5. GTA IV It's Only Depressing Because You're Seeing It As Niko
It's safe to say that Niko Belic isn't the happiest of chaps. Between being constantly troubled, occasionally mournful and possessing more moral shades of gray than your average colour wheel, his is not a nice life, despite all the trappings homicide seems to have brought him. He's dogged by his old war record and what his life-of-crime is doing to him in the present day, so he barely cracks a smile. In fact, I'd go so far as to argue he's probably the most depressing protagonist modern GTA has ever had even more so than Claude, and that guy's a mute. As such, he's given a more depressing playground to wonder around, and this was many people's primary grievance with GTA IV when you compared it to the wonderful technicolour fun-scape of San Andreas, everything was just a bit drab and sad. Well really, there's a point to that the world you see is informed by what Niko sees. He sees the world as a depressing place, so lo and behold, the Liberty City is shaped in that image. This theory is given credence by the later DLC. If you remember playing them, you'll remember that they were just a whole lot more fun, especially in the Ballad of Gay Tony, which painted Liberty City with a much brighter colour brush, mirroring Luis Lopez's sunnier outlook on life. Liberty City just seemed a more fun place to be, with drinking and dancing minigames, as well as underground fights and driving ranges. Really, the only reason you weren't doing that as Niko was that as a shell-shocked veteran who may have committed horrible crimes, he wasn't exactly in the mood to go dancing.