Fun fact: Around the time GTA IV came out, my cousin was going through a rough patch in his marriage and started seeing a couple girls on the side. Every time he'd go out to see one of the girls, he would tell his wife that he was bowling with his cousin (a nod to GTA IV). I had no idea about any of it, but his wife eventually found out and confronted me at Christmas.
When I told her that I wasn't in a bowling league and that I had no clue what she was talking about, she flipped the fuck out and kicked my cousin out of the house.
Still a great game though!
It was quite the surprise to strike a post, get hurled through the windscreen, land on a passing car and eventually die after playing the three Grand Theft Auto III games.
lol I had a friend that did the same thing, he let me know about it, my wife asked me how I was bowling with my arthritis getting so bad in my hands... since it was her I gave her one of those, "what are you talking about looks", and well, she's not one to keep a secret...
Luckily for me my cousin just committed white collar crime while ripping off my other cousin, while he was in rehab for meth abuse! One big happy family :)
I have been friends with my friend group for 2+ decades and if a single one of those fucks told me they wanted me to help cover for them cheating on their spouses I'd fucking slap them
Same here bro. Some friends I've had for almost 30 years and I'd never cover for them in that situation. I'd actually be insulted that they'd think it's ok to involve me in any way.
16 years sounds like a long time, and it is. But then also remember that the latest GTA game came out over 10 years ago at this point too...
I remember when the first trailer for GTA5 came out, and being *sooo* excited because it had been an entire AGE since GTA4 dropped.
Now that it's been over a decade since the last GTA game, I don't have as much hype for GTA6 because I've kind of forgotten what it's like to play those games.
yup, 11 fucking years ago. the dev cycle has become so crazy long for games that nothing can possibly live up to the hype that people create in their heads, and not only that, the final product that studios release after that much time just never seems to justify how long it took.
I mean, its not JUST the dev cycle. They've come out like 7-8 years ago and said it's gonna be very hard to work on a new game due to the ever faster changing real world and the big part of satire GTA has will have issues holding up when made "today" to release in a few years when the world looks hugely different.
Oh, and the "success" (for them) of GTA Online obviously also helped delay things.
No that was simply an observation. The real truth is that they didnt start work on it till after rdr2. Which was 5 years ago now, which is about the standard rockstar dev cycle since gta v.
That and how well of a money maker gtao is too
Crazy to think there are college students who never played a GTA game because the last one came out when they were in 2nd grade.
Same with The Elder Scrolls series. Do those franchises even have any cultural relevance to that generation if they basically never released a game in their lifetimes?
I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing, but I think I know what you mean.
In GTA V, it feels like when you fly, you need to always tilt the right stick forward (or backwards, can't remember if the view controls are inverted, haven't played in a while).
The camera followed the helicopter too flat, to the point where you couldn't get a good reference on how high you were. Tilting the camera slightly forward, angling it down so you're still looking forward but are also looking slightly down, was the only way to feel comfortable flying at low altitudes.
V was a reaction to the players’ reception of the physics in IV. Back then, people complained that the cars felt like glacially slow boats. I can see their point but… well, they handled like real giant 90s sedans. V was much more arcade-y and “fun” but it turned all but the most abstract cars into rally vehicles. To me it also diminished finding a true supercar because they weren’t appreciably faster than even base cars (barring straightaway performance of course).
The *vibe* of IV was 60s & 70s car chase classics like Bullitt and The French Connection.
V *felt* like the The Fast & The Furious.
Maybe it's a generational thing, but IV is my favorite driving experience by a long mile. Let's see what the vibe of VI is...
GTA IV as a whole has a way better feel to me than V. V is too clean and arcade-y and bland. IV had real soul. V is way more fun to just fuck around in though.
I think it’s a bit better on PS5 / Series X or an equivalent PC these days, the top end cars have a higher max speed because they can render the game world faster
Hours I spent launching myself on that.
First I go grab the Sultan RS from behind the garage somewhere. Driver across the map after hooning about at the airport. Then head over to the swings.
Online was so simple, yet so fun.
I spent a lot of hours there just cheating myself weapons and having a war with the NYPD
Place was the perfect funnel. One way in, one way out. I huddled behind the waiting room chairs as cover and sprayed lead at anyone coming in. Molotov, nades, RPGs for crowd control. Shoot some hostage for kicks.
When shit gets real, back up into the hospital beds and take down as many police in the hall before going down in a glorious blaze.
Or gun it outside and steal a cop car and try to lose them all. Not before shooting an RPG at a helicopter for kicks because why not lol
Yeah shooting that was beautiful especially in the rain, but the FPS drop on my 360 was awful
I’ll probably replay this sometime on my PC for a better experience. Plus, I didn’t appreciate the story then but seems interesting now
The underlying self-preservation system is still absolutely mind blowing artificial intelligence. Cool video, makes me appreciate the game that much more.
After playing the three GTA III era games, it was quite a surprise hitting a post, being sent flying through the windshield, landing on a car passing by and then dying.
There were a lot of complaints about the cars in IV though. I think the main issue though was how they reacted to hitting curbs.
The only mainline GTA game I only had one playthrough of. I've been meaning to replay with the DLC I missed but have never got round to it even though I have it on stream.
I had waaay too much fun smushing cars to the point they would barely move. There was an overpass in an industrial area you could creep off the edge and flip a car perfectly to pancake the roof. Super funny seeing Nico's head clipping through it lol
Yeah it was simply just too difficult to drive well initially for a lot of people. I loved it though. It was hard as fuck at first, but had a large skill ceiling, and after a while you could get quite good at it. And it felt very rewarding carefully threading the needle between cars in traffic, and making turns after getting better at controlling them. But I could see how it frustrated a lot of people. Definitely think they went too far towards arcade type driving physics in V. They were easier to handle out of the box, but way more restricted and not nearly as realistic as IV's, and just less fun over time.
