The recent GTA V reveal reminded me that I had set GTA IV aside more than a year ago.  I just fired the game up and checked my playthrough stats: To my surprise, I discovered that had played for 20 hours before I lost interest.  I remember next to nothing of those hours.

By contrast, I had logged untold hours on the PS2 GTAs, and my memories of those installments in the franchise remain vivid even though I played them before GTA IV.  I remember San Andreas most of all: I recall with amusement the unlikely friendships that Carl made, and I remember that I had such an investment in the game world that I actually felt unsettled and displaced when Carl was exiled from Los Santos.

What I remember of GTA IV is the nagging sensation of being stifled, that my actions and interactions with the game world were being curtailed.  Perhaps the gameplay itself is a commentary on the suffocating restrictions that have been imposed over the last ten years in the name of security and the powerlessness of the average person in a system controlled by insiders and the wealthy.  If so, it's appalling that gameplay was compromised to send a message.

I worry that with GTA V Rockstar is again making cultural relevance the priority at the expense of fun.

I don't give a damn about the entire series to be honest.
Same goes for last year's Red Dead Redemption: there's a whole bunch of stuff you can do, but none of it is any fun at all to me.

To be honest, I've never played a "sandbox" game and I don't really have the desire to either. Still, I'll admit to liking how they incorporate light RPG elements (you get stronger for working out, etc.) into their gameplay.

Yet I'm probably the wrong person to even be talking about modern games. I'm sure everyone here's heard it enough to make their ears f---ing bleed but I rather surround myself with older games (anything pre-PS2 is pretty boss) and my collection reflects that. I've had countless people come up to me and try to talk up the soon to be released Modern Warfare 3 or the "latest shooter" and I just don't care. I mean they’re talking to someone who's FPS of choice are Doom and Goldeneye.

Speaking of first person shooter fans, do they even respect the games that blazed the trail and made today's games possible? I'll try and connect with them saying I liked the aforementioned games and all they do is look at me like why in the hell I would still be playing them. It's the total opposite scenario I encounter when I tell someone I'm playing old platformers like Mario and Mega Man.

The fun starts when you abandon the main campaign and play the Gay Tony add-on. Although that still has one of the big problems with GTA IV - the location. In the search for realism, they seemed to lose any sense of fun in the layout of the city. It's mostly like driving in real traffic and the handling of the cars doesn't help. I realised at a certain point that I mainly just took taxis to cut out the driving and, when a game is 90% driving and I want to skip it, that's not a good sign.

And, again with the location and what they did with it, as a sandbox game it's not really a success because it's a massive box with very little sand. So big and yet so little to find, so little to do.

But yes, Gay Tony brought back much more fun and I enjoyed that much better than the main campaign. More humour, more fun weapons, parachuting and base jumping and all in a tighter package.

GTA V hasn't got me excited but the location does seem more varied and more open so I'm hoping that they'll realise the potential for fun that comes with that. Gay Tony could be a sign that they know what they need more of in the next one.

This. Red Dead Redemption lets you quick-travel and I can't begin to say how much that improves the mechanics of the genre. It also doesn't hurt that it's far easier to control a horse than a car. I beat RDR but I couldn't get further than ten hours into GTA IV because I hated the story, the characters and ESPECIALLY the driving.

Going a bit off target, but speaking of recent sandbox games, does anyone have any thoughts on the Saints Row and Just Cause series?  People liken it to GTA IV, but far more liberating, wacky, and, well.... FUN.  What think?

I can't speak for Just Cause, but that is an accurate assessment of Saints Row. 1 and 2 both feel more like the pre-GTAIV GTAs than anything, down to the sense of humor (which comes off as raucously fun and somewhat dark all in the same breath) and overall feel of the world it depicts. The storyline in 2 is actually surprisingly good, all things considered.

It's in functionality though that Saints Row beats the living shit out of GTA. The basic controls in Saints Row are far more intuitive than the confusing button layout that has plagued GTA since it's debut in three dimensions. Simple actions like scoring headshots, drive-by shootings, or even melee combat feel so natural that going back to GTA after experiencing Saints Row could be likened to hooking up the ol' VHS player after experiencing DVD.

All told, an excellent series.