of a game? i doubt. and what about radio stations? these radios take gigabytes of space on my **** hard drive, and most of the songs suck ass! HOLY **** where the **** was the quality control team when they tried the PC version of gta4? where they takin a **** or did the programmers put some drugs in their coffee, so they couldn't see all the **** on the screen?
what pisses me off even more is that some IDIOTS who reviewed this game gave it a 10/10! DID ROCKSTAR PAY YOU FOR NOT TRYING THE GAME??? OR WERE YOU JUST DRUNK AS **** WHILE REVIEWING IT?
in conclusion, after wasting 70 euros (that's like 90 mother**** dollars!) for this miserable piece of **** after downloading and installing almost 1 gb of crap that did nothing but slow down my computer, all i have to say is **** YOU ROCKSTAR for wasting my **** money! die!

In conclusion, ratings:
-graphics: 4.5 (could've been 6.0 if the game ran at 60 fps minimum)
-sfx: 4.0
-ost: 6.0
-gameplay: n/a
-story: 8.0

final score: 3/10 (not a **** average!)… Collapse

DO NOT BUY IF YOU WANT TO GET RID OF $20 THERE ARE LESS PAINFUL WAYS TO DO IT. I got it off steam installed it and immediately crashed black screen fatal error. Well I wasted some more time I wont get back doing about 20-25 steps off the steam forum(R* doesn't even have their own forum) trying to get it to work. This is completely unacceptable and I wont be buying rockstar games in the future.

Rockstar should hang their heads in shame: they've released some weak PC ports in the past (all of the GTA games, really), but this one takes the cake for total failure. Only this year have I finally (3+ years after release) been able to get the game to run solidly. When it runs properly, it's a fantastic game, probably my favorite of the series (although San Andreas is close). That has been a HUGE if, though, with 20-30 minute crashes being the norm, and one fix only leading to other, more difficult problems. Finally I figured out that the game was doing something no other "next-gen" game could pull off: it was taxing my graphics card so much that it was overheating and shutting down. No other game has been able to pull that off (including far more recent titles), and that's a testament to how poorly-coded the game was for the PC: my specs beat the **** out of the PS3 and yet I've had to struggle with an assortment of frame rate issues and texture glitches (the later of which I still haven't been able to solve to this day). It's about time that PC gamers stop taking this nonsense: build the game for the PC FIRST, then you can port it to the lesser systems, not the other way around.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. A very poor example of a game coming onto the PC port instead of trying to stabilize the games the game company tries to improve the graphics only to make much worse for people with low-end gaming rig, see I'm a person who owns a high-end rig but it still lags to about 15-20 fps I had to turn off all the textures setting only to find out that the game gets about 23-25 fps

Even then analyzing the story and the gameplay itself is nothing special and that 95% of the mission have nothing to do with the story which is about Niko Bellic trying grab the man who's betrayed his squad in the previous war, the mission feel like a set chores unlike in GTA San Andreas which most of the mission relating to story and trying to get back to the CJ once had in the hood.
The only other thing about this game that seems like something to praise is the cover-based system and that the only fun thing to do most of the time is to camp at the Bohan safehouse and kill some police officers having six stars but even then you can't do that because this game LAGS to much.
Lack of variety I see too can't get stronger, ridiculous clothing or getting fat which was the fun part about GTA SA.
Overall if you have the most powerful gaming rig in the world that us poor can't buy than GTA IV is up your alley but even then so is Crysis.… Expand

(Sorry, didn't know metacritic doesn't recognize paragraphs)
I just purchased this game for dirt cheap and I had absolutely no problems running the game in high detail on my newish PC - 3 years after release. It still feels like a waste of money. I heard many good things about this game from everyone and really seemed up my alley. I also own an Xbox controller for the PC so I was able to enjoy the same controls 360 users have. All in all, I am playing a just plain better version of GTAIV. All that said, after a good 20 hours, I have to say this is the most overrated piece of twaddle in gaming history. I am astounded at how many perfect 10s this game received despite a laundry list of glaring problems, affirming my suspicion that games are rated on graphics and presentation alone, with 0% of fun factor being considered.

This game has some awesome moments. The realistic graphics really make for some cinematic scenes. Gun fights can be amazing in destructible environments, with pillars being shredded by gunfire. The realistic graphics and physics give the automobile-related incidents a new "oh snap" factor. I really enjoyed how the new realistic and serious twist put more gravity into your violent actions. It's just too bad the game does almost nothing to nurture these elements. First of all, the controls are godawful. Niko moves like he's wearing a 60-lb backpack and the cover button is just plain clunky. The snap-to-target system rarely chooses an enemy close to your reticule. Instead it just seems to choose a random yokel fully behind cover while someone that was in your reticule before you hit the aim button fills you up with machine gun fire. This is great considering that missions have no checkpoints, so there is no feeling of frustration like driving halfway across town to pick up a car again because Niko was too stupid to target the guy 5 feet in front of him or you didn't know you were going to need a really fast car to chase a helicopter. It becomes a bit easier, later, when you realize all of the missions are a exactly the same. Drive to point A (maybe on a timer), kill guy ( maybe chase him in car), maybe lose the police. This gets real old in a game with so much potential for mayhem.

