1. The IceGlace ENB mods have been grabbing headlines for the last couple of years, and rightly so. ENB's advanced shaders and lighting tweaks transform GTA 4's outdated visuals into something.
2. We all know Grand Theft Auto IV was a terribly optimized port on PC. Even now, my i7-6700 and GTX 1080ti regularly dips into the mid-30's at 1080p. Mind you, this is using the 'Just ENB' mod for 1.

Despite GTA5’s massive popularity, many of us still like to boot up the old Grand Theft Auto IV to take a walk around as Niko Bellic.

Amazing graphics mod for GTA IV that uses a combination of new textures, ENB, timecyc and icenhancer to create an almost photorealistic experience.

Sure, the game has been out for over a decade.

But the genius and Rockstar put into the game still shines bright – especially when assisted by a few of mods.

Whether you want to add more weapons, new cars, or completely overhaul the game, mods have you covered.

Flying in a jetpack is also a possibility, and wait until you hear about the shark gun.

Sorting through hundreds of mods online can get tedius. Luckily it’s my task to organize the best-of-the-best to help you save time — and I take my job very seriously.

30. Zombie Apocalypse

You can’t write a “best mods” ranking without including at least one zombie-related mod.

Especially when it comes to one of Rockstar’s open-world sandbox masterpieces.

This simply-titled mod by creator Jc0001 does just what you’d expect.

Everyone is a zombie now, and it’s up to Niko Bellic to end the undead threat by putting as many zombies out of commission as he can.

It’s the ideal mod to get whenever you want to try out new weapons, or to just mindlessly murder empty husks into the wee hours of the morning.

29. Beta Mod

There have been many leaks regarding old Nintendo games.

And it got me thinking about the hours of cut content hidden deep within games like GTA IV.

This Beta Mod by SlayerMaggot scratches my game-archaeologist itch by reinstating a lot of removed content present within GTA IV’s code.

This includes new taxis, new weapon icons, alternative versions of cars like the Esperanto and the Faustin, and even an older Niko Bellic skin.

A lot of it had to be rebuilt and even completed by modders.

But it’s still amazing to see just how much work developers put into stuff that never sees the light of day.

Well, I guess now it’s here for us to have our fun, but yeah.

28. Shark-o-Matic Gun

Saints Row has always been GTA’s main competition, giving the open-world urban sandbox a lot more wackiness and absurdity.

The Shark-o-Matic Gun mod by JulioNIB lets you bring some of that humorous craziness into Liberty City, the JAWS way.

This gun will make a shark bust through the asphalt and eat whoever you shoot it at… leaving nothing but the crater behind.

For some reason, it looks twice as funny in GTA IV than it did in Saints Row: The Third.

27. Bicycle Script

On their race to make release dates, developers often neglect to include minor gameplay elements, or minute details like dynamic bicycle animations.

Considering they were present in GTA: San Andreas, it was pretty jarring for some fans not to have them in GTA IV.

Thanks to modder JulioNIB and his Bicycle script, driving a bicycle in GTA IV feels just like it did in San Andreas.

You can even do the silly bicycle start-up animation!

Handling may sometimes feel weird.

But this is a must for people who grew used to San Andreas’ bicycle gameplay.

26. Jetpack Mod

What’s something simple like a bicycle, compared to a Jetpack?

A functional jetpack mod is simply a must for any open-world game.

This one is inspired by the fantastic movie Kick-Ass, so it features two handy miniguns you can use to rain down lead from the skies upon your enemies.

You’ll also be able to spawn bodyguards or enemies wearing jetpacks for intense augmented shootouts.

These may also happen naturally if you ever go against a SWAT team at high Wanted levels.

To unlock it, you’ll have to do the Kill Frenzy at the Airport first. But that shouldn’t be too hard.

25. Liberty City Customs Autobody Shop

Among the fantastic additions GTA5 made to the Grand Theft Auto formula, the car customization options hold a special place.

Thanks to modder NatT96Report, this functionality comes to GTA IV.