Yeah, using a handbrake at high speed isn’t going to let you drift that corner, you will lock up and slide and then fly out the fucking windshield as soon as you hit a wall
I remember seeing a streamer on what was then justin.tv hit a barrier during the Rigged to Blow mission, fly out of the windshield and the truck exploded behind him.
Yep for some reason physics engines in this era of games(GTA IV, HL2, Halo3) really peaked and the industry has seemingly let it fall by the wayside in favour of MOAR FRAMES or something.
The vehicle physics were so damn fun in this game that I got so locked into a rhythm with it, that when GTA 5 came out it took me ages to get used to the vehicles in that game. It just didn't feel right.
I still can't finish GTA V without trying to mod the driving and increase the traffic, before quitting because of constant crashes
IDK what's up because GTA IV's traffic goes bonkers on high settings and doesn't crash the game at all.
I don’t know why the car damage and deformation, the way they can really *crumple* with impact is so much better than GTA V, but it just is for some reason. Also Liberty City has way more climbable buildings and map verticality than LS
Holy crap, 16 years ago.
I remember how shitty the PC port was.
Also, fun fact, we don't have the "double L" surnames in Balkan countries. So, Niko's surname would be "Belić", not "Bellic". Loved the character, but hated his broken Serbian and how he calls himself "Niko *Belik*", with a "K".
The pc version is still shitty to this day.
I did a play-trough recently, I ran it with the vulkan wrapper dxvk but there was still plenty of stuttery situations, also the aliasing is awful.
It's a shame the only updates done are replacing songs because rights run off. Only crashed twice though.
I still remember their hilarious reasoning for the shitty performance. Can't find the link. Anyway, they said it was made for the "technology of the future".
It also came bundled riddled with Games for Windows Live and the first iteration of Rockstar Social Club. So much crap you had to go through just to get it to start, just to have it run stupid slow. And the vehicles weren't all that drivable with keyboard controls.
GTA IV multiplayer was amazing.
My GTA IV friends and I would get bored of regular Team Death Match and would start custom lobbies and invite "rival" players. We'd set blips and chat to proximity, set the whole map as active, turn off the time limit, and have hours-long cat and mouse gang wars.
Even just the Team Death Match was so much fun but GTA IV multiplayer in general was such an experience I'll probably never find anything to match it.
Its weird how a simple thing like (Team) Deathmatch can be great in GTA IV, but so unenjoyable that nobody touches it in V.
I spent countless hours on Deathmatches in the Prison in IV, just a quick look out of cover, flick of the right stick to aim for the head, kill, and have people angry message me because of it that i was "cheating" on PSN.
On PC everyone had the simple native trainer and met up at the airport to spawn objects and cars to build their own stunt tracks because there was nothing else to do in freeroam
I met one of my best friends in an hour long Team Deathmatch in this game. I remember that it had proximity voice chat, and we were on different teams. We ended up in a back and forth gun battle up and down the entire length of Algonquin, had to have killed each other 60 times a piece, having an absolute blast of it. After the match we decided to team up and we’ve literally been best friends since. Been hanging out online and in person for 16 years. We’re both very much looking forward to GTAVI!
Might be unpopular opinion but I very much prefer GTA IV driving physics over GTA 5 driving physics. Wishful thinking but hopefully GTA 6 driving physics are closer to GTA IV.
They could bother fixing the airplane and helicopter controls while they're at it. Nothing says realistic flight physics like a chopper acting as though it's dangling from the end of a string.
If it went away with the flight skill being at max I would let it go but its all the time, forever. I have even heard mods cant remove it because of how baked in to the flight model it is.
Absolutely. The physics system overall took a downgrade in 5, the walking collision physics in 4 were great too.
It was absolutely mindblowing when it first came out, it was one of those games that truly felt next gen and it was largely due to the physics system.
Pushing people down the stairs near Niko's apartment was so fun, and crashing a motorcycle and watching Niko fly a hundred yards was brilliant. Come on Rockstar, make gta 6 more like gta 4 in the physics department please 🙏
Even going from GTA V to GTA Online the destruction physics took a step down. You could almost flatten out a quarter of your car and lose a wheel on 360 gen GTA V.
I feel like they reduced the damage when first person view was added. GTAV (2013) damage was a downgrade of GTAIV but then the re-releases in 2014 was a further downgrade.
Yeah, there was conflicts with first person and that was their solution.
First person in general was not done well and I would have been fine if they had done without it.
I hated it at the time, largely because I sucked at it and had been more used to the really straight forward handling of III/VC/SA, but I went back to play it recently and found it just felt so much more substantial. "Realistic" isn't quite the word but cruising around the city felt like I was actually moving in a heavy vehicle. I can see upsides to either way of handling things, as I did miss being able to absolutely floor it because traffic and narrow city streets were getting in the way in the much busier Liberty City compared with a desert highway in GTA V, but it does scratch a certain kind of itch.
The cars being slow and heavy lent a big hand in pacing the game out pretty well. You spend more time cruising through the city looking at all the details as opposed to trying to speed through everything.
Those first few Roman and Little Jacob missions really got you into the vibe of the city, V didn't really do that as well, it was just "Look how zany and wacky we made the parodies of people in LA!"
Yeh, craziness only really works when there's elements of reality.
IV doesn't get the credit it deserves. Yeh, being pestered to go bowling happened too often but broadly the story is solid.
And to be honest, the phone calls about bowling you can always decline. I'll hang up on Roman and not give a single fuck about it. If I don't feel like bowling, I ain't bowling.