In fact, that leads into the main problem of the game: it just seems to want to waste your time instead of provide fun things to do. Your friends call constantly to do inane, unwelcome minigames, others constantly call your phone to make you sit through a five minute cut scene before doing the same mission again. You are constantly being nagged to do anything but free roam, which is OK I guess because the game provides absolutely no incentive to free roam. You can go on a rampage, of course, but make sure to save first because the game does nothing but you put in the hospital or take away all your weapons for causing a ruckus, nor does it provide you with anything resembling fun targets (not unarmed civilians) for some good ol' action while free roaming. Instead, why not just follow the storyline? It has its moments, but its altogether too long, thanks to driving around, again with no incentive to go really fast except to have to restart the mission because your passenger flew out the window. I won't get started on the phone as well. I can't believe you have to manually dial any number in something that is supposed to be fun. It's also great that Niko can't carjack while someone flaps his gums on phone with him for 5 minutes. Of course, if you are really bored, you could watch TV in game instead of turning off the game and watching actual good TV (What?), go to a cabaret or comedy club instead of visiting Youtube, or any other diversion that has nothing to do with playing a game. You could also slow down and listen to the radio. There is a huge list of licensed music which I was looking forward too, but have heard maybe 5 songs so far in between the 20 minutes straight of cringe-inducing unfunny radio ads, DJ comments, and news breaks, not to mention the humor of the radio/TV doesn't mix at all with the semi-serious tone of the story. I ended up turning off the music altogether and using Windows Media Player in the background.

All in all, 99% of what this game has to offer is entirely unwelcome. It's really too bad, because it presented a sweet physics system and infinite potential to turn a modern city upside-down. Instead, it envelops itself in self-important drama, asinine courier tasks, and inconvenience in the sake of immersion.

Maybe GTA4 was a sign of the times. Maybe it was the draught of games we had in 2008, maybe the economic scare was so serious that we all just wanted to escape into a virtual world, even if it wasn't very fun. Maybe it's just the forerunner in a trend of games for people who hate games but just want to escape.… Expand

Terribly optimized for a pc to the point of being broken. Even to this day it fails to run on many hardware config's at a playable framerate. If you want to play this game, make sure you are running a quad core cpu with a high clock rate and a single - powerful gpu. Crossfire produces negative scaling, Sli is buggy, and a duel core cpu will produce a scattershot fps. The plus side to all of this mess is that it's far better looking on the stray computer than does meet all these requirements. The game itself fantastic, with an involving (albeit well tread) story, with great action, and a weighty physics system. If this game runs well on your system - 10/10. If it runs poorly. 0/10.… Expand

The GTA 4 is a worthy part of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. It's rather similar to Vice City than San Andreas which can make people disappointed but in my opinion it's a perfect game. Great graphics, enjoyable gameplay and a good multiplayer are contained. The system requirements are not as high as they say, they are acceptable.

I bought this game on Steam and it won't run--it crashes on startup on our 64-bit Windows 7 machine with a GeForce GTX 470. Steam doesn't give refunds, so all I can do is offer this negative review.

After upgrading my computer to 2012 standards, I can finally enjoy the game at it's highest detail. With mods like iCEnhancer , it looks totally amazing, almost real-life visuals! On top of that, good old GTA gameplay and amazing voice acting and euphoria physics are just too much fun to play with!
Too bad we had to wait 3 years to finally properly run this.

As with previous GTA games, this one is packed with hours of action adventure fun in a sandbox that you can call yours. Shoot an old lady, blow up a helicopter, have complete fun causing a mini apocalypse. Make sure you buy the add ons for even more fun. However the PC port is a disaster. Random crashes and bugs, many cheaters online, lots of glitches, cant support SSI. I have a VERY high end alienware desktop, and its still bad. Its about as bad as the PC ports of Saints row 2 and Driver 3. As said before, Play it on console. Make sure you get it on PS3, the online play is free unlike crapbox 360.… Expand

I'm not rating this game down because it's a poorly optimized game for PC, because I have a computer that can run it fine. In GTA IV, graphics are obviously the peak. For me, San Andreas was a better game because of more to do, not because of the graphics. In my opinion, GTA IV: 9/10, GTA SA: 10/10.

Pros: -LOT of effort put into making the environment believable (radio banter, TV shows) -characters you can empathize with Cons: -missions are repetitive -you have to start all the way from the beginning if you fail a mission, and this includes the tedium of driving to get there or frantically running into the street to hail a cab -despite the vast city, there are very few places you can actually interact with, and that interaction is not compelling in the slightest (i.e. playing pool, watching a cabaret show)
-AWFUL driving controls (it's supposed to be 'realistic,' but all it accomplishes is frustrating the player)
-boring, badly designed combat system (both melee and shooting), bad cover system

Summary:
On the whole, I felt like I was playing a drama show. I was getting from one story mission to the other as fast as possible so I could watch the next cutscene. I cared for Niko as a character, it's just that the character deserved to be in a better game.… Expand

