I always loved GTA, but I was never able to get it until recently when I had to replace my laptop- turns out I got one that can run it :) I wasn't sure what to expect, because I've heard so many negative things about the game, both online and in real life. 

What were they complaining about? The physics and graphics are brilliant, even today (on medium settings no less :p), and it's really fun driving around the city. The ability to aim your shots while driving make this game unbelievable to me, but it's also the little things like sometimes the NPCs talk on their mobile phones, and they always seem to have a different conversation.

Maybe it's because I only bought it as a driving/police chase simulator, but considering that's what I was looking for, I don't think this game could be much (if at all) better.

What are your opinions on GTA 4? Why does it get so much negativity?

The port to PC is one of the big reasons. It's crap. It's so badly optimized. It lags still with exceeding hardware requirements. I have a i7 2.66ghz, GTX 570, 24GB of ram, and a SSD. It still acts stupid in places. A lot of things make it feel annoying. Falling off the bike constantly. Flying out of the windshield gets annoying after you hit 4 cars. The story felt lacking. People had to mod the game, to control the train. I also got fed up dying in the cheap cheating missions and having to drive back to the mission. The game overall felt bloated. Like the stories where too short. But they made some missions so cheap, to extend the time to finish it. GTA needs to take some cues from Saints Row 3. The game had more simplier car controls. Full story co-op. The cell Phone interface didn't suck, etc. I also liked VC and SA story better.

I don't think that a lot of people hate it, I just think that a lot of people thought it was inferior to GTA3, Vice City, San Andreas...

I'm replaying it at the minute and I'm loving it. I think it lacks some of the charm that previous GTA games had, but the attention to detail in it is crazy!

The missions were terrible. Go on a mission and then I have to gun down 100 people alone, no allies. It was just inhuman and quite annoying. After you gun down 100 people you have to run from the cops everytime because you killed everyone else that was guilty. I liked GTA4 but it was more of the same if you have played earlier GTAs.

I've played it only for 1-2 hours, but I can tell you that the car handling is worse than in GTA Vice City, and the camera is too close to the cars.

By 'worse' I think you mean more difficult? 

And you can easily change how far away the camera is.

The car handling feels a bit more realistic, which is great imo

It's great for messing around, following the story sucked though. Mission structure, on foot camera and shooting are still not fixed. I had to resort to cheats to be able to finish the game. I got too fed up with the camera and aiming problems. Plus getting interrupted by the mobile phone all the time to go bowling or 1 of the other 3 activities to maintain friend status got old really fast. And a lot of fun activities were removed compared to the previous outings.
Great sandbox, mediocre game.

For me, it was because it was so serious, and because Niko was kind of unlikeable. The missions weren't very diverse, either. It had great graphics, great music, and a TON of content but I just wasn't having much fun. I was worried that I was just tired of sandbox games but then I bought Saints Row 2 and couldn't stop playing it. I didn't walk in wanting to dislike GTA4. I bought it the day it came out and I even bought the Liberty City DLC disc. It just couldn't suck me in.

Loved Red Dead, Saints Row, Assassins Creed, and more. Couldn't get enough of them. GTA4 just didn't have a soul. Oh, and if this post were GTA4, Niko's cousin would have called me 7 times before I finished this post.

Its because its successful. anything thats successful gets alot of hate