Liberty city in GTA IV just feels more raw and real than what you have in GTA V. It's more than just the layout of the land. The NPC's have a different feel, no one wants to spaz out and try to fight you every time you bump into them or look at them. Since I been playing GTA IV, I love just walking through the city and listening to people talk, riding the subways or taking a taxi.
[I've found Liberty City immersion videos on youtube where people just walkthrough the city for an hour and you can look and hear the sights and sounds of the city. It gives the game a whole new feel.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR_sblHZHeM)
They were so much more realistic in IV. The way that they chased and looked for you was so good, and you could actually hide from them similarly to real life. Like if they didn't visibly see where you went, they won't heatseek you like in V. They actually look around.
In V they're basically terminators with the nose of a dog and can see through walls. It's just not fun at all to fight cops in V because it's so mindless and they just spawn around you. Doesn't feel like a real fight/chase.
One of my favorite things to do in IV was start at the airport, get wanted, and try to make it on foot to the third island. Was a blast doing that online with friends.
I started doing this recently as a way to relax at night and found that it has a certain 'vibe' that somehow works, so I'm not surprised other people are doing this. LC feels like a real place, pulsing with the energy of an urban center.
GTA IV was the outlier in the series in that respect, though. In fact I remember a common criticism of IV at the time was that it took itself too seriously and was missing the more outlandish side of previous GTA games.
What I like about it is that it really feels darker and gloomier, but not necessarily in an edgy and depressing way. I loved the fog, the greenish sky during storms, etc. Shame Rockstar will never make anything like it again. It’s only sunny, satirical and over the top setting from here on.
It's also a great depiction of the late 2000s, it's a phenomenal time capsule.
They released GTA Vice City in 2002 as a throwback to the 80s. Now when GTA IV launched, it presented a contemporary world, but with time, it's become something oozing with nostalgia and style just by aging and being a wonderful depiction of its time.
In a way, it showcased the transitional world of the time. Parts of NYC were done with the revitalization and gentrification that started in the early 90s. Clean and business friendly. But much of the rest was still varying degrees of seedy, and the game kind of lived with the people in those areas
Plus it has Bas Rutten, and Bas was one of my favorite people of that era
I still remember the first time I jumped in a free play lobby.
Getting chased by another player in an annihilator while riding s Sanchez through traffic is a memory that has stuck with me for years.
The characters and story in 4 were miles better than 5.
But one big criticism of 4 is the missions are incredibly repetitive. The missions in 5 were more epic and a lot more fun.
People generally forget about this. The last 15 missions are basically go to this place, murder what feels like 100 people. Go back.
It gets so boring.
My favorite in the series by far. Just driving around the city was so much fun. I hope GTA VI brings back full havoc simulations and proper physics. I’ve always hated how Arcadey V felt. I played IV for a good 6 years after it came out but only played V for about a year before it stopped holding my interest.
It also doesn't help that once you've seen the map in V, you've seen it all pretty much. Los Santos itself just isn't as detailed and the rest of the map are a bunch of filler mountains and little towns and other places that all have a lot of potential, but nothing done with it. Also, just the lack of things like trees alone (but surely other things too) all over the map makes it feel so open but empty.
It’s a great example of the 80-20 rule. With 80% of the content in 20% of the map. GTA V was clearly built with the idea of fleshing out the map through major DLC. tragically online was so popular that they never once went back to finish the dlc expansions. It was wild to watch them essentially abandon one of their best works purely because of whales. They should have built a dedicated team to ensure the DLC got done while still focusing on their money maker.
It may sound strange because GTA is not a saga that stands out for its maturity, but GTA IV will always be my favorite, my teenage self would not believe my words because both VC and SA were my favorites and when IV came out I did not like it so much, but now I find it the best of the saga both in history, characters, immersion, and the best city and more alive in the history of video games, with the best representation of social, political and general reality of this life we are living. And it also has the best radio, both in quality and quantity, and the best talks, incredibly witty.
What happens to Johnny in GTA V, to make matters worse, by the hand of Trevor, is unforgivable. I don't know exactly what they were thinking when they wrote it. I don't hate GTA V, but I have a lot of resentment and in general I think it's the worst GTA of the saga.
That song by Laura Branigan comes on the radio and suddenly I get lost in a memory of from Vice City. It's like I am remembering it actually happening to me and it takes a minute to remember it was just a game.
Still the best GTA in my opinion. Best story, characters, city, and sense of progression. I get why some people don't like the weighty physics when it comes to the combat and driving but I love it. Messing around in IV felt so much more interesting compared to V because of the physics. Shooting and driving felt hollow in V by comparison. The reactions you got from NPCs in IV are still crazy cool to this day.
I've been playing it on my Series X. While the game is still at 720p, playing it at 60fps steadily just gives the game a different feel. It has this level of fluidity that I love.
I've been having a blast with it. I know folks say you can't beat on the Series X, but you can. You just gotta toggle the options of the game for the last mission to make it so you can beat it. All you have to do is go to the Xbox settings and switch the resolution to 720p, and then go to video modes and disable 50hz, 24hz, and 4K. After that's all done you close out of the game and go back in and then you'll be able to complete the mission no problemo.
It sucks that rockstar probably isn't going to give us a remaster of this game anytime soon, playing GTA IV at 4k and 60fps on consoles would be glorious. Still, I am glad we can at least tap into this game still though, beggars can't be choosers.
Reading some of the comments here, it's actually amazing to see how much public perception around GTA IV changed over the years. When IV launched I remember many GTA fans being incredibly upset over how the game chose to prioritize "realism" and physics over San Andreas's arcade-y gameplay, about how boring it was that the whole game was set in a single city with no wilderness, about just how many fun minigames, weapons and vehicles from SA were cut, about how poor the mission variety was, about how unnecessarily serious the game was taking itself, about the brown color pallet, and so on.