After playing GTA:SA, I must say that the graphics have certainly improved (drastically), and Liberty City is bigger and better than ever. Although this game is slightly less open world than I would have hoped, (in comparison to GTA:SA), the ragdoll and crash physics system is more or less fun and hilarious to play with.
Microsoft does, however, need to optimize the packets sent in multiplayer, as there is severe drag and lag unrelated to ISP provided speeds and quality.… Expand

A highly over-rated game. It is very clear that Rockstar developed this as a console title, because on PC it is very unoptimized, it requires more from your computer to max than many high-end titles released today, but not looking nearly as good. The combat and driving of the game is also very mediocre and the story uninteresting. It is also restricted to the incredibly dumb Games for Windows Live service, even if you buy from steam. That said, it can still be very fun for short periods of time when trolling around in multiplayer with friends.… Expand

This port is broken and utterly worthless. Furthermore after you complete the several pages of registration you'll find it would've been easier to pirate the game. Utterly trollish and asinine port.

Grand Theft Auto IV represents one of the worst attempts to make even mildly serious game in completely psychedelic franchise. Good job R*, you just ruined GTA.

Buggy PC port is also a serious issue.

Overall, Really good Game. Ive owned this game for several years now, but only just recently got a new computer with Radeon HD 7770, and I'm finally able to play this game it was meant to be played. The other reviewers are right, the game is tough to play when its slow and choppy, and requires a high end videocard. The social aspect of the game is a toss-up. I like that I can call characters to accelerate through a particular person's quests/storyline, but I absolutely hate how all these new social things like playing pool (yes, u have to actually play virtual pool), or go bowling (yes that too), so forth... its no fun. This is GTA!!! compared to San Andreas or the previous ones, I would have liked less social missions, where the objective is solely to spend time with the person, and more ACTION ... more stealing cars, spectacular shootouts, what about recruiting followers/gang members??? What happened to all that?… Expand

I am not a pro gamer. After beating borderlands I got this game in an offer in Steam to play with. I have already played the other versions of GTA namely, GTA 2, 3, Vicecity, and san Andreas. One thing that is critically acclaimed to be unique is the cover system, car driving mechanics and AI. Cover system: None of the other GTA provides this. It is really amazing to use cover and die not often. This game gives a lot of scope to creativity unlike other versions. You can try multiple ways to complete a mission, although we will be driven according to the scope of the mission. Car mechanics: This is really cool. Not all the cars burns into ashes when damaged completely. No two cars are same, for instance driving a Hummer is completely different and stable than driving a coupe. The damage sensitivity is also perfectly matched with the car type. However, I have seen few glitches in the missions where the enemies could smash and throw a hummer up in the air. AI: You can't stay and shoot from one place anymore. Enemies come striking at you bombarding like a multiplayer human opponent. I have just beaten the game. I haven't experienced Multiplayer yet. I have seen Social Club not logging in often.… Expand

Poorly optimized console port.

Awsome game,very nice gameplay modes such as fake internet in the game,hot dog stands,online dating,underground illegal weapon shops,computer in cop car,taxi rides and much more,graphics is nice,has a huge story with different endings,really enjoyed playing this game

Graphism : 18/20 (Strolling through a beautiful New York is cool !)
Sounds : 19/20 (Lots of good music as usual, just -1 for the sound of cars not top)
History : 20/20 (Just huge, with a main frame has multiple choice)
Gamplay : 18/20 (He lost some fun, but he won at realism !)
Lifespan : 20/20 (Illimité. .. it's GTA ...)

Final Score: 19/20 One of the best games of all time !

4+/5 (Very Good) I suggest you buy the game and play it. Now. But be warned though, if you play the PC version, the graphics are sometimes buggy and really break the immersion you might have build up while playing. Oh and apparently the game is rough on the hardware reqs. Yeah, it is.

Buy it. (for X360 if you can, if not the PC version does the job really well)

The GTA series are the only open-world games where I've been content just goofing off around the city, and GTA IV specifically has had more replay value for me than any other game I've owned. Years after the initial release, this is still the game I go back to when I'm bored with everything else.

I don't how they manage to make a game so fun like this one. Even if you end the story the game never ends. The effects and design of this game it's not at 100% mostly because of some vehicles that are not 100% functional like they used to be on GTASA, but that's mostly because it's a new engine. Maybe on the future, with GTAV we will be able to see this game working at 100%, and believe me, i'm going to be there, playing it.… Expand

The most advanced in the series to date, absolutely amazing game. Though has some optimisation issues and it took several years until the majority of PCs started to run this beast smoothly =)

Very good game, but worst port that has ever made to the PC. Bilions of bugs, very bad optimized, so very "heavy" game, and very bad FPS. The game isn't protected very well from cheaters.

DON'T DRINK THE COOLAID! This game is down right terrible for PC. Does Splinter Cell: Double Agent for PC ring a bell to anyone? If so, then you already know what I'm talking about.

If not, believe me when Joel and I tell you that this is a terrible PC port of the game. Do not buy it!! I AM WARNING YOU!

I give it a 2/10. The two goes towards the marketing team for doing such a great job at over hyping this craptastic game. If it wasn't for marketing doing their job ridiculously well, I would have rated 1/10.… Expand