Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition
Intense overall intensityWhat's in it
Realistic third-person gunfights, melee, drive-bys and explosions against human enemies and police, with blood spatter and ragdoll deaths; pedestrians can be run over or shot.
The Ballad of Gay Tony expansion shows full frontal nudity, and strip-club scenes include topless dancers.
The player drinks alcohol and can drive drunk, and drug dealing is central to the story—especially cocaine and heroin trafficking across the two episodes.
Carjacking, armed robbery, contract killing and gang warfare are the core gameplay loop and are financially rewarded within the story.
The player can solicit street prostitutes, pay for and receive a sex act, and (optionally) kill them to recover the money.
Sex is strongly implied through dating, paid encounters, and strip-club scenes; the Ballad of Gay Tony episode adds explicit sexual dialogue and situations.
Frequent strong profanity including f-words and sexual and crude slang throughout scripted dialogue and radio.
The story deals with war trauma, immigration, revenge, betrayal and death in a bleak, cynical satire of American life.
The only animals in the city are pigeons, which the player hunts and shoots as a 200-item collectible challenge; there is no other animal life to harm.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition bundles the crime saga of immigrant Niko Bellic with its two expansions, following a biker and a nightclub fixer across the gritty open city of Liberty City. Players drive, shoot and brawl their way through a criminal underworld, completing missions that involve carjacking, robbery, drug deals and contract killing, with a police 'wanted' system responding to mayhem. Content includes realistic bloody gun and vehicular violence against people and police, frequent strong profanity, alcohol and drug use, strip clubs and paid sex with prostitutes, and explicit sexual and nude content in the Ballad of Gay Tony expansion. Its themes are dark and cynical, touching on war trauma, revenge and death. An open-world multiplayer mode with other players existed historically, though the PC online components are now largely defunct.
How it's framed
The game frames its criminal world as bleak satire, presenting Liberty City as a corrupt place obsessed with money and status where the protagonists' violence and crime are both rewarded gameplay and the subject of dark, morally ambivalent commentary; Niko's story in particular treats his violent life with regret and consequence rather than celebration.
Details
- Developer
- Rockstar North
- Publisher
- Rockstar Games
- Released
- Mar 24, 2020
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