The Night I Realised This Wasn't San Andreas Anymore
I still remember the first ten minutes of GTA IV. April 2008, a borrowed Xbox 360. Niko Bellic steps off a boat in Liberty City under a grey sky, and his cousin Roman is there yelling about his mansion and his sports cars. Then you see Roman's actual life: a busted taxi depot in Broker, loan sharks at the door, a flat the size of a cupboard. Niko just looks at him. That look told me everything. This was not going to be San Andreas.
Coming off San Andreas — jetpacks, gang wars, a map the size of a small country — GTA IV felt like someone had turned the volume down and the lights off. Smaller map. No planes. My first reaction was disappointment, and I wasn't alone. But that disappointment was the point. GTA IV launched on April 29, 2008, for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with a PC version in December. It scored 98 on Metacritic, made $310 million on day one and $500 million in its first week, and sold more than 25 million copies. Critics loved it. Fans still argue about it.
Niko Bellic: The American Dream Was a Lie
Tommy Vercetti wanted his empire back. CJ wanted his neighbourhood back. Niko wants two things, and they're both impossible: to find the man who betrayed his unit during the war back home, and to believe his cousin's lie that America will fix everything. He arrives chasing Roman's story and finds a taxi driver drowning in debt. The game never lets you forget the gap between the dream and the reality.
What makes Niko different is that he doesn't enjoy any of this. Michael Hollick, who voiced him and did his motion capture, played him as a tired man. Niko has killed before, in a war, and it ruined him. Every job he takes, he takes because he has no choice. Hollick spent about fifteen months on the role for a flat fee of around $100,000 — a figure that became its own controversy once the game made hundreds of millions — and won Best Performance by a Human Male at the Spike Video Game Awards. The writing, by Dan Houser and Rupert Humphries, is the sharpest the series had ever been. And the big choice near the end — revenge or the deal — genuinely hurt me the first time. No GTA before IV had made me sit on a pause screen and think about what I was about to do.
Liberty City: Smaller, Greyer, and More Alive Than Any Map Since
The first time I played IV, I thought Liberty City was boring. San Andreas had three cities, desert, countryside, a mountain. Liberty City is one city and one industrial island, and it rains all the time. Play it again with older eyes and the trade-off is obvious. Rockstar cut the map down so they could fill every inch of it. The streets feel dense — steam from manholes, hot dog stands, neon signs, traffic that behaves like traffic.
Broker is Brooklyn, Algonquin is Manhattan, Dukes is Queens, Bohan is the Bronx, Alderney is New Jersey across the river. It has one mood, and the mood never breaks. A rainy night in Algonquin, skyscrapers lit up, the radio playing something sad, is still one of the best atmospheres in gaming. Niko's phone, the in-game internet at the TW@ cafes, the TV in your safehouse — all of it was new in 2008. And the radio is still my favourite in any GTA game.
The Physics That Split the Fanbase in Half
Now the part everyone argues about: the driving, the running, the falling over. GTA IV runs on Rockstar's RAGE engine, and for character movement it uses Euphoria, a physics system from NaturalMotion that simulates a body trying to keep its balance instead of playing a canned animation. Niko stumbles. He trips over curbs. Pedestrians you clip crumple and flail, and it looks uncomfortably real.
Cars feel heavy in IV in a way they never did before or since. Every vehicle has weight, suspension, body roll. Take a corner too fast and the back end slides out. Slam the brakes and the car dives forward. GTA driving had always been arcadey. In IV, hitting something hard enough sends Niko through the windscreen. I hated the driving for my first ten hours. Then it clicked: once I stopped treating Liberty City like a racetrack, the weight felt right. A fast car in IV, driven well, feels earned. Its chases still look better in clips than almost anything in V, because the physics do the comedy and the drama for you.
The Little Things I Didn't Appreciate Until Later
IV is full of systems that felt like chores in 2008 and look like genius in hindsight. Take the friendship system: Roman, Jacob, Brucie and the rest call you to go bowling or darts, and if you keep blowing them off, their perks dry up. Everybody mocked the bowling, but Rockstar was making relationships a mechanic, not a cutscene. GTA V quietly dropped the idea. The police use a wanted radius — escape the circle and you're free — which made chases feel fair for the first time.
Two Expansions, One City, Three Lives Crossing
If the main game is IV's serious heart, the two expansions prove Liberty City could hold more than one story. The Lost and Damned arrived on February 17, 2009, starring Johnny Klebitz, a biker trying to hold his gang, the Lost MC, together while its leadership tears itself apart. Then The Ballad of Gay Tony landed on October 29, 2009, and swung the other way: Luis Lopez, bodyguard to nightclub owner Tony Prince, in the city's glittering nightlife, with the funniest dialogue in the whole IV era.