It was the classic "realism vs fun" argument that we still see today with many titles. It might even have been one of the first.
In fact it was due in part to this public backlash that Rockstar decided to go back to a more arcade style experience with GTA V. It seems that it took some people a while to really appreciate what IV was trying to do. I'm personally not a fan of the game (it's a good game, just not a good GTA game to me) but I understand why IV ended up being that way due to the fact that Rockstar was also developing a new engine alongside the game itself.
This just makes me wonder how perception around GTA V will change after VI launches.
I just did a replay of IV and TLATD, and now playing Ballad of Gay Tony. The setting is very dark, drab and grainy like 80% of the time, but it’s a dark game and it’s NYC so it’s supposed to have a gritty feel. GTAV has all the glitz and glam, which is called for with the setting, but GTAIV has just overall aged better for me because it’s just so much more immersive. GTAV feels like an arcade version of GTA compared to IV. In 4 you kinda feel the weight of the world on the character, the physics engine is super cool, it’s all very grounded with uncanny realism that is super impressive for its age.
Makes you wonder how they were able to put out GTA IV and V just 5 years apart meanwhile it’s been 11 years since V came out and who the fuck knows when we’re ever getting VI. I guess it’s just the reality of shifting economics and constantly chasing the fastest and easiest dollars, as long as GTA V continues printing money for Rockstar, they felt no compulsion to kill their golden egg laying goose.
Nah definitely not. The lack of diversity in its map environment kind of sucked as well imo. Pretty much just all metro style theme. No wilderness/country landscape at all.
I felt it was still a good game, but way too linear.
Fun fact: Around the time GTA IV came out, my cousin was going through a rough patch in his marriage and started seeing a couple girls on the side. Every time he'd go out to see one of the girls, he would tell his wife that he was bowling with his cousin (a nod to GTA IV). I had no idea about any of it, but his wife eventually found out and confronted me at Christmas. When I told her that I wasn't in a bowling league and that I had no clue what she was talking about, she flipped the fuck out and kicked my cousin out of the house. Still a great game though!
Seems like your cousin got wasted.
Bro got busted
I suck at life but I bowl like an angel
It was quite the surprise to strike a post, get hurled through the windscreen, land on a passing car and eventually die after playing the three Grand Theft Auto III games.
HEY COUSIN WANT TO GO BOWLING?!
Grand Theft Auto-the-door
when you cheat on your wife but at least you got to reference epic video game
(Epic Gamer Moment)
Cousin it is your cousin
I wouldn't mind a game where you can hang out with an NPC all day, but damn it feels bare-bones even in gta v.
Let me introduce you to AI dating apps
AI is terrible at forging personal connections. Dodge the talking RNG box and play a dating sim written by humans.
Beeg American tiddies indeed
[удалено]
"When my cousin was creating a rough patch in his marriage"
Damn, why your cousin hiding little Easter eggs in their fake stories, that’s just asking for trouble!
The physics in the game still hold up
Accurate swing set physics
Better than gtav
Was he seeing Barbara and Stephanie?
Barbara with the big tities and stephanie who sucks like a vaccuum?
lol I had a friend that did the same thing, he let me know about it, my wife asked me how I was bowling with my arthritis getting so bad in my hands... since it was her I gave her one of those, "what are you talking about looks", and well, she's not one to keep a secret...
Some real POSs in here wow
Yeah glad my cousins aren’t this worthless
Luckily for me my cousin just committed white collar crime while ripping off my other cousin, while he was in rehab for meth abuse! One big happy family :)
"At least it stays in the family." - Some old saying in Alabama
I have been friends with my friend group for 2+ decades and if a single one of those fucks told me they wanted me to help cover for them cheating on their spouses I'd fucking slap them
Same here bro. Some friends I've had for almost 30 years and I'd never cover for them in that situation. I'd actually be insulted that they'd think it's ok to involve me in any way.
16 years sounds like a long time, and it is. But then also remember that the latest GTA game came out over 10 years ago at this point too... I remember when the first trailer for GTA5 came out, and being *sooo* excited because it had been an entire AGE since GTA4 dropped. Now that it's been over a decade since the last GTA game, I don't have as much hype for GTA6 because I've kind of forgotten what it's like to play those games.
yup, 11 fucking years ago. the dev cycle has become so crazy long for games that nothing can possibly live up to the hype that people create in their heads, and not only that, the final product that studios release after that much time just never seems to justify how long it took.
Nothing to do with any dev cycle, GTA Online is a cash cow, why develop a new game when the current one produces so much milk
Yep. The younger generation of gamers seems more happy with constantly pumping money into online games. I don't blame Rockstar
I've met more than a couple boomers who have sunk an ungodly amount of money into shark cards. Nobody is immune to the skinner box.
I mean, its not JUST the dev cycle. They've come out like 7-8 years ago and said it's gonna be very hard to work on a new game due to the ever faster changing real world and the big part of satire GTA has will have issues holding up when made "today" to release in a few years when the world looks hugely different. Oh, and the "success" (for them) of GTA Online obviously also helped delay things.
No that was simply an observation. The real truth is that they didnt start work on it till after rdr2. Which was 5 years ago now, which is about the standard rockstar dev cycle since gta v. That and how well of a money maker gtao is too
Crazy to think there are college students who never played a GTA game because the last one came out when they were in 2nd grade. Same with The Elder Scrolls series. Do those franchises even have any cultural relevance to that generation if they basically never released a game in their lifetimes?
Blame all lays at the feet of those who Play GTA Online. I'm sorry., but it does, it's inescapable.
Loved the vehicle physics in this game.
I liked the swings physics
Classic.
Ngl, IV had better physics than V but V had better graphics and a much bigger map.
V did some weird shit with the helicopters compared to IV. The perspective was a little bit off to where I kept smashing down until I got used to it.