Gta 4 Graphics Overhaul

After installing this mod you’ll find the Liberty City Customs Autobody Shop near the center of the map.

There, you’ll be able to apply some essential modifications to most of the vanilla vehicles.

It’s nothing fancy. But even a basic improvement like this can make the game feel much more engaging.

24. Simple Trainer

Something that can’t be missing from a mod user’s roster is a competent trainer that’ll let them bend the game’s rules, like a developer would during testing.

Made by Sjaak327, this Simple Trainer offers all the basics you’d expect from such a tool.

Teleportation, object spawning, a very simple speedometer, and the ability to spawn vehicles, all just some of its features.

If you’re going to be trying out mods and custom content like cars and weapons, having this will make your life much easier.

23. Snow Mod

New York City looks its best during the winter, when snow sweeps in and provides a pure white blanket to contrast with the city’s dusty ceilings and sidewalks.

Modder Jumbo0 brings us the Snow Mod to reproduce this magical effect in GTA IV, turning the virtual sandbox into a winter wonderland.

In other words, you’ll bring a massive snow day to Liberty City.

Rooftops, windowsills, roads, and trees are all covered in snow – which you can even pick up and throw at NPCs!

It’s great for some winter fun, or just to give GTA IV an entirely different atmosphere.

22. GTA IV For Extremely Low-End PC

Nowadays it’s unlikely your computer has trouble running the 12-years-old GTA IV.

Still, I know for a fact there are some people out there struggling with toasters running Windows XP – and I’m determined to lend a hand.

This incredible mod by Cody5699 attempts to make the game much lighter by disabling several graphical features, such as explosion FX, car FX, particles, and basically anything you don’t explicitly need to make your way through the game.

Sure, the colors are washed-out. And you can’t see past a couple of meters ahead.

But it sure beats not being able to play at all!

21. Dual Wielding Style

If there’s something that fits Niko Bellic’s background as a war veteran and occasional criminal, it’s dual-wielding military-grade weapons.

Made by JulioNIB, the Dual Wielding Style mod allows Niko to hold and fire two guns at once with pretty natural-looking animations.

This applies to shotguns, handguns, SMGs, and anything shorter than a sniper rifle.

It also includes an optional “headshot” feature that’ll let you watch all headshot kills in a zoomed-in slow-motion view, similar to what you’d see in Sniper Elite (minus the X-RAYs).

20. HQ GTA V Weapon Pack

Speaking of weaponry, have you ever felt like you don’t have enough guns in GTA IV?

If so, get this HQ GTA V Weapon Pack.

It takes a truckload of weapons from the GTA5 world and puts them in Niko Bellic’s badass hands.

The Assault Rifle, Carbine Rifle, Double Barrel Shotgun, and Micro SMG are only some of the fantastic guns included in this pack.

Considering they’re technically from the future, they’ll give you the advantage over your enemies in Liberty City.

And if you like these you can get more from the mod’s continuation.

19. 4K Ultra HD Graphics

Few things will make your GTA IV screenshots look as photorealistic as this 4K Ultra HD Graphics mod.

While it does apply a special ENB preset, most of what this mod does is replace textures in the game for hyper-detailed 4K ones.

The result?

Spaces that look real at a glance, but slowly fall into the uncanny valley as you continue to detail them.

The only thing stopping me from giving this mod a higher spot on my ranking is how ridiculously taxing it can be on some systems.

The graphical upgrade is only worth the performance cost if you’re running a monster PC that can take it.

18. Spiderman IV

Before there was Marvel’s Spider-Man, we had to make do with what we had.

One of the best options to enjoy life as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is JulioNIB’s Spiderman IV mod, which will let you swing around pseudo-Manhattan as Spider-Man with incredibly well-made animations.

It’ll even give you a Spider-Sense, which will warn you of nearby dangers like shootouts between gangs and the police.

If you like this mod, you should try to acquire Marvel’s Spider-Man when you get a chance. That game is too good to miss. Arguably one of the better Spider-Man games ever made.

