Good game. Fuck Niko Bellic.
Everything you've heard about GTA IV is true. It looks great, it sounds great, for most part its alot of fun to play.
Let's talk about the story, or more specifically, about Niko.
Starting out, Niko is a likable protagonist in the same way all good scoundrel-with-a-heart characters are. He gets into trouble, but he usually isn't the one who starts it, and you can empathize with him. As the game goes on this persona drifts from one of a empathetic rogue caught up in events to a sociopath, willing to take any mission to kill nearly anyone for a little money, and even less reason. The cut scenes and story-telling begin to diverge wildly from the actual content of the missions, and eventually you're left concluding that Niko Bellic is just a murdering fuck-head, and game-over is probably the best he deserves. Late in the game, the wife of a mobster who you're working for says it best in a cut scene. She asks where you've been, and if you've been out killing innocent people for her husband. She suggests that maybe you killed someone with a young family who'll really miss him. She seems to be the only character in the game that has what most people would identify as a human perspective on the events of the game, and she's only in one cut scene.
Next to none of it is convincing, unless maybe you listen to too much gangster rap. Fuck Niko Bellic.