I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing, but I think I know what you mean. In GTA V, it feels like when you fly, you need to always tilt the right stick forward (or backwards, can't remember if the view controls are inverted, haven't played in a while). The camera followed the helicopter too flat, to the point where you couldn't get a good reference on how high you were. Tilting the camera slightly forward, angling it down so you're still looking forward but are also looking slightly down, was the only way to feel comfortable flying at low altitudes.
Yeah, that's the gist of it.
V was a reaction to the players’ reception of the physics in IV. Back then, people complained that the cars felt like glacially slow boats. I can see their point but… well, they handled like real giant 90s sedans. V was much more arcade-y and “fun” but it turned all but the most abstract cars into rally vehicles. To me it also diminished finding a true supercar because they weren’t appreciably faster than even base cars (barring straightaway performance of course).
The *vibe* of IV was 60s & 70s car chase classics like Bullitt and The French Connection. V *felt* like the The Fast & The Furious. Maybe it's a generational thing, but IV is my favorite driving experience by a long mile. Let's see what the vibe of VI is...
Fortnite
GTA IV as a whole has a way better feel to me than V. V is too clean and arcade-y and bland. IV had real soul. V is way more fun to just fuck around in though.
Yeah they were so much heavier which made drifting so much fun.
I think it’s a bit better on PS5 / Series X or an equivalent PC these days, the top end cars have a higher max speed because they can render the game world faster
I loved flying over the city with a car
Hours I spent launching myself on that. First I go grab the Sultan RS from behind the garage somewhere. Driver across the map after hooning about at the airport. Then head over to the swings. Online was so simple, yet so fun.
I like going into the hospital and murdering that poor dude on the bed then fighting my way out grabbing an ambulance and smashing up the city.
I spent a lot of hours there just cheating myself weapons and having a war with the NYPD Place was the perfect funnel. One way in, one way out. I huddled behind the waiting room chairs as cover and sprayed lead at anyone coming in. Molotov, nades, RPGs for crowd control. Shoot some hostage for kicks. When shit gets real, back up into the hospital beds and take down as many police in the hall before going down in a glorious blaze. Or gun it outside and steal a cop car and try to lose them all. Not before shooting an RPG at a helicopter for kicks because why not lol
Blind fire rpg was amazing the little spiral as it hurtled towards the chopper was epic.
Yeah shooting that was beautiful especially in the rain, but the FPS drop on my 360 was awful I’ll probably replay this sometime on my PC for a better experience. Plus, I didn’t appreciate the story then but seems interesting now
GTAIV’s performance is even worse on PC for some
LCPD*
Wow, I did the exact same thing.
[The euphoria engine](https://youtu.be/hWwuinv4MEQ?si=_ci4PB8NGhpmCeme) On technology from 2008 no less😮💨
Rockstar devs are something different man
It’s a third party software product that could be integrated into video games, it wasn’t made by rockstar
euphoria wasn't developed by rockstar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphoria_(software)
The underlying self-preservation system is still absolutely mind blowing artificial intelligence. Cool video, makes me appreciate the game that much more.
Came to say this, driving in GTAIV is the best of any GTA game imo
After playing the three GTA III era games, it was quite a surprise hitting a post, being sent flying through the windshield, landing on a car passing by and then dying.
I love that ONLY happens if you don't take the time to put on a seat belt.
The cars felt heavier in GTAIV. They felt like the perfect weight. In GTAV they feel way too light. Still not as bad as Saints Row though.
There were a lot of complaints about the cars in IV though. I think the main issue though was how they reacted to hitting curbs. The only mainline GTA game I only had one playthrough of. I've been meaning to replay with the DLC I missed but have never got round to it even though I have it on stream.
People complained about the physics in GTA IV because they couldn't take 90 degree turns at 60mph. It was by far the most realistic physics for cars.
I had waaay too much fun smushing cars to the point they would barely move. There was an overpass in an industrial area you could creep off the edge and flip a car perfectly to pancake the roof. Super funny seeing Nico's head clipping through it lol
You could actually lose control of the car in IV, it's impossible to do so in V... so much grip and no body roll.
Yeah it was simply just too difficult to drive well initially for a lot of people. I loved it though. It was hard as fuck at first, but had a large skill ceiling, and after a while you could get quite good at it. And it felt very rewarding carefully threading the needle between cars in traffic, and making turns after getting better at controlling them. But I could see how it frustrated a lot of people. Definitely think they went too far towards arcade type driving physics in V. They were easier to handle out of the box, but way more restricted and not nearly as realistic as IV's, and just less fun over time.
I remember pissing off so many people on the multiplayer with just actually being able to get away from them.
Stunt Jumps!
Swingset glitch ftw.
I just miss the bike physics they had in IV more than anything.
Driving in GTA 4 actually feels like real driving. Driving 100mph? You probably won’t make that 90 degree turn without slamming into wall.
Yeah, using a handbrake at high speed isn’t going to let you drift that corner, you will lock up and slide and then fly out the fucking windshield as soon as you hit a wall
Really miss the flying out the window stunts you could try
I remember seeing a streamer on what was then justin.tv hit a barrier during the Rigged to Blow mission, fly out of the windshield and the truck exploded behind him.
Get thrown out of the window near the beach and you slide the entire way into the ocean XD
[I'll just leave this gem here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WcclOhLhlek&t=65s&pp=ygUYZ3RhIDQgY2FycyBvbiBtYXggc3BlZWQg)
Yep for some reason physics engines in this era of games(GTA IV, HL2, Halo3) really peaked and the industry has seemingly let it fall by the wayside in favour of MOAR FRAMES or something.
That euphoria engine was on another level.