17. Death Race IV

The best thing to come out of Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2008 Death Race movie was probably the inspiration for this incredible mod.

Death Race IV brings a bunch of features based on the film into GTA IV, including heavily-armored and weaponized cars.

You also have the possibility of creating races around Liberty City.

The project was stopped in its tracks early in its development when modders realized how many custom objects they would need to make to complete it.

That said, what they had already made is still enough to keep you entertained for a pretty long while.

16. GTA IV: San Andreas

Another incredible mod whose life was cut short before it could take off is GTA IV: San Andreas, which aimed at porting the entirety of San Andreas into GTA IV’s RAGE engine.

Creator Blaster_nl was able to port the entire map, some vehicles, weapons, and even the main character from San Andreas – although the Niko Bellic voice clips are still in place.

It even includes a Snow Edition, which turns San Andreas a wintery white.

Despite being incomplete, it’s fully functional.

And the progress made is still worth a look.

15. Ultimate Textures

One of the most important things you need to improve if you want a more realistic and appealing GTA experience is the roads.

You’ll spend a sizable amount of time either running or driving over them.

The Ultimate Textures mod by Realizm IV Team replaces several textures all around Liberty City, but the best improvement is made to asphalt and road textures that look intricately detailed.

Almost lifelike.

It makes no sense having a hi-poly custom super-car, when the road looks like it belongs in Sonic Adventure: Battle 2.

14. Selfie Mod

If you’re putting so much work into beautifying your game, you’re going to need a way to document it.

While regular-old screenshots certainly get the work done, nothing is quite as immersive as the surprisingly fun activity of taking in-game selfies.

Now you can do so in GTA IV thanks to modder JulioNIB.

Unlike GTA V, this selfie camera won’t let you browse your pictures in-game.

But they’ll be saved to a folder on your PC so you can comfortably check them out later.

It even works in cars and several other places you wouldn’t expect it to, so don’t be afraid to try it out.

13. New Weapons

Over time, gamers have become used to massive collections of highly-detailed guns – even when the difference between them in functionality is minimal.

A great way to improve GTA IV’s “fun factor” and make it feel more up-to-date is by introducing new firearms.

How do we do this? Well, hrough mods like Quechus13’s New Weapons.

Now you’ll have access to more assault rifles, SMGs, grenade launchers, and even shotguns with new attachments.

There’s even a shiny new bat for you to bash in some skulls in style.

And don’t even get me started on the FN P90…

12. Grim’s Weapon Pack

But if you really want to beef up your weapon arsenal to the point where you never have to worry about it again, you should get Grim’s Weapon Pack.

This fantastic weapon compilation was originally made for San Andreas, then updated and upgraded for use in GTA IV.

While the models are all high-quality and very appealing, it’s stuff like the custom HUD icons and special attachments like the flashlight for the MP5A4 that make these weapons feel professional.

11. LCPD First Response

It’s hard to avoid interaction with Liberty City’s Police Department when you’re one of the biggest criminals in the area.

This mod won’t make it any easier to avoid the police.

But it will make it much more engaging by introducing a realistic arrest system.

Now you’ll have to be reported and identified before the police send any forces after you.

You’ll also run into the police making arrests and the like throughout the city much more often while running this mod, making Liberty City feel slightly more active and alive.

10. GTA Environment Mod

One of the most popular mods to improve the game’s look is the GTA Environment Mod created by Kriller2.

It focuses on providing more natural lighting, and making the game’s climate more realistic.

All weather types were manually tweaked one-by-one to work with better shadow calculations, and more sophisticated reflective surfaces.

All water reflections are improved as well.

What do I like best about this mod? Looking up at the sky and find gorgeous HD cloud textures staring back down at me.

9. Ultimate Graphic Tweak

The Environment Mod is recommended to work with the Ultimate Graphic Tweak by modder Bartekxyz to maximize your game’s visual appeal.

This fantastic mod adds several post-processing effects to GTA IV’s graphics, including a greater depth of field and motion blur.

