I’m taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we’ll be putting together won’t be traditional re-reviews, and they won’t come with any new IGN score, but they will re-examine what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release. By the end of the project, using GTA’s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly rank in my long-term love for this series.

Today it’s time to revisit Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV.

Grand Theft Auto IV is smaller than GTA: San Andreas. Significantly so, if you exclude water, as its land area is reportedly around only one-quarter the size of San Andreas’s physical real estate. GTA IV also has markedly reduced vehicle variety, with much fewer of them overall and zero car customisation. It has no asset management, less mission variety, no RPG-inspired skill system, a pretty paltry list of cheats, and the only thing you can alter about lead character Niko Bellic is his outfit. In fact, if you weren’t around for the arrival of GTA IV, I think it’s fair enough that you may actually find yourself a little confused about its place in the series pantheon. That is, how could this apparently smaller game with overtly fewer features than its predecessor have instantly become not only the highest-rated GTA in the history of the series, but one of the highest rated games of all time, full stop?

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