Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition — 遊戲評測Metacritic 98 narrative depth backed by five thousand dialogue lines and Euphoria physics, though late-game repetition undermines the structure.

Grand Theft Auto IV is the moment the open-world crime game grew up. When Rockstar North first released it on consoles in 2008, it arrived with a Metacritic score of 98 — one of the highest in the medium's history — and perfect tens from IGN, GameSpot, Game Informer and Eurogamer, sweeping the year's Game of the Year awards. But the numbers undersell what made it a landmark: this was a Grand Theft Auto that traded the cartoonish excess of its predecessors for a grounded, melancholy, genuinely literary story about an immigrant chasing the American Dream and finding only its hollow underside. Niko Bellic, a war-scarred Eastern European arriving in Liberty City with a cousin's lies and his own bloody past, became one of gaming's great protagonists, and the game built around him reached for — and achieved — the tonal seriousness of prestige television.

The Complete Edition under review here bundles the base game with both of its acclaimed expansions, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, three storylines that unfold across the same Liberty City timeline and intersect in clever, rewarding ways. Underpinning all of it is Rockstar's RAGE engine debut and the Euphoria procedural physics system, which gave the world a weight and unpredictability — every stumble, crash and shootout playing out with unscripted realism — that, remarkably, the GTA series itself has never quite recaptured.

This review grades GTA IV across six dimensions, and the scores describe an aging masterpiece: a towering 9.8 for story leads, with a 9.5 for audio and a 9.0 for content close behind, an 8.8 for its grounded gameplay holding strong, and only a 6.7 for graphics — dragged down by dated 2008 visuals and a notoriously poor PC port — bringing the average down, landing on a 9.1 overall. That spread is the whole story. GTA IV is a narrative and physical achievement that still has no true successor, wrapped in a technical package that now shows its age and demands patience or mods to enjoy. The next six sections explain exactly who should return to Liberty City.

Grand Theft Auto IV scores 9.8 for story, the highest mark in this review, and it is the dimension that earned the game its place in history. Where earlier GTA titles were gleeful satire, GTA IV reached for something far harder — a grounded, character-driven crime drama with the tonal weight and writing quality of prestige television — and it succeeded so completely that, more than fifteen years later, it remains a high-water mark for narrative in the open-world genre. This is a story score that reflects genuine artistic achievement.

Niko Bellic and the hollow American Dream

The foundation of the 9.8 is Niko Bellic, one of the most fully realized protagonists in gaming. A veteran of a brutal Balkan war, haunted by what he did and what was done to him, Niko arrives in Liberty City lured by his cousin Roman's emails promising a fantasy of wealth and women — and finds instead debt, desperation and the same cycles of violence he came to escape. His pursuit of the American Dream curdles into a search for the man who betrayed his unit, and the game uses his journey to deliver a genuinely thoughtful meditation on immigration, trauma, capitalism and the impossibility of leaving the past behind. Niko is weary, morally compromised, capable of tenderness and terrible violence in the same breath, and the writing never flinches from the contradiction of a man who wants to be better in a world that keeps pulling him back. This is character work of a caliber the medium rarely attempts, let alone achieves, and it anchors the entire game. Niko's quiet disillusionment gives every mission a thematic weight that no amount of mayhem can dispel, and it is the beating heart of the story score.

A cast with real arcs

Surrounding Niko is a supporting cast of extraordinary depth, and it is a major reason the story reaches HBO-drama caliber. The game features twenty-six main NPCs who each ship complete character arcs, brought to life across more than five thousand lines of dialogue, and these are not cardboard mission-givers but fully written people — Roman with his desperate optimism and gambling debts, the various crime bosses with their own agendas and tragedies, the friends and lovers whose relationships with Niko evolve over the course of the story. The writing gives each of them a voice, a worldview and a trajectory, so Liberty City feels populated by characters rather than quest markers, and the drama between them carries genuine emotional stakes. Crucially, the game folds the player into this web through branching moral-choice missions: at key moments Niko must decide whether to take revenge or show mercy, whether to make a deal or settle a score, and these choices have lasting consequences that ripple through the narrative. This interactivity deepens the storytelling, making you complicit in Niko's compromises and forcing you to sit with the weight of his decisions, which is exactly what elevates GTA IV's narrative above passive cutscene delivery.

