When it comes to the story, Grand Theft Auto 4 manages to do what games have been trying to do since the idea of games having story/storytelling elements exclusive to them. A movie-like story that grips the player and lets them interact with it, making it so that player's choices make a change to the story.

Wanna find out something about a certain character that is never mentioned in the story, but is something you would like to know? No problem, you can hangout with characters and listen to what they have to say to Niko. It makes the characters feel human.

When it comes to the gameplay the game does often put realism and immersion before gameplay and it does sometimes mildly annoy me. However it's never a big deal to me, it never made me very mad or anything...
The thing that annoyed me the most is the fact that you can't mod your car, you can only change it's color, but you can't even choose the color you want for your car. It doesn't waste too much money, but on the other hand it does waste a lot of time.

The atmosphere is great, but I should add that they went a little overboard when it comes to the visual filters. Sometimes it looks like there is no color at all.

The voice acting is great, not sure what else to say, it's just good. However Niko does sound more like an American man with a fake Russian accent speaking Serbian than a Serbian man, but it's a complicated language and the actor still did a very good job and manged to capture the raw emotions of the character.

I like Liberty City, however it's a terrible place for police chases in my opinion. I also like the more "realistic" approach they tried taking with the cars. It's not really realistic but it actually made me drive like a (somewhat) normal person. It also made driving a bit more engaging to me since cars actually feel like something that weights around ton, unlike GTA5's boring paper plate cars that all feel the same to me. As I mentioned, it's a bummer that you can't customize cars, since different cars feel different to drive.
Also driving does take some time getting used to and for some reason, breaking makes it so that you can only steer the wheels half way you can without breaking. Not sure why that's a thing... The driving in this game does make car chase sequences where you need to chase somebody more tedious than they should be.

I also really like the many small details they added to make the game's world more believable.

When it comes to the story, Grand Theft Auto 4 manages to do what games have been trying to do since the idea of games having story/storytelling elements exclusive to them. A movie-like story that grips the player and lets them interact with it, making it so that player's choices make a change to the story. Wanna find out something about a certain character that is never mentioned in the story, but is something you would like to know? No problem, you can hangout with characters and listen to what they have to say to Niko. It makes the characters feel human. When it comes to the gameplay the game does often put realism and immersion before gameplay and it does sometimes mildly annoy me. However it's never a big deal to me, it never made me very mad or anything... The thing that annoyed me the most is the fact that you can't mod your car, you can only change it's color, but you can't even choose the color you want for your car. It doesn't waste too much money, but on the other hand it does waste a lot of time. The atmosphere is great, but I should add that they went a little overboard when it comes to the visual filters. Sometimes it looks like there is no color at all. The voice acting is great, not sure what else to say, it's just good. However Niko does sound more like an American man with a fake Russian accent speaking Serbian than a Serbian man, but it's a complicated language and the actor still did a very good job and manged to capture the raw emotions of the character. I like Liberty City, however it's a terrible place for police chases in my opinion. I also like the more "realistic" approach they tried taking with the cars. It's not really realistic but it actually made me drive like a (somewhat) normal person. It also made driving a bit more engaging to me since cars actually feel like something that weights around ton, unlike GTA5's boring paper plate cars that all feel the same to me. As I mentioned, it's a bummer that you can't customize cars, since different cars feel different to drive. Also driving does take some time getting used to and for some reason, breaking makes it so that you can only steer the wheels half way you can without breaking. Not sure why that's a thing... The driving in this game does make car chase sequences where you need to chase somebody more tedious than they should be. I also really like the many small details they added to make the game's world more believable.