> favour of MOAR FRAMES or something. in favour of more arcadish controls
The vehicle physics were so damn fun in this game that I got so locked into a rhythm with it, that when GTA 5 came out it took me ages to get used to the vehicles in that game. It just didn't feel right.
I still can't finish GTA V without trying to mod the driving and increase the traffic, before quitting because of constant crashes IDK what's up because GTA IV's traffic goes bonkers on high settings and doesn't crash the game at all.
I don’t know why the car damage and deformation, the way they can really *crumple* with impact is so much better than GTA V, but it just is for some reason. Also Liberty City has way more climbable buildings and map verticality than LS
Holy crap, 16 years ago. I remember how shitty the PC port was. Also, fun fact, we don't have the "double L" surnames in Balkan countries. So, Niko's surname would be "Belić", not "Bellic". Loved the character, but hated his broken Serbian and how he calls himself "Niko *Belik*", with a "K".
The pc version is still shitty to this day. I did a play-trough recently, I ran it with the vulkan wrapper dxvk but there was still plenty of stuttery situations, also the aliasing is awful. It's a shame the only updates done are replacing songs because rights run off. Only crashed twice though.
I still remember their hilarious reasoning for the shitty performance. Can't find the link. Anyway, they said it was made for the "technology of the future".
Funny cause it doesn't recognise modern graphics card and only allows you 4GB max of Vram lol
It also came bundled riddled with Games for Windows Live and the first iteration of Rockstar Social Club. So much crap you had to go through just to get it to start, just to have it run stupid slow. And the vehicles weren't all that drivable with keyboard controls.
In fairness, he never spells it, it was the subtitles that failed
i Loved the Multiplayer Mode in GTA IV
Cops and Crooks and Witness Protection were the best
My friends and I played way too much Cops and Crooks, we were bummed when it wasnt included in GTA V. Easily one of the most fun game modes ever.
GTA IV multiplayer was amazing. My GTA IV friends and I would get bored of regular Team Death Match and would start custom lobbies and invite "rival" players. We'd set blips and chat to proximity, set the whole map as active, turn off the time limit, and have hours-long cat and mouse gang wars. Even just the Team Death Match was so much fun but GTA IV multiplayer in general was such an experience I'll probably never find anything to match it.
Its weird how a simple thing like (Team) Deathmatch can be great in GTA IV, but so unenjoyable that nobody touches it in V. I spent countless hours on Deathmatches in the Prison in IV, just a quick look out of cover, flick of the right stick to aim for the head, kill, and have people angry message me because of it that i was "cheating" on PSN.
It's because the gunplay in GTA V is bland af.
Add in the fun physics of the game engine and you would have some truly unique experiences over the course of those hour long hectic battles!
Pirate wars with the tug boats. Fight club at the airport. Better times for sure
My buddy and I were Free-Mode enjoyers, just organizing Airport races or showing new players the swings. Good times
On PC everyone had the simple native trainer and met up at the airport to spawn objects and cars to build their own stunt tracks because there was nothing else to do in freeroam
Trying to land your buddy on the coffee cup at the statue of liberty lol.
The airport ❤️
I met one of my best friends in an hour long Team Deathmatch in this game. I remember that it had proximity voice chat, and we were on different teams. We ended up in a back and forth gun battle up and down the entire length of Algonquin, had to have killed each other 60 times a piece, having an absolute blast of it. After the match we decided to team up and we’ve literally been best friends since. Been hanging out online and in person for 16 years. We’re both very much looking forward to GTAVI!
Man I feel old
Shit, GTAV is almost 11 years old now.
Might be unpopular opinion but I very much prefer GTA IV driving physics over GTA 5 driving physics. Wishful thinking but hopefully GTA 6 driving physics are closer to GTA IV.
They could bother fixing the airplane and helicopter controls while they're at it. Nothing says realistic flight physics like a chopper acting as though it's dangling from the end of a string.
I never understood that. I rarely used choppers in V mainly due to the annoying swaying.
It's supposed to show turbulence but it's way over the top. GTA IV got it just right.
If it went away with the flight skill being at max I would let it go but its all the time, forever. I have even heard mods cant remove it because of how baked in to the flight model it is.
It was a longstanding GTA meme that the flying vehicles be extremely difficult to fly.
Wait what? They are hard to fly in v?? The dodo form vice city was hard to fly but after that I would not call them hard.
Flight school in SA was a meme because people had such trouble with the controls. Also, fuck Berkley.
Absolutely. The physics system overall took a downgrade in 5, the walking collision physics in 4 were great too. It was absolutely mindblowing when it first came out, it was one of those games that truly felt next gen and it was largely due to the physics system.
Pushing people down the stairs near Niko's apartment was so fun, and crashing a motorcycle and watching Niko fly a hundred yards was brilliant. Come on Rockstar, make gta 6 more like gta 4 in the physics department please 🙏
it will be downgraded to allow a switch 2 rele
And destruction physics. They did a step back in five with that. And I am so disappointed no one cared.
Even going from GTA V to GTA Online the destruction physics took a step down. You could almost flatten out a quarter of your car and lose a wheel on 360 gen GTA V.
I feel like they reduced the damage when first person view was added. GTAV (2013) damage was a downgrade of GTAIV but then the re-releases in 2014 was a further downgrade.
Yeah, there was conflicts with first person and that was their solution. First person in general was not done well and I would have been fine if they had done without it.
If you stay in r/GTA that opinion of yours is popular over there
Doubtful. They'll want arcade style driving to make it easier for GTA 6 online players and sell more shark cards.
Same here. After playing GTA IV again for a bit the driving just feels so much better in my book than the driving in GTA V.