Three stories, one city, one timeline

What pushes the story from excellent to a landmark, particularly in the Complete Edition, is the structural ambition of the two expansions. The Lost and Damned follows Johnny Klebitz, a biker gang's vice president navigating loyalty and decay, while The Ballad of Gay Tony follows Luis Lopez through Liberty City's neon-lit high-society nightlife, and crucially both campaigns unfold within the exact same timeline as Niko's story. Events you witnessed from one perspective in the base game recur from another in the expansions, characters cross paths across the three narratives, and a deal that went wrong in Niko's story is revealed to have been happening simultaneously elsewhere in the city. This interwoven, three-perspective structure is a genuine narrative triumph, a piece of storytelling architecture that few games have attempted with this much coherence, and it transforms Liberty City into a single living drama viewed from three angles. Together, the three campaigns deliver a richness and a sense of a complete, interconnected world that almost nothing in the genre matches. The 9.8 is the honest verdict on a story that is ambitious, mature, beautifully written, structurally daring, and still, after all these years, one of the very best the medium has produced.

Grand Theft Auto IV scores 9.5 for audio, and the mark reflects sound design that is as central to the game's greatness as its writing. From the voice performances that carry the prestige-drama script, to the iconic radio stations that have become a series signature, to the dense ambient soundscape of a recreated New York, GTA IV's audio is a complete, immersive achievement that makes Liberty City feel genuinely, breathingly alive. It is one of the best-sounding open worlds of its generation.

Performances that carry the drama

The foundation of the 9.5 is the voice acting, which delivers the game's exceptional writing with the conviction it demands. Niko Bellic's performance in particular is a standout, capturing the character's weariness, his dry humor, his buried pain and his flashes of warmth with a subtlety that sells the entire narrative, and the supporting cast matches that standard across thousands of lines of dialogue. These performances are what turn the script from words on a page into a lived drama, giving each of the twenty-six main characters a distinct voice and emotional reality, and they are inseparable from why the story lands as powerfully as it does. The quality of acting here was well ahead of the industry standard in 2008 and holds up completely today, proof of Rockstar's investment in performance as a pillar of storytelling. Without voice work this committed, the HBO-caliber writing would be inert; with it, the characters breathe, and the audio dimension earns much of its high score on the strength of these performances alone. They are the human voice of Liberty City.

The radio that defined a series

The most iconic element of GTA IV's audio, and a landmark of the medium, is its radio. The game offers nineteen fictional radio stations spanning a huge range of genres — from hip-hop to classic rock to electronica to talk radio — each curated with real licensed music and laced with brilliantly written satirical commentary, fake advertisements and call-in shows that skewer American culture with razor wit. Driving across Liberty City while flipping between stations is one of the defining pleasures of the game, and the radio does double duty as both a soundtrack and a comedic, satirical companion that enriches the world immeasurably. The talk-radio stations in particular are small masterpieces of writing, lampooning politics, consumerism and media with a sharpness that rewards close listening, and the music curation gives the city an authentic sonic texture. This is the open-world radio experience perfected, the template the entire series and genre would follow, and it remains one of the richest examples of incidental audio content ever assembled. It is a huge part of why the audio scores so high and why Liberty City feels like a real, culturally specific place.

A living city, with one honest scar

The third pillar of the audio is the ambient soundscape, which makes the recreated New York feel genuinely populated and alive. The constant hum of traffic, the chatter of pedestrians, the sirens and horns and arguments and snatches of overheard conversation all combine into a dense, convincing urban audio environment that sells the illusion of a real, functioning city. Liberty City sounds like New York, busy and indifferent and full of life, and that ambient richness is a quiet but essential part of the immersion. The one honest caveat on the 9.5 is a wound the game has suffered with age: in 2018, the expiration of certain music licenses forced the removal of a number of songs from the radio stations, leaving some of the playlists thinner than they were at launch and the radio experience slightly incomplete compared to its original form. This is a real loss, a casualty of the licensing realities that haunt music-heavy games over time, and it is the reason the audio score is not even higher. But even diminished, the radio remains excellent, and the overall audio package — superb voice acting, landmark radio, and a living-city soundscape — is so strong that the missing tracks only dent rather than undermine it. The 9.5 is the fair verdict on one of the most immersive and influential audio designs in open-world gaming.

Grand Theft Auto IV scores 6.7 for graphics, its lowest dimension, and the score is the honest reckoning of a game whose visuals were impressive in 2008 but have aged considerably, and whose PC version is one of the more notoriously troubled ports in the medium. This is not a knock on the game's artistic vision, which remains strong, but a recognition that the technical presentation today — especially on PC — is the weakest part of the package and a genuine barrier for modern players.

Groundbreaking physics, credited honestly

It would be unfair to discuss GTA IV's technology without crediting what it got genuinely, historically right, and that is the Euphoria physics engine. The procedural physics system gave the game ragdoll, collision and fall behavior of a granularity that felt revolutionary in 2008 and, remarkably, the GTA series itself has never quite replicated since: characters stumble, grab for railings, crumple realistically, and react to impacts with an unscripted weight that no canned animation can match. This was a real technical leap, and it remains one of the most-cited reasons fans return to GTA IV over its slicker successors, because the physical world simply behaves with more conviction here than in almost any open-world game before or after. The Euphoria-driven physicality is the part of GTA IV's technology that has aged best, a genuine achievement that the low graphics score should not be read to dismiss. But physics is only one component of a visual presentation, and it is the only part of GTA IV's technology that still impresses unreservedly, which is precisely why the dimension's overall score lands where it does despite this standout.