Same city, same timeline, three lives crossing: the museum diamond deal plays out three different ways depending on whose eyes you're seeing it through. Both were Xbox 360 exclusives at first, then reached PlayStation 3 and PC in April 2010 as Episodes from Liberty City. One city, one week of chaos, three men who never see the full picture.
What Still Annoys Me (Let's Be Honest)
IV earned its criticism too. The PC port, which arrived in December 2008, was a mess at launch — demanding hardware that barely existed, stuttering on machines that ran everything else fine, and tied to Games for Windows Live, a service nobody misses. There's no countryside, no planes, no proper character customisation, and the weapon selection is thin next to San Andreas. The mission design repeats itself, and the middle act drags. If you want a power fantasy, IV will frustrate you on purpose — and I still won't pretend the pacing is perfect.
Why It Aged Better Than Anyone Expected
Here's the twist. The things people complained about in 2008 — too serious, too grey, too heavy, too slow — are exactly what make IV feel fresh in 2026. GTA V gave us everything IV didn't: three heroes, a huge map, planes, heists, an online mode that ate the industry. And yet I forget V's story within a week of finishing it. When I go back to IV, I remember Niko's face, the rain on the windscreen, the choice at the end.
IV is the only GTA that trusted its story to carry the game instead of its toys. It bet everything on a character, a city, and a mood. The grey palette people called boring now looks like a deliberate art choice. The heavy physics people called clunky now look like the last time a GTA game tried to make the world feel physically real.
What GTA VI Seems to Be Learning From It
So what does any of this mean for GTA VI, which launches on November 19, 2026, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S? Two protagonists, Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval, a couple on the run after a heist goes wrong, in the state of Leonida with Vice City at its heart. Lucia is the first playable female lead in a mainline GTA, and the trailers lean hard into character and relationship, not just chaos. That's IV's DNA. It was delayed twice, from fall 2025 to May 2026 and then to November 2026 — Rockstar refusing to ship until it feels right.
The second trailer spends its time on quiet moments, a couple trying to build a life, a state that feels lived in. That's the IV playbook: take the characters seriously, let the city breathe, and trust players to care about people, not just explosions. The lesson of IV isn't "make it grey and slow." It's "make it matter." That's what IV got right, and that's what I'm hoping VI remembers.
The Verdict: The GTA That Grew Up Deserved Better Than Our First Reaction
So where does that leave GTA IV? Not the best GTA, or the most fun. But the most important one — the game where Rockstar stopped making bigger sandboxes and started making a world with a conscience. It divided fans because it asked us to care about a tired immigrant who didn't want to be a criminal, A lot of us weren't ready for that in 2008. We wanted jetpacks.
I'm glad I went back. Playing IV now, with GTA VI weeks away, it feels like a warning and a promise: scale without soul gets boring fast, and this series can still surprise us when it takes its characters seriously. Niko came to Liberty City looking for the man who betrayed him, and what he found was that revenge doesn't fix anything — it just costs you more of yourself. It's also why, eighteen years later, I'm still thinking about it. If GTA VI gives me even half of that feeling, I'll be very happy indeed.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was GTA IV released?
April 29, 2008, for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360; the PC version followed in December 2008. Developed by Rockstar North, published by Rockstar Games.
Who voiced Niko Bellic?
American actor Michael Hollick, who also performed the motion capture. He worked on the role for around fifteen months and won Best Performance by a Human Male at the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards.
What is the Euphoria engine in GTA IV?
Euphoria is a physics system by NaturalMotion that Rockstar used alongside its RAGE engine. Instead of fixed animations, it simulates a body trying to balance and react — which is why Niko stumbles and ragdolls so realistically.
How many copies did GTA IV sell, and how was it reviewed?
It earned $310 million on day one and $500 million in its first week, and sold more than 25 million copies. On Metacritic it scored 98 on consoles and 90 on PC, with 10/10 reviews from IGN, GameSpot, Eurogamer, and Edge.
What are The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony?
The two story expansions for GTA IV, following biker Johnny Klebitz (February 17, 2009) and nightclub bodyguard Luis Lopez (October 29, 2009). Both share Niko's city and timeline, with the three plots crossing over. They came to PlayStation 3 and PC in April 2010 as Episodes from Liberty City.
Is GTA IV connected to GTA VI?
Not directly — GTA VI is set in Leonida and Vice City with new leads Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval, launching November 19, 2026. But its trailers borrow IV's playbook: a serious, character-led story about a couple on the run. If you want to understand what VI is aiming for, IV is the game to replay first.