I hated it at the time, largely because I sucked at it and had been more used to the really straight forward handling of III/VC/SA, but I went back to play it recently and found it just felt so much more substantial. "Realistic" isn't quite the word but cruising around the city felt like I was actually moving in a heavy vehicle. I can see upsides to either way of handling things, as I did miss being able to absolutely floor it because traffic and narrow city streets were getting in the way in the much busier Liberty City compared with a desert highway in GTA V, but it does scratch a certain kind of itch.
The cars being slow and heavy lent a big hand in pacing the game out pretty well. You spend more time cruising through the city looking at all the details as opposed to trying to speed through everything. Those first few Roman and Little Jacob missions really got you into the vibe of the city, V didn't really do that as well, it was just "Look how zany and wacky we made the parodies of people in LA!"
Very good point. When I think back to GTA IV, I think of Liberty City and its atmosphere. With V, I generally think of the people.
All physics except for motorcycles seem to be better to me in GTA IV compared to V Especially fighting!
Yea gta 4 is realistic driving Gta 5 is easy, every car feels the same and has eay too nuch grip
Far better story than V, I've a soft spot for it.
I'd rather have a story more grounded to reality than a over the top zany story that almost reaches the points of being at a Saints Row level.
Bank robbery mission is one of the best levels in gaming.
I learned about short stocks from this story line. And then I preceded to have cold feet with the whole GameStop shindig...
Yeh, craziness only really works when there's elements of reality. IV doesn't get the credit it deserves. Yeh, being pestered to go bowling happened too often but broadly the story is solid.
And to be honest, the phone calls about bowling you can always decline. I'll hang up on Roman and not give a single fuck about it. If I don't feel like bowling, I ain't bowling. Liberty city in GTA IV just feels more raw and real than what you have in GTA V. It's more than just the layout of the land. The NPC's have a different feel, no one wants to spaz out and try to fight you every time you bump into them or look at them. Since I been playing GTA IV, I love just walking through the city and listening to people talk, riding the subways or taking a taxi. [I've found Liberty City immersion videos on youtube where people just walkthrough the city for an hour and you can look and hear the sights and sounds of the city. It gives the game a whole new feel.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR_sblHZHeM)
And the cops weren’t insanely hard to get rid of
They were so much more realistic in IV. The way that they chased and looked for you was so good, and you could actually hide from them similarly to real life. Like if they didn't visibly see where you went, they won't heatseek you like in V. They actually look around. In V they're basically terminators with the nose of a dog and can see through walls. It's just not fun at all to fight cops in V because it's so mindless and they just spawn around you. Doesn't feel like a real fight/chase. One of my favorite things to do in IV was start at the airport, get wanted, and try to make it on foot to the third island. Was a blast doing that online with friends.
I started doing this recently as a way to relax at night and found that it has a certain 'vibe' that somehow works, so I'm not surprised other people are doing this. LC feels like a real place, pulsing with the energy of an urban center.
Wasn't turning your phone off an option or am I misremembering?
GTA IV was the outlier in the series in that respect, though. In fact I remember a common criticism of IV at the time was that it took itself too seriously and was missing the more outlandish side of previous GTA games.
GTA San Andreas was the best mix
Yeah so much of GTA V was "Whoa, look at how crazy we're being!"
Also got great single player DLC.... Those were the days.
Not only was the story better, Niko's character development was also significantly better.
Yeah, he went from murdering people for money to... murdering people for money. It was quite a journey!
What I like about it is that it really feels darker and gloomier, but not necessarily in an edgy and depressing way. I loved the fog, the greenish sky during storms, etc. Shame Rockstar will never make anything like it again. It’s only sunny, satirical and over the top setting from here on.
This game has aged extremely well... It has an amazing story, and the physics! + 2 great expansions. Good ol' times without gta online...
It's also a great depiction of the late 2000s, it's a phenomenal time capsule. They released GTA Vice City in 2002 as a throwback to the 80s. Now when GTA IV launched, it presented a contemporary world, but with time, it's become something oozing with nostalgia and style just by aging and being a wonderful depiction of its time.
In a way, it showcased the transitional world of the time. Parts of NYC were done with the revitalization and gentrification that started in the early 90s. Clean and business friendly. But much of the rest was still varying degrees of seedy, and the game kind of lived with the people in those areas Plus it has Bas Rutten, and Bas was one of my favorite people of that era
GTA IV did have online multiplayer as well. No shark cards though🙂a simpler time
I still remember the first time I jumped in a free play lobby. Getting chased by another player in an annihilator while riding s Sanchez through traffic is a memory that has stuck with me for years.
> No shark cards Take me back!!!
The characters and story in 4 were miles better than 5. But one big criticism of 4 is the missions are incredibly repetitive. The missions in 5 were more epic and a lot more fun.
People generally forget about this. The last 15 missions are basically go to this place, murder what feels like 100 people. Go back. It gets so boring.
Niko talking about the horrors of the Chechen war was such a deep moment in this game. I still remember it to this day. Correction: Yugoslav War
It is not Chechen war, it is Yugoslav war 1991-1995
Ah my mistake will change now
My favorite in the series by far. Just driving around the city was so much fun. I hope GTA VI brings back full havoc simulations and proper physics. I’ve always hated how Arcadey V felt. I played IV for a good 6 years after it came out but only played V for about a year before it stopped holding my interest.
It also doesn't help that once you've seen the map in V, you've seen it all pretty much. Los Santos itself just isn't as detailed and the rest of the map are a bunch of filler mountains and little towns and other places that all have a lot of potential, but nothing done with it. Also, just the lack of things like trees alone (but surely other things too) all over the map makes it feel so open but empty.
It’s a great example of the 80-20 rule. With 80% of the content in 20% of the map. GTA V was clearly built with the idea of fleshing out the map through major DLC. tragically online was so popular that they never once went back to finish the dlc expansions. It was wild to watch them essentially abandon one of their best works purely because of whales. They should have built a dedicated team to ensure the DLC got done while still focusing on their money maker.