Art direction that captured a city

The other enduring strength of GTA IV's visuals is its art direction, which captured a believable, grounded New York with real conviction. Liberty City traded the sun-bleached fantasy of earlier games for a grimy, overcast, lived-in realism — grey skies, dirty streets, weathered brownstones, the specific texture of a great city's less glamorous corners — and this melancholy, authentic art direction perfectly matched the tone of Niko's story. The four boroughs each have a distinct visual character, and the overall aesthetic of a slightly tarnished, rain-slicked metropolis remains evocative even as the raw fidelity has dated. For its era, the recreation of New York was a remarkable feat of environmental design, and the mood it conjures still works because mood is a product of art direction rather than polygon count. This is the part of the visuals that holds up on its own terms: GTA IV does not look modern, but it looks like Liberty City, and that coherent, grounded vision of a city is a genuine artistic strength that survives the years better than the underlying technology does.

Dated fidelity and a broken PC port

What drags the graphics score down to 6.7 is the combination of dated fidelity and serious technical problems, especially on PC. Against the standard set by GTA V and modern open worlds like Cyberpunk 2077, GTA IV's raw visual fidelity now reads as clearly old — lower-resolution textures, simpler lighting, stiffer character models — and that is the unavoidable reality of a 2008 game. More damaging is the PC version itself, which launched with poor optimization tied to the now-defunct Games for Windows Live, and which has long been infamous for running badly even on capable hardware. The 2020 patch removed the worst of the legacy dependencies and improved matters, but the port still benefits enormously from community graphics mods to look and run acceptably on modern systems, and an unmodded install can be a frustrating experience. This technical roughness is a real, practical barrier — a player coming to GTA IV today may have to invest effort in patches and mods before the game runs well, which is a poor first impression for a classic. The 6.7 is the fair verdict: groundbreaking physics and evocative art direction held down by genuinely dated fidelity and one of the medium's more troubled PC ports, the one dimension where this acclaimed game most clearly shows its age. It is worth stressing that none of this reflects a failure of vision — GTA IV looked and felt cutting-edge in its moment, and the choices it made were the right ones for 2008. The low score is simply the unavoidable verdict of time and a port that was never properly maintained, and it is the price of admission for everything the game still does brilliantly.

Grand Theft Auto IV scores 8.8 for gameplay, and the mark reflects a grounded, physics-driven open world that prioritizes weight and realism over the frictionless spectacle of its successors. This is a deliberately heavier, more deliberate GTA, where the Euphoria physics give everything consequence and the driving demands respect, and while that grounded design is divisive, it is also exactly what gives the game its enduring, distinctive identity. The 8.8 credits a gameplay experience of real craft, tempered by mechanics that feel their age.

Euphoria physics and the weight of the world

The defining feature of GTA IV's gameplay is the Euphoria physics, and it changes how everything feels. Because the game simulates bodies and collisions procedurally rather than playing canned animations, every action carries unscripted weight and consequence: a car crash sends Niko tumbling realistically through the windshield, a gunfight drops enemies in ways that reflect exactly how they were hit, a fall down stairs plays out differently every time. This physicality gives the moment-to-moment gameplay a tactile, believable quality that, as noted, the series never recaptured, and it is the single biggest reason GTA IV's gameplay still feels special. Combat is built around a functional cover system and gunplay that, while dated, gains real impact from the physics of enemies reacting to fire, and the sense that the world pushes back — that actions have physical consequences you cannot fully predict — is what makes even routine mayhem engaging. The Euphoria system turns GTA IV from a game you play into a world you bump against, and that grounded physicality is the heart of the gameplay score, an achievement that has aged far better than the visuals wrapping it.

The driving model and a life beyond missions

GTA IV's driving is its most divisive mechanic, and it is central to understanding the game. Vehicles are heavy and realistic, with real weight transfer, momentum and a tendency to slide and wallow that demands genuine attention — a stark contrast to the arcade-tight handling of GTA V. Many players found it frustrating at launch and many still do, but it is a deliberate choice that fits the grounded tone: cars feel like two-ton machines rather than slot cars, and mastering them is a skill rather than a given. Whether you love it or fight it, the driving is unmistakably part of GTA IV's grounded identity. Beyond the missions, the game builds a life around Niko through its friend and relationship systems: you can take friends bowling, to bars or shows, go on dates, answer phone calls, and build relationships that yield gameplay perks, and these activities flesh out Liberty City into a place where Niko has a social existence rather than just a kill list. This systemic life, combined with the city's many diversions, gives the open world a lived-in texture that supports the narrative's grounded ambitions and rewards players who want to inhabit the city rather than just complete it.

