Grand Theft Auto IV

Rockstar North's 2008 entry is the darkest and most physically grounded game in the series. Niko Bellic arrives in Liberty City expecting the version his cousin described in emails and finds debt, and the tone follows him - the satire is still there but the humour is bleaker and the story is fundamentally about someone who cannot stop doing the thing he came here to escape. Mechanically it is defined by Euphoria, the physics system that gives pedestrians and Niko himself real weight: cars wallow on their suspension, falls are ragdolls rather than animations, and shootouts play out from cover with a stickiness the later games sanded off. Some found the driving heavy and the friend-activity phone calls intrusive, and both criticisms are fair. What is not in dispute is Liberty City itself, a compressed New York with more architectural character than its successors, and two expansions - The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony - that are among the best DLC Rockstar has made.