The mod also gets rid of low-quality dotted shadows in favor of smoother, more realistic-looking ones.

Sure, it’ll have a sizable performance cost.

But nowadays most gaming rigs should take it just fine. Even if you do need to sacrifice some FPS, you won’t regret it.

8. Realistic Driving & Flying

Creator Killatomate is obsessed with realistic handling in his games.

Which is why he made massive handling improvements for both GTA IV, and more recently GTA V.

Killatomate addressed each of the 170 vehicles present in Liberty City individually.

He gave them each a custom center of mass, plus other variables that interact with the game’s physics, to create more coherent handling.

I can’t say I’m going to be doing anything “realistic” while driving in GTA IV anytime soon.

Still, driving definitely feels better with this mod installed.

7. Excellent ENB Graphics

A recently-created option for embellishing the streets of Liberty City is AP84’s Excellent ENB Graphics mod, released in 2018.

It’s actually a full rework of a previously-released ENB preset, created by AP84 after months of work and testing within his own game.

While it improves visuals in several aspects, my favorite part about this ENB is how bright and colorful it makes Liberty City look.

It’s almost like playing in GTA V’s Los Santos!

6. GTA 4 Beautification Project – Graphical Overhaul

Variety is the spice of life.

And I’m committed to giving you as many options to beautify your game as possible.

One of the best options you have if you’re aiming at a cohesively good-looking game is to follow Tore Andersen’s GTA 4 Beautification Project guide towards prettying-up your GTA IV.

Among the most essential parts of the guide are steps for installing this Graphical Overhaul for more natural lighting, and some other rendering tweaks to boot.

5. V Style Char Switch (and more)

Let’s take a break from visual enhancements and consider one of the most significant gameplay improvements ever made to GTA IV.

V Style Char Switch is part of a family of mods by JulioNIB aimed at bringing the best parts of GTA V to GTA IV.

This specific mod lets you switch between characters like you can in GTA V.

It also provides a practical weapon selection add-on to your HUD, among other minor things. It really re-does the game in a massive way, and it’s absolutely worth trying out.

Best Gta Iv Graphics Mods

4. VIVA New York

After so many awesome games in Liberty City, most GTA fans have grown to love the New York-inspired metropolis as a second home.

A great way to make Liberty City feel fresh is Emble’s VIVA New York mod.

It replaces several key aspects of the city to make it appear more like its real-life inspiration.

This includes replacing the Star Junction for Times Square, changing street names, and rebranding the public transportation system to mimic New York’s.

3. iCEnhancer

The most endorsed and famous graphics overhaul for GTA IV has to be Hayssam Keilany’s iCEnhancer, bringing countless improvements to make this game shine.

The iCEnhancer was made by iceLaGlace by combining better textures and improved models with a custom ReShade and an ENB preset.

The result is a game that only vaguely resembles vanilla GTA IV.

And it may even look better than vanilla GTA V.

2. Realism Project Mod Pack for GTA IV

If what you’re looking for is to make GTA IV feel as lifelike as possible, look no further than KCPRR’s Realism Project Mod Pack.

Rather than a mod in and of itself, this is a selection of mods chosen and edited by KCPRR, while making the game more realistic and challenging for himself over the course of 500 hours of playtime.

Those are 500 hours you don’t have to spend modding the game yourself.

So I’d say this is a pretty sweet deal.

1. American Sleep

The first spot in our ranking goes not to a single mod. But to a compilation of add-ons that come packaged together to tell a story.

American Sleep picks up right after GTA IV.

Niko has burned through all the cash he made during the main campaign and is now nearly destitute (as shown by your empty modded-in bank account).

This is especially troublesome considering you now have Basic Needs like eating and staying hydrated.

You’ll have to learn how to exploit the most bizarre vanilla and modded-in mechanics to survive poverty in Liberty City and climb back to the top.

If you really just need more to do in GTA IV to keep yourself entertained, this is a must-have mod. Nothing else quite like it.