I tried so hard to love this game. This was supposed to be my first GTA experience; I chose IV in particular because I was drawn to the fact that it was the first in the series to have ragdoll physics and HD graphics, and lacked the microtransactions and bloat of V. With the research that I did, I felt like this would be the perfect starting off point to get me into the series, and I planned to explore the rest of the games after finishing this one.

I am not exaggerating when I say that this has been the most frustrating gaming experience I have ever had. I want to preface that, yes, this is probably all due to skill issue, but I still feel that I'm justified in airing my frustrations because a lot of it is due to intentional game design choices that I strongly disagree with.

First of all, the chase missions in this game are absolutely atrocious. There is almost zero bar for error, and they intentionally place traffic in inconvenient places to slow you down. This, in itself, isn't a problem. It's the fact that the missions are so unforgiving with their checkpoints, or lack thereof. I'll be a decent way through a pretty long mission, only for it to end in a chase that I'll accidentally take a wrong turn during, have to take the slowest three-point turn because of the car's slow acceleration, and end up outright failing because the handling is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I've played a lot of racing games before, and open-world action RPG's like Cyberpunk that have extremely refined car handling, but GTA IV was so unnecessarily frustrating with it.

Using the handbrake causes the camera to whip around the car like three times, completely disorienting you and making that feature effectively useless. Some objects can be driven through, and then some that would make sense to drive through stop you dead in your tracks. Yes, it's technically my fault for not having a good handle on the controls, or for taking a wrong turn, or for crashing into something, but what's not my fault is the fact that the mission starts you back ALL the way from the beginning. You have to replay everything leading up to that point, making it feel like a complete waste of time and extremely irritating. I enjoy challenging games that punish you for failing, but GTA IV doesn't encourage you to learn because you have to trudge through a ton of content you've already completed just to get back to the point where you failed.

Everything is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ clunky too. For instance, you don't just throw out punches, you have to wait for Niko to finish his animation and decide that he wants to throw a punch. The last mission before I caved and finally decided to put the game to rest was when I was getting mobbed by a group of people, and was supposed to punch my way through them. I was frustrated because no matter what I did, whether I tried to throw punches or kicks or evade their attacks, Niko wouldn't do ♥♥♥♥. In a panic, I tried to switch weapons, but the game refused to, so I ate dirt and Alt + F4'd. I would've been inclined to replay the mission if it put me right before the fight, but I was so miffed knowing I would have to do all of the tedious ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ leading up to that point, that I cut my losses and decided it wasn't worth it.

I really wanted to love this game. I feel like I'm crazy for being so frustrated with this game when practically everyone I see online worships it. Maybe I'll come back to it when my prefrontal cortex fully develops and I have more time to waste on repeating the same things over and over and over an

I tried so hard to love this game. This was supposed to be my first GTA experience; I chose IV in particular because I was drawn to the fact that it was the first in the series to have ragdoll physics and HD graphics, and lacked the microtransactions and bloat of V. With the research that I did, I felt like this would be the perfect starting off point to get me into the series, and I planned to explore the rest of the games after finishing this one. I am not exaggerating when I say that this has been the most frustrating gaming experience I have ever had. I want to preface that, yes, this is probably all due to skill issue, but I still feel that I'm justified in airing my frustrations because a lot of it is due to intentional game design choices that I strongly disagree with. First of all, the chase missions in this game are absolutely atrocious. There is almost zero bar for error, and they intentionally place traffic in inconvenient places to slow you down. This, in itself, isn't a problem. It's the fact that the missions are so unforgiving with their checkpoints, or lack thereof. I'll be a decent way through a pretty long mission, only for it to end in a chase that I'll accidentally take a wrong turn during, have to take the slowest three-point turn because of the car's slow acceleration, and end up outright failing because the handling is so dogshit. I've played a lot of racing games before, and open-world action RPG's like Cyberpunk that have extremely refined car handling, but GTA IV was so unnecessarily frustrating with it. Using the handbrake causes the camera to whip around the car like three times, completely disorienting you and making that feature effectively useless. Some objects can be driven through, and then some that would make [i]sense[/i] to drive through stop you dead in your tracks. Yes, it's technically [i]my[/i] fault for not having a good handle on the controls, or for taking a wrong turn, or for crashing into something, but what's [i]not[/i] my fault is the fact that the mission starts you back ALL the way from the beginning. You have to replay everything leading up to that point, making it feel like a complete waste of time and extremely irritating. I enjoy challenging games that punish you for failing, but GTA IV doesn't encourage you to [i]learn[/i] because you have to trudge through a ton of content you've already completed just to get back to the point where you failed. Everything is so fucking clunky too. For instance, you don't just throw out punches, you have to wait for Niko to finish his animation and decide that he wants to throw a punch. The last mission before I caved and finally decided to put the game to rest was when I was getting mobbed by a group of people, and was supposed to punch my way through them. I was frustrated because no matter what I did, whether I tried to throw punches or kicks or evade their attacks, Niko wouldn't do shit. In a panic, I tried to switch weapons, but the game refused to, so I ate dirt and Alt + F4'd. I would've been inclined to replay the mission if it put me right before the fight, but I was so miffed knowing I would have to do all of the tedious bullshit leading up to that point, that I cut my losses and decided it wasn't worth it. I really wanted to love this game. I feel like I'm crazy for being so frustrated with this game when practically everyone I see online worships it. Maybe I'll come back to it when my prefrontal cortex fully develops and I have more time to waste on repeating the same things over and over and over an