It took itself to seriously, and stifled the earlier games innovation. The earlier games were like Saints Row 2 -Technically messes, but insanely fun. At times, GTA 4 felt like "The Getaway". That's the opposite of what I wanted.

Trusted sites & reviewers told us it would be phenomenal, a real hundred-percenter. It didn't meet gamers expectations though. I think (hope) a lot of us learned a lesson there.

It really lacked the charm of the previous GTA games and to top it all off, it felt like a step down after San Andreas which had so many different vehicles and a larger variety of areas (not just 1 city but pretty much an entire State with countryside and desert + 3 individual cities). I used to love flying my fighter jet around and just causing mayhem. And sometimes you don't want to play a serious game which is the direction GTAIV took the series. The previous 3 had a serious element to them but it was much easier to just pick up and cause mayhem and generally have fun.

I'd like to know how many 360 fans were disappointed with GTA?

GTA4 was way too scripted. I wanna complete XX mission by blowing up the guys car before the 100th chase begins, oh no, I can't its not part of the story and if I use codes, I get penalized. Seriously, no codes in a GTA game, WTF?? Additionally, the game tries to be more realistic than its predecessors and until cars started flying at me in the final mission, it was. The missions themselves were very bland and unimaginative; go to this place and retrieve this item, chase after that car, kill this person, nothing as awesome or hilarious as the missions in San Andreas. Finally there's the main Protagonist a yokel who's looking for revenge/answers. I completed the game hoping that Niko would, become a rich entrepreneur (like many CJ and Tommy), instead he stays pretty much the same except now he's emo and has even less to do ( for all that detail there sure aren't a lot of places to go or things to do ).

Mitsurugi said every problem I had with the game.

I didn't really care what happened to Niko though. I hoped he would like, start cocaine or something and stop being such a boring douche.

I don't think GTA IV is a bad game but the reviews made it sound like the second coming of christ.

I don't think people can blame the media as much as they seem to be doing.

When you see most people moan about it they are comparing it to the earlier games. Therefore the media's reaction to the game has very little impact on what it is they don't like.

Sure, hype doesn't help but I don't think it's the main protagonist in this case.

I liked GTA's story a lot. Thew whole redemption/revenge them was really well done.

But, and that is the biggest problem to a lot of people, Rockstar changed the tone of the game.

It went from absurd, over the top fun to a serious story.

I liked it, but a lot of people didnt.

I wish Rockstar could do both.

put it this way, when a company makes something new, you expect it to excel not decel (not go back) that's what happened in gta iv, gta San Andreas had the most amazing game play ever, that was the most enjoyable game of all time, there was million if not billion of things to do, from quad bike to planes to helicopter, to boats, the list never ends, what happened in gta iv sure the graphics where amazing, but other than that the rest was a shit hole, that's why every one talks about how shit gta iv