Grand Theft Auto IV

No shark cards and comes with actual dlc

Fantastic game, even in 2023. Tips for new players in 2023:
1) GSHADE: Install GShade and choose DXVK/Vulkan. Free performance uplift for any semi-modern GPU.
2) DOWNGRADE RADIO: Use the community downgrade patch (google it) to restore the game to 1.0.8 or lower. (1.0.8 or 7 are most popular). This restores older radio stations. Choose Old Vladivostok Radio if asked.
2a) EFLC RADIO LIMIT: Optionally, install the mod to limit the Episodes/DLC radio to their own episodes. This helps keep the tone of the main story from changing early on with pop and dance music drowning out the Vladivostok Russian radio.
Optional easy enhancements:
3) TIMECYCLE: Install a Timecycle mod of your choice (I use Sweet Autumn). There cost 0 performance, and go well with Reshade's expanded color space. (Timecycles control weather/color/tone at all times of day.)
4) RESHADE RTGI: If your system can handle it, go subscribe to Pascal Glitcher's patreon for a month and grab an older release of his RTGI shader for Reshade and install it into Gshade. (I find 0.17 has the best performance. Newer versions look better but hurt the GPU more.). This can cost 5fps or so depending on the system, but adds immense depth to scenes.
Long version:
For best performance, you want to upgrade from DirectX 9 to Vulkan. Vulkan is massively faster than DX9, and the speedboost helps the game engine run at a solid 60fps without stutters, even when loading. Riding in a Taxi is instant teleportation on a good system. You can do this via a project called DXVK. It's as simple as dropping it into the game folder. DXVK can be setup via a DXVK.conf file (set maximum resolution here) and one of these settings allows you to enable true HDR by expanding the HDR color range. But wait, it gets better: Reshade offers modern post processing effects, but some of the more advanced effects in Reshade (as of January 2023) don't all work great with Vulkan in DXVK.
Enter Gshade. Gshade is a fork (variant) of Reshade, which has a slightly different Vulkan implementation than Reshade which works great with GTAIV. It also releases with a integrated DXVK version. So you get Gshade/Vulkan in one install. At a later time, Reshade may operate just as well, but at the time of writing Gshade was far more consistent in being able to offer depth effects in GTAIV. I use a light DOF, light bloom, levels (to expand the color range to full blacks), and RTGI 0.17.
From there, you have GShade and Vulkan, and if you have used the downgrade patch, you have your game with original radios on 1.0.7 or 8. Now you can add a few community fixes (2DFX, FusionFix and ZolikaPatch) for the 1.0.7/8 releases, and suddenly your game is looking insanely good and running at a consistent 60fps+ with no frame pacing issues. Note: In ZolikaPatch, disable the "quick startup" and "vram" and "memory manangement" hacks, as these actually slow down DXVK.
Timecycles are far more powerful than they sound. The timecycles alone, with no other mods, allow you to change the color grading, effects, and lighting of the in-game appearance drastically, with no external tools. The default game timecycles are meant to give a smoggy, grungy filter on the city. This is fine, but if you want to use other post processing, something a bit less heavy might be better. I use Sweet Autumn.
"But what about ENBs or mods"
This is up to you. Personally, I think an ENBs 5-10 years ago offered unparalleled enhancements and would strongly recommend it. But with how far the Reshade project has come, frankly there's not a ton that ENB offers that a good Reshade+Timecycle mod does not nowadays, and Timecycle mods are much easier to implement.

Pros:
Has Bowling
Single-player DLC
No Microtransaction BS
Cons:
No Barbara with big titties and Stephanie who sucks like a vacuum

I would like to say guys, please do yourself a favor and download Dxvk plugin for this game. It's a Vulkan translation layer that has the potential to double your framerate. Yes, a program meant for Linux-to-Vulkan api makes GTA IV, a non-Vulkan game, run better on Windows - that's what a disaster this games coding is.
You simply download dxvk, go into the x32 folder located in the zip file and then cut/copy d3d9.dll and dxgi.dll and put them into your GTA IV directory (where the games .exe is located)
My game is now a stable 60fps 90% of the time with all high settings and I'm one of those scrubs on a decade old AMD 8350. I do adaptive V-sync via the Nvidia Control Panel, for what it's worth. The only downside, if you even use it, is that it disables the Steam overlay, but the Rockstar one remains active: so you'll still see your delicious achievements pop when you get them.
Also, if your game is stuck at only recognizing 512mb of Vram - an old issue I thought was fixed but is apparently back thanks to Rockstars general incompetence and apathy - simply add a commandline via Steam in the launch options for the game with your Vram amount.
For example, "-availablevidmem 8192" if you have 8GB of Vram on your GPU.
It's hard to recommend this game without these improvements but once you get it running smoothly, you won't be disappointed. It's a travesty that we - as the consumer - have to jump through hoops and essentially do Rockstars job to make this game work well but those clowns have become a straight parody of themselves ever since GTA V online started making them half a billion a year. They've literally become one of the companies they would satirize in a GTA game, requiring their own customers to effectively do their programming just to make their game run adequately. It's frankly disgusting but welcome to the video game industry in 2021.
Alright, rant over. I genuinely hope this helps you as it helped me because everyone deserves to experience this gem of a game free of issues.
UPDATE: Editing my previous disclaimer to G-Sync/FreeSync users since more people have reported NOT having issues with dxvk than those who have

Best GTA with actual DLC. Fight me.
Not the best port tho,

"Where's Barbara with big titties and Stephanie who sucks like a vacuum?" - Niko Bellic

If you use the GTA 4 downgrader, enable the ZolikaPatch, replace d3d9 with DXVK (it may be subjective however, if you experience bad performance you should try it), and install the custom GTA 4 launcher (has steam integration) then you're gucci. The current modern versions suck ass because they depend on the rockstar launcher, making it hard to even play offline and taking a year to launch.