GTA3 through GT SA were arcade like. GTA4's physics were life like, slow and realistic. That's the main reason people disliked it. Plus, they removed lots of things like doing fire truck missions etc. But it was mostly a physics thing imo.

I decided to use videos to explain what is wrong in the driving, for those that say that it is realistic, etc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKnDCGGYyvI

4:59, 5:03, etc: I can't see what it's in front of the car. Comparison with GT5. Notice how the car doesn't rotate in GT5 and you can always see what you have in front. One of those games is doing it wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpJdD9nEx5Y

4:58: 10 mph and the car looks like it's going to overturn. Those suspensions are too soft. Even the suspension of sportcars in this game are soft.

5:11: Did the car jump? Any of you have done something like that at the same speed with your real car?

The minimap should zoom out when I'm driving slow (when I can look at it without risk of crashing), not when I'm driving fast. Or at least allow me to control it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MazJqCzgpoE

1:27: If you do a jump in a bike and you land that way, I guarantee that you will die.

Real life example of how things look like when you push in a RWD car. I've chosen a heavy Jaguar on purpose. (skip to 6:08 for the Stig lap). See how it barely jumps when it goes over the grass at the end of the lap:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovOh58UBWOs

I loved GTA:SA too, but I love GTA 4 in a different way

I did'nt hate it,it was just a huge letdown after playing the previous games. I thought that the main character sucked and the whole game just felt boring. I thought it was decent on a technical level,but not much else.

Why i dislike GTA4
1: Bowling
2: Driving feels stiff, i don't care if it is realistic
3: Niko is awful

I think that a main criticism of GTA4, which a lot of people don't realise, is that it didn't have any real gangs in it. The gangs, the way they treated you, the way they had their cars, the way they dressed and the way they had their turfs really added to the previous GTA games.

It was a 'good' game in that it was very technically impressive and had a pretty good story. However, the game just isn't fun. There's exactly one fun mission in the entire game and that's the bank heist, almost every other mission is just boring busy work. There was also a lot less to do outside of the missions, since you could only do one fourth of the things you could in San Andreas.

I played San Andreas for several hundred hours outside of the story mission, just messing around with my friends and doing crazy things. IV? I've touched the game exactly once after completing the missions, and it just ended up with me messing around with the physics, because there's not much else to do in the game.

He sums it up pretty nicely:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/312-Saints-Row-2

I though GTA 4 was the best one. Sure I had a ton of fun with 2 and 3 but I did not care for Vice City or San Andreas. San Andreas did some new stuff, really changed it up but I could not get into it and still haven't picked it up after several years. I forget if I've put 20 hours or more into it.

I like Nico, I like the story, I like the driving, the city. I don't really have a single complaint when it comes to a GTA game. Maybe because it was kind of straight forward instead of filled with trivial (yet interesting) stuff like San Andreas. Reminded me more of GTA 3.

EDIT: I mean I could be completely wrong. I didn't get to finsih GTA 4 but played a lot of it, only problem is it wasn't my game and I didn't get my own this gen console till years later. It was one of the few games I was able to play until I got my PS3 so I could remember it slightly differently. I just know I liked it a lot more than San Andreas and was interested in the story.

Dude, you hate EVERYTHING.  Now is your chance to really cut loose.  Don't do this to me.  When I saw your post, my eyes lit up.  Tear into this game!!