Like almost every other human being on this planet, I've been watching with great interest the hype and promo material surrounding the release of GTA V. It looks superb; and is hyped to be the "perfect game" in almost every way. To kind of prepare for the release, I have spent the last month playing both Grand Theft Auto IV and Saints Row II. Upon completion of this pre-GTA V preparation, and having got over the novelty factor of HD Liberty City, I feel that I can honestly consider the game itself as a game and not the "gaming franchise wonder" that it has become known as. I have come to this conclusion - the game sucks! If this was any other franchise, this game would have been panned and forgotten about fast. Folks, GTA IV has many problems - it is repetitive, poorly implemented, riddled with design flaws, awkward, glitchy, hyper-realistic and overall grey. However, I still appreciate the scale of Liberty City; it is perhaps the most ambitious game world until GTA V. This won me over when it first came out, and I played it for months on my Xbox 360; the scale is still rather impressive while at the same time highlighting the flaws of the game (there is an
awesome mod that can fix that issue on the PC). That said, there are literally hundreds of reasons on an ever-growing list as to why GTA IV was the worst in the series, so I will try and cover the major ones here. Note: I will use Saints Row II as my control for a comparison.