Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto series is among one of the biggest video game franchises of all time, next to Mario, Call of Duty, and other hits. Along the way, many titles have laid the basis for the latest game Grand Theft Auto 5, which hit 90 million units sold this year, making it the most profitable commercial entertainment product of all time. The fourth numbered title in the GTA series is the obviously-named Grand Theft Auto 4.
Grand Theft Auto 4 reaches its 10 year anniversary today, as it released on April 29, 2008. The game is considered by fans as a monumental point in the Grand Theft Auto series because it featured brand new options such as genuine multiplayer – something that hadn’t been a real option in previous games. Most of the previous games required manually hosting a server or playing only co-op with up to 6 people. Grand Theft Auto 4’s multiplayer was cutting edge for a Grand Theft Auto game, and it is claimed to be the best multiplayer mode in the entire series (a lot of people hate Grand Theft Auto Online, which recently was the center of a brand new edition).
Grand Theft Auto 4 revamped the much-loved Liberty City map, based off of real life New York City of course. It featured many easter eggs, such as a beating heart in the Statue of Happiness (Liberty) and replacing the Statue’s face with Hillary Clinton. It also included an intense amount of interiors for the player to visit, and had an amazing protagonist in the form of Niko Bellic, an Eastern man visiting his cousin, Roman, to “live the American Dream.” The game is praised for its differences to Grand Theft Auto 5, which does not have sophisticated car damage or melee combat – both of which were likely to have been removed for performance reasons.
The game was unbelievably ambitious for the first few years of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 – the animations were much smoother and a lot more detail was emphasized in the little things. Niko’s idle animations were improved upon, and he would interact with the weather (he would wipe rain off his head and shake it off his hand). You can see why fans are begging for a remaster, or even a port, on the 10 Year anniversary of this fantastic game. The only update Rockstar have given it is one to remove over 50 songs from the game due to licensing issues, which released yesterday.