Metascore
90

Universal acclaim - based on 40 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 38 out of 40
  2. Negative: 0 out of 40
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  1. The entire game has a feeling of misdirected effort, as if Rockstar sat down to rejuvenate the franchise without knowing particularly how and simply stuck every idea, gimmick and cliché they could think of into one big ball, like some sort of Katamari of game elements with the old GTA feeling at the core.
  2. Overall, I’m simply disappointed with Rockstar when it comes to Grand Theft Auto IV. PC gamers already get shafted with the slow GTA releases compared to the consoles. To have all the bugs at launch that it did makes me wonder what happened during the testing period. It’s also missing a lot of great features that were included in San Andreas.
User Score
7.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 3557 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Feb 28, 2022
    10
    Tagline: "Phenomenal open-world, modern-city masterpiece that is still more detailed than any open world game as of February 2022"

    What
    Tagline: "Phenomenal open-world, modern-city masterpiece that is still more detailed than any open world game as of February 2022"

    What specs you need to run it 60fps - 1080p or 4K, without stutter or lag?
    - Let's make one thing clear, you should never max out "View Distance", "Detail Distance" and "Vehicle Density". But good news is that you don't need to max out either of these, because game looks already perfect when you set all these settings to 50%. Everything after 50% is very minor and not necessary, but takes away huge amount of fps, so it's not worth it and with 50% it will already look miles better than Console versions. So for conclusion, yes, this is the best looking version of that game.

    Now, to run it in 4K, High Settings, you need minimum "RTX 2060" or "RX 6600 XT" for graphics card, For CPU Ryzen 3600 or I7 7700.

    Now let's make one thing clear, this game was extremely ahead of time. More than any game ever. "Resident Evil 4" (2005) was revolutionary in it's own ways and is still amazing game, no doubt, but what GTA 4 did, changed open world games forever.

    Let's start with physics. You wont find this good physics from any open world game. None. Keep in mind this was 2008.

    New York truly feels alive, more alive than modern open world games like Just Cause 3/4 or Cyberpunk 2077. Whole city is extremely detailed, especially by 2008 standards and all of that looks absolutely phenomenal, if you play this game in 4K.

    You can go inside hospitals (fully detailed), inside apartment buildings, inside police station, abanoned places, etc. There's so much to explore and find in this incredibly crafter open world. Every inch of that map shows how much passion and talent was put into making this incredible game.

    Story is fun, long and rich, full of loads of memorable characters, missions and locations.

    GTA IV is timeless masterpiece, that truly showed what is possible in gaming, most detailed open world game to date and one of the best games of all time.
    Full Review »
  2. erei
    Jan 4, 2010
    3
    This GTA is a real GTA, no problems with it. The characters we meet and the hero are fun, and are still the GTA spirit. But the port is This GTA is a real GTA, no problems with it. The characters we meet and the hero are fun, and are still the GTA spirit. But the port is probably the worst never seen, we have lots of inexplicable FPS drop, crashes, various bugs,... Even capcom did better port. You need a high end Graphic card to play the game, with low settings. The game is very long, probably too much, there is a long beginning, and many "useless" missions. The friends, and social thing we have ingame are quite fun and new, but sometimes get boring. You want to call friends NPC all day, and have dinner with them, and enjoy sending mail ? Buy sims3, we are in GTA... Conclusion : Pro : -NPC and hero are cool, as usual with GTA -story is interesting enough -the awesome amount of extra content is really cool (from cinema to tv show and internet) -graphism are not too bad, but not specially good con : -FPS drops on most graphic card (i have a nvidia 275GTX and i need to play on very low to keep my fps above 20) -bugs, bugs, and sometimes, bugs -the "friends" system become more and more boring further you go in the game. Expect to do something with one of them at least once by half an hour to keep them friendly. Spending about 10m to do so. So it make 1/3 of the game involving social things with IA. -many repetitive missions, slow beginning -all the copy protection there is, rockstar social club + windows media live,... Honestly, i guess there is far less trouble if you hack it. Advice : buy it, and download an illegal copy for installation purpose. I guess on console i should have note 6 or more, but im PC user, and your port is total garbage. Full Review »
  3. EyjoK.
    May 18, 2010
    10
    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 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. Full Review »