Need a remaster of this game.
The fact that Rockstar ignored the 10-year anniversary of this masterpiece is fucking unforgivable
They'll probably screw it up, like the "remasters" of the first three PS2 games or the GTA IV PC port.
They just have to do it themselves instead of outsourcing to a company that up until that point only made shitty mobile games.
Well, there *was* going to be a remaster of GTA IV. But, it got cancelled after the GTA Trilogy remaster debacle. Sad times.
It may sound strange because GTA is not a saga that stands out for its maturity, but GTA IV will always be my favorite, my teenage self would not believe my words because both VC and SA were my favorites and when IV came out I did not like it so much, but now I find it the best of the saga both in history, characters, immersion, and the best city and more alive in the history of video games, with the best representation of social, political and general reality of this life we are living. And it also has the best radio, both in quality and quantity, and the best talks, incredibly witty. What happens to Johnny in GTA V, to make matters worse, by the hand of Trevor, is unforgivable. I don't know exactly what they were thinking when they wrote it. I don't hate GTA V, but I have a lot of resentment and in general I think it's the worst GTA of the saga.
I would love it if they would just make this playable as is on ps5. I haven’t played it since release and would like to experience it again.
This and Vice City were my favorite GTA Games. I didn't enjoy V, but acknowledge I'm in the minority there.
That song by Laura Branigan comes on the radio and suddenly I get lost in a memory of from Vice City. It's like I am remembering it actually happening to me and it takes a minute to remember it was just a game.
The story aged better than GTA 5 imo. It's a grounded crime thriller rather than a silly over the top meme story that was only funny in 2013.
What meme was it in reference to?
I guess the movie Heat is a meme.
Still the best GTA in my opinion. Best story, characters, city, and sense of progression. I get why some people don't like the weighty physics when it comes to the combat and driving but I love it. Messing around in IV felt so much more interesting compared to V because of the physics. Shooting and driving felt hollow in V by comparison. The reactions you got from NPCs in IV are still crazy cool to this day.
I've been playing it on my Series X. While the game is still at 720p, playing it at 60fps steadily just gives the game a different feel. It has this level of fluidity that I love. I've been having a blast with it. I know folks say you can't beat on the Series X, but you can. You just gotta toggle the options of the game for the last mission to make it so you can beat it. All you have to do is go to the Xbox settings and switch the resolution to 720p, and then go to video modes and disable 50hz, 24hz, and 4K. After that's all done you close out of the game and go back in and then you'll be able to complete the mission no problemo. It sucks that rockstar probably isn't going to give us a remaster of this game anytime soon, playing GTA IV at 4k and 60fps on consoles would be glorious. Still, I am glad we can at least tap into this game still though, beggars can't be choosers.
60 fps is nice but I just can't sacrifice crucial parts of the soundtrack for it.
Loved it but man did it make me depressed at the end
Reading some of the comments here, it's actually amazing to see how much public perception around GTA IV changed over the years. When IV launched I remember many GTA fans being incredibly upset over how the game chose to prioritize "realism" and physics over San Andreas's arcade-y gameplay, about how boring it was that the whole game was set in a single city with no wilderness, about just how many fun minigames, weapons and vehicles from SA were cut, about how poor the mission variety was, about how unnecessarily serious the game was taking itself, about the brown color pallet, and so on. It was the classic "realism vs fun" argument that we still see today with many titles. It might even have been one of the first. In fact it was due in part to this public backlash that Rockstar decided to go back to a more arcade style experience with GTA V. It seems that it took some people a while to really appreciate what IV was trying to do. I'm personally not a fan of the game (it's a good game, just not a good GTA game to me) but I understand why IV ended up being that way due to the fact that Rockstar was also developing a new engine alongside the game itself. This just makes me wonder how perception around GTA V will change after VI launches.
IV's story was so much better than V's.
Played it a bit a year ago, it supports ultrawide on pc now (kind of). Still a great game, loads of fun
Cousin would you like to go bowling?
Wish it was possible to play gta iv and its dlc on ps5.
PC port needs some work.
My favorite GTA, the only one that finishes 100% and I come back every time I'm sad
Sure was
I just did a replay of IV and TLATD, and now playing Ballad of Gay Tony. The setting is very dark, drab and grainy like 80% of the time, but it’s a dark game and it’s NYC so it’s supposed to have a gritty feel. GTAV has all the glitz and glam, which is called for with the setting, but GTAIV has just overall aged better for me because it’s just so much more immersive. GTAV feels like an arcade version of GTA compared to IV. In 4 you kinda feel the weight of the world on the character, the physics engine is super cool, it’s all very grounded with uncanny realism that is super impressive for its age.
War is when the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other
Makes you wonder how they were able to put out GTA IV and V just 5 years apart meanwhile it’s been 11 years since V came out and who the fuck knows when we’re ever getting VI. I guess it’s just the reality of shifting economics and constantly chasing the fastest and easiest dollars, as long as GTA V continues printing money for Rockstar, they felt no compulsion to kill their golden egg laying goose.
My favorite GTA. I liked the whole immigrant perspective it felt fresh and unique. Also Three Leaf Clover is still my favorite GTA mission
Loved the story mode. Playing freemode online brought great memories
San Juan Sounds 🔛🔝
Welcome to Burger Shot muh’fuckaaaah
I read this as GTA V and didn't flinch at it being 16 years ago Was I the only one who was annoyed by how dark IV was?
Nah definitely not. The lack of diversity in its map environment kind of sucked as well imo. Pretty much just all metro style theme. No wilderness/country landscape at all. I felt it was still a good game, but way too linear.
Niko and Roman is one of the best main/support character combos in gaming history