Liberty City — 2008
Grand Theft Auto IV
“Life is complicated. I killed people, smuggled people, sold people.” · April 29, 2008
GTA IV at a glance
Copies Sold25M+
Metacritic98
First-Week Revenue$500M
Expansions2
the american dream, allegedly
The Story
Niko Bellic comes to Liberty City on his cousin's promise of mansions and sports cars, finds a damp apartment and a taxi firm, and goes looking for the man who sold out his unit in the war.
Niko and Roman
Roman's lies are the reason Niko is there at all, and the relationship between them — exasperated, genuine, funny — is the emotional spine of the whole game.
Hunting Darko Brevic
Twelve men went into that village and one walked away rich. The revenge plot runs quietly under every job Niko takes.
Deal or Revenge
The finale forks, and either Kate or Roman dies. GTA had never made a choice cost that much before.
a new engine, a new tone
What Changed
RAGE and Euphoria
The Rockstar Advanced Game Engine paired with NaturalMotion's Euphoria physics — characters that stumble, catch themselves and fall differently every time, instead of playing canned animations.
Grounded, Not Cartoonish
After San Andreas' jetpacks, GTA IV pulled hard toward realism: heavier cars, no bicycles, a sombre palette and a story about immigration and debt.
The Cell Phone
Missions, friendships, dates and taxis all routed through a phone — the interface idea every later GTA kept.
Cover Shooting
A proper cover system finally made gunfights readable and tactical rather than a matter of circling and spraying.
Liberty City Rebuilt
Broker, Dukes, Bohan, Algonquin and Alderney — New York redrawn with a density and verticality the PS2 games could never hold.
Online Out of the Box
Sixteen-player multiplayer with free roam and modes built in — the direct ancestor of GTA Online.
liberty city, twice more
Episodes from Liberty City
The Lost and Damned
February 2009. Johnny Klebitz of The Lost MC, running the same weeks as Niko's story from the other side of the city — and quietly one of the best things Rockstar has written.
The Ballad of Gay Tony
October 2009. Luis Lopez, nightclubs, parachutes and gold-plated everything — the deliberate colour counterweight to the base game's grey.
Three Stories, One Map
The episodes intersect the main plot at specific moments, showing the same events from three angles without ever rebuilding the city.
Standalone Release
Both shipped as a disc that needed no copy of GTA IV — an early argument that expansions could stand on their own.
the game itself
Grand Theft Auto IV Screenshots
Official shots first, then what the community is still making nearly 20 years on.
Official
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/screens/gta4/ on the server and they appear here automatically —
or browse Rockstar's own game pages ↗.
From the Community
Every piece links back to its creator. Browse more on
DeviantArt ↗.
still in the conversation
Grand Theft Auto IV News
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the critical peak
Legacy
One of the Highest-Rated Games Ever
A Metacritic 98 puts it in a handful of titles at the top of the all-time list, alongside a BAFTA and a clean sweep of 2008's awards.
The Physics Everyone Copied
Euphoria's ragdolls are still clipped, memed and studied — and remain the reason players argue GTA IV's driving and crashes feel better than GTA V's.
The Licensing Problem
Music rights expired over time and songs were stripped from later re-releases — the clearest example of what happens when a world is built on borrowed records.
The Bridge to GTA V
Everything GTA V refined — the engine, the phone, the online mode — is GTA IV's groundwork. See where it led on our GTA V page.