Does anyone else fell that GTA4 has not lived up to the hype, it feels like an updated GTA3, and does not feel as good as GTA:VC or GTA:SA.  The story was OK after i thought about it after awhile, it felt worse then VC and SA, the radio is better then 3 and SA but its lacking compared to VC.  There is no FBI after 5 stars anymore, there is no army after 6 stars either.  There are no police bribes and you can't enter paint spray shops when cops are around either. 

The camera and controls are not as good as they were in SA.  There are hardly any weapons compared to the other games.  There is no Tank and there is no Hunter from what i have seen so far.  Trying to exit one car and enter another one during a car chase with the cops is suicide.  After 2-3 stars all the cops have shotguns, and they just plow into any car you are near and it kills you. 

You are also forced to use cheats to get anough ammo or weapons to engage the cops for extended amounts of time.  You have almost no cash aswell.  Each time you die you lose over 10k cash, i have lost over 250k from dieing in this game so far, and spent about 150k on weapons and only have 600k or so left. 

This thread is going places. I figure it will take about 2 hours before this topic is 3 or so pages.

Boo-hoo.

Oh noes! It's obviously another Wii fanboy who's feeling threatened by GTA IV's success!

Seriously though, even from never having played the game, it still sounds like you're expecting to just be able to shoot things up without any consequences and not having to prepare properly when you're going to do something that would likely get you gunned down IRL too. All the elements you point out are things that I would find totally unrealistic about the game. Isn't the whole point of the thing to be the most "realistic" environment possible? Every piece of fantasy you demand is only going to detract from that experience.

From what you described... It's more.. realistic?

Although I see where you're coming from to an extent, I haven't played IV yet so I can't really agree or disagree if things have changed that drastically from San Andreas/Vice City

I don't understand your ammo problem as each cop you kill drops a couple of clips worth of ammo for the particular gun they were using, and it only takes one bullet to the head to kill them. using autoaim it takes only a couple of rounds providing they are not wearing armor.

I was also somewhat disappointed with GTAIV. I won't deny that it is a great game, but after all those 10s it got I thought I would be blown away with its awesomeness. But I wasn't.

GTA games with cheats is the way to go. I play all GTA games with cheats makes the game lots more fun.

I was expecting the game to be more like the GTA games i have played for the past 10years. Instead they have taken the fun factor out of walking around and killing stuff, this is why the GTA:SA sold 21.5mil copies. The cover system is also useless, i have spent 10mins in cover since i bought the game out of over 50 hours. It adds nothing to the game.