I've played this game from start to finish and now I only play the multiplayer part of the game. Lets start out with the storyline. It is pretty easy to understand. Niko Belic arrives In America in pursuit of the american dream even though it doesn't seem that way actually. He is also looking for the man who betrayed him in some war in Russia. I can't think of anything bad to say about the storyline. However with every mission it felt like Niko was like the Transporter. He does a job for one guy and that guy reccomends that he does work for some other guy. One of those guys betrays you and you kill him. Same thing that happened in GTA: SA and GTA: VC.
Now for the graphics. Everything looks beutiful and goes along with the gameplay well. When you crash into newspaper bins a bunch of papers fly out making a mess. Sometimes when you are swimming you can see trash like cans floating on the water.
I'm not gonna say much about this part. The sound in GTA4 simply goes right along with the gameplay and city well. The radio stations are fun to use while trying to escape the cops on a beutiful new Turismo.
Now for the most important part. The gameplay in GTA4 is simply incredible. The melee combat is very simple yet hard to master. I wish Rockstar would've included more melee weapons that just the knife and bat. The guns work well. When you shoot somebody in the leg they fall and try to get up. If you shoot them in the head they won't get up again. The new cover system that has been introduced in GTA4 s very simple to use and very realistic. It adds more strategy to the game instead of just running out in the open Rambo style.The Euphoria engine is completely amazing. Almost every part of the AI responds when you shoot it. That's about it, the gameplay works well for what it has.
What I didn't like: Since this was a GTA game I was expecting much more to do. Alot of things were taken out of GTA4 that GTA: SA had. This includes planes, bikes, modifying your car with nitro and hydralics, parachutes, geting fat or skinny,etc.
If It wasn't for the multiplayer I would've given this game a very different score.

GTA IV turned GTA into a more grounded franchise where storytelling and immersion became just as engrossing as wrecking up open-world sandboxes.

Huzaifa from eXputer: "2008 was home to the likes of Call of Duty: World at War, Dead Space, GTA 4, Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, and many other hits, which is outright remarkable."
Just about every year in the 7th generation was great and something we most likely won't experience again.
2009 for example had Assassin's Creed 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age: Origins, Uncharted 2, Halo 3: ODST, Killzone 2, Borderlands, Bayonetta, and Demon's Souls to name a few.

Grand Theft Auto 4 is an important game for Rockstar, not least because it was the first title in the franchise to use the newly created RAGE engine.