I have a confession: I miss GTAIV's driving. Not so much that I want to go back to it nor to say that I think it was particularly good (it took some getting used to). All that intense practice translates into GTAV, and when coupled with the arcade-like handling makes for a fairly unchallenging drive. I can survive for ages on the motorcycles while holding w down like a madman, and dodge through absurdly tight spaces at speeds where it just looks absurd. Highways are particularly boring, and you might think that that's expected considering slab of pavement hundreds of miles long but when you're speeding at 180mph and not almost dying every second it doesn't feel very real or exciting.
Kind of a boring example, but:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7SxKt_01RINow that I think about it I had installed handling re-balances, top speed increases, x2 damage for vehicles, and a first person mod for GTAIV. These had a few effects:
1. The vehicles were all realistically powerful in that your average sedan could accelerate to fairly dangerous speeds, while superbikes were almost guaranteed suicide until you really got the handling down.
2. First person was difficult to control without boosting your mouse sensitivity to absurd levels. Combined with effect number 1, meant I had to struggle to drive down the street, much less evade police at speed.
3. The A.I. was not made for those speeds, let me tell you. . . Highways in particular were always hilarious to observe. The NPC would accelerate upon entering the freeway like normal, but since the game didn't know to expect the realistic speeds the hapless AI would smash into the rear of slower cars and drive itself over barriers.
I hope to find similar mods cropping up soon.
The new wanted system will take some getting used to. I'm not too sure how to escape from a 4-star wanted level with three helis chasing me. I shoot one and another, but before I kill the third the others return and I'm suddenly out of ammo and then I'm dead.