I read a story about people playing GTA IV online. This guy and his friends had invented a game called Hello-copter. The trick was to get in a helicopter, find a friend, hover over them, bail out, and yell "hellooo..." and then "copter!" just as your body crashes at their feet. They get about two seconds to look up and see the helicopter about to crash down on their head.
So I tried to install it again. They patched it up pretty well, and I can run the PC version on pretty high settings without any issues.
I thought I was making okay progress for the time I've spent on it, but my brother started playing at the same time and he has pretty much all of the features unlocked. I'm just getting off the first island.
It is an improvement on GTA III and its spawn.
The fighting is probably the biggest improvement. It's not a FPS, so it's never going to be the best fighting, but I think the previous games would have been immensely improved with a system closer to this.
The added realism of stealing cars, driving cars, and escaping cops is also appreciated. There are times where I wish I could have a car that drove a bit more like a video game than real life, but I appreciate what they were going for.
The story telling still kind of sucks in places. Characters pop up that you've never met, but act like they've been there all game. Motivation is inconsistent. It's mostly about doing things that teach you to use the game or show off something cool. Which is fine, but not great.