The dated edges and the GTA V contrast

The honest cost of GTA IV's gameplay is that, beneath the still-impressive physics, much of it feels its 2008 age. The user interface is clunky by modern standards, the menus and mission-replay conveniences that later games introduced are absent, and the controls and handling can feel awkward and unforgiving to a player arriving from GTA V or Cyberpunk 2077, where everything is smoother and more accommodating. These dated edges are real friction, and they are the main reason the gameplay sits at 8.8 rather than higher — the core is excellent, but the surface has not aged as gracefully as the physics underneath it. The contrast with its own successor is the key to understanding the trade: GTA V is bigger, slicker, more convenient and more spectacular in nearly every measurable way, but in smoothing out the experience it also sanded away the granular physics and the grounded weight that made GTA IV feel so distinct. GTA IV is the more deliberate, more physical, more demanding game, and for players who value that grounded consequence over frictionless fun, it offers something its glossier sequel does not. The 8.8 is the fair verdict on grounded, physics-rich gameplay of real craft, held back from a higher mark only by the dated conveniences and controls of its era.

Content scores 9.0 for the Complete Edition, and the case is strong: a dense, faithful recreation of New York, three full interwoven campaigns, and a city stuffed with radio, television, diversions and social activities. This is the version of GTA IV to own precisely because it bundles so much, turning an already substantial game into a sprawling package that holds up well even against modern open worlds. The content score reflects both the scale of Liberty City and the generosity of the edition.

A faithful, dense Liberty City

The foundation of the 9.0 is Liberty City itself, a roughly 13.86-square-kilometer recreation of New York that prioritizes density and authenticity over raw size. Rather than the empty sprawl that pads out many open worlds, GTA IV's city is tightly packed with detail across its four boroughs and the neighboring Alderney, each with its own distinct architecture, atmosphere and character, and populated by thousands of NPCs going about a believable urban existence. This is a city designed to feel real rather than merely large, and the result is an environment that rewards exploration and never feels like filler — every street corner has the texture of a genuine place. The faithfulness of the recreation, from the bridges to the Times-Square analogue to the grimy industrial fringes, is a remarkable achievement of environmental design, and it gives the content a quality that pure square-kilometer counts miss. Liberty City is smaller than later GTA maps but denser and more deliberately crafted, and that density is a major part of why the world remains so compelling to inhabit. It is content measured in detail rather than emptiness.

Three campaigns in one timeline

What makes the Complete Edition the definitive package is that it bundles all three campaigns, and together they form one of the richest narrative content offerings in the genre. Beyond Niko's lengthy main story, you get The Lost and Damned, following biker Johnny Klebitz, and The Ballad of Gay Tony, following nightclub fixer Luis Lopez — and crucially, both expansions are full-length campaigns in their own right, not minor add-ons, each with its own missions, characters, vehicles and tone. The genius is that all three unfold in the same Liberty City timeline and intersect, so playing through them reveals the same events from multiple perspectives and rewards you with a deeper, more complete understanding of the city's interconnected web of crime. This is enormous narrative content delivered with structural ambition, effectively three games' worth of story set in one shared world, and it dramatically extends the value of the package. For a player who engages with all three, the Complete Edition offers dozens of hours of high-quality, interlocking storytelling that few open worlds can match even today.

A city full of life, with one honest lull

Surrounding the campaigns is a wealth of incidental content that fills Liberty City with life and diversion. The nineteen radio stations and their hours of curated music and satirical talk, the in-game television channels with their own parody programming, the functional internet cafes, and the friend activities like bowling, drinking and dating all combine to make the city feel like a living place full of things to do beyond the missions. This breadth of incidental content was a genre ceiling for its era and remains impressively rich, giving players countless small ways to inhabit the world. The one honest caveat on the content score is pacing: the base game's main story can plateau in its later stretch, with a degree of mission repetition becoming noticeable somewhere in the twenty-to-thirty-hour range, as the structure of drive-here, shoot-this begins to show. It is a real if modest flaw, the point at which the lengthy campaign's momentum sags before its strong finish. But weighed against three full campaigns, a dense and faithful city, and a wealth of diversions, that lull is a minor blemish on an otherwise enormous package. The 9.0 is the fair verdict on content that is generous, dense, narratively rich, and — in this Complete Edition — about as much game as anyone could ask for. Crucially, this is content that prizes quality over padding: there are no busywork collectibles stretched across an empty map, only a tightly authored city and three substantial stories, which is exactly why the package holds up against open worlds many times its physical size.