GTA IV driving appreciation thread

[ImpalaBoy77]

I can't be the only one who absolutely LOVES the driving in GTA IV. Everything from the way the cars handle to the car damage imo is the best GTA has ever done. I love how you can do burnouts and donuts and leave a large cloud of smoke behind your car, how you can drift around corners and do reverse 180s & 360s. The tire smoke is trash in GTA 5, the burnouts and doing donuts suck. The muscle cars don't drive like a real muscle car. It's arcade trash. Everything handles like a Lambo for the most part except for untility vehicles. You can't hardly drift or really slide your car around corners. The fact that you can drive a Patriot into a small car and shove it out of the way in GTA 4 instead of coming to a dead stop like you ran into the side of a mountain in GTA 5 

 

Car damage is way better. The car body actually deforms including the doors and the roof. Not as many parts fall off the cars which is more realistic. I hate how in GTA 5 the car hardly deforms at all and all the body panels just fall off. Doesn't make sense that the fender on your 80s Cadillac just falls off when hardly tapping a car especially when those fenders are made of solid steel and held on with like 50 bolts. 

[Mindshower]

I love the body roll, makes you use your brakes. It's an acquired taste, but once you get accustomed to not being on autopilot like in V, chases and car crashes can be quite cinematic with the traffic density and car deformity.

[Smocaine]

I love that in GTA IV every car had a purpose, in GTA V all you really need is a super car, but if you come across let's say a blista in gta IV you could really use it to go around corners so quickly compared to other cars. The tight streets of the map really complements the driving.

[Nico]

I'm not sure if it can be said that GTA IV driving model was fully realistic, because aside of very lifted off-road vehicles and cars of the American "land-yatch" era, I don't think any real cars had such an excessive amount of body roll in their handling. To me, it was a bit exaggerated. But still, what I liked the most about this exaggeration is that it gave the driving mechanics of this game some sort of learning curve, making them feel quite unique and distinctive. It wasn't plug and play; you had to learn to live with it, and eventually you could master it with enough patience and dedication. It's something that becomes surprisingly pleasant to do once you know the tricks to it. The Mafia series adopted a similar handling mechanic since Mafia 2, with every game having a switch for a "simulation mode" so people who don't want to deal with it can toggle it off. It's a win-win situation.

 

But over time, I've heard lots and lots of complaints from people about how many times they crashed (as if that was an unusual thing to happen in GTA ) their cars in GTA IV because they just couldn't handle the driving physics. They expected similar stuff to the previous 3D era GTA's, and ultimately this is a business and they have to cater to a majority; hence why GTA V was such a massive downgrade of pretty much everything. But I'm glad Rockstar, at least once during in their prime, had the audacity to go in the opposite direction of what their fans "wanted". It's a shame GTA V didn't feature a switch like the Mafia games to alter between different driving modes, although I assume they skipped this and many other cool, realistic things because they just wanted to build the basis of a massive, very casual online platform.

[IVCavalcade]

I do really like the challenge of IV's driving, but the problem is that when you get it sussed, the AI can't adapt and just ends up slamming into walls on every corner when they're chasing you. Whether it's police, enemies, races, they aren't programmed to adapt to decent+ driving. At least in my experience. The only thing I don't like is the excessive body roll, but overall it's a good system.

[billiejoearmstrong8]

Totally agree! But just pointing out there is already a thread for this still being used fairly recently (maybe a mod can merge this with it)

 

 

[TKDSnovelist]

I did a lot of racing in IV... enjoyed it more than on V. 

[EL_FUGA]

Driving on IV is perfect. They downgraded/ruined it on gta5.

 

I know of some racers who only race on IV because they find IV's driving better than any other racing dedicated game.

Edited November 26, 2021 by EL_FUGA

[billiejoearmstrong8]

I had to adjust to the driving again after not playing for a year and a half and after mistakenly believing LA Noire's driving was more similar to it than it is lol. But guess what, it only took a short time to get used to braking earlier again and it's all good. In fact when I had a quick go on V at my nephew's house a few weeks ago (hadn't played that for ages either) I also had to get used to it - I swear HD era GTA driving in general is just more slidey. I love the handling of the cars while driving around LC, so satisfying, and nice and varied between models too.

[diperro]

I've tried most games out there that involve driving in an open-world environment, and after many years of experimenting, I have to say that nothing comes close to GTA IV's driving.

 

We can all agree that vanilla handling settings aren't perfect, but they sure laid the foundation for this:

 

 

 

Here I'm playing with Killatomate's Realistic Driving mod, and you can easily notice some stuff that all these new games lack:

 

- The ability to drift/powerslide 

- The car having a certain weight and the feel of it while accelerating/turning/braking

- The way the car reacts to road inconsistencies/different surfaces

- The feel and adrenaline of going really fast when reaching certain speeds

 

Obviously this mod isn't perfect because cars feel too fast for such a small map, but nevertheless, it is the most immersive experience you can have while driving in a GTA-like game. I've tried GTA 5 but there's something about it that pulls me out of that immersion I'm talking about, even with "realistic" mods installed. Only series that comes close to this level could be Mafia, although I think that none of the new games come close to Mafia II in terms of driving. 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2021 by diperro