The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!
Let’s discuss the Grand Theft Auto series. What is your favorite game in the series? What do you like about it? What doesn’t work for you? Are there similar games you like or even prefer to the original series? Feel free to share anything that comes up and react to other comments. Let’s get the conversation going!
If you have any recommendations for games or series for the next post(s), please feel free to DM me or add it in a comment here (no guarantees of course).
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12 years since GTA5. If they take as long between 6 and 7 it will be 2037 before it comes out.
As a kid I liked GTA2, modded the game to make the taxi super fast and strong lol
I messed around a lot in GTA3 with cheats, causing chaos in the tank
Vice City I actually played for real and beat it, my favorite in the series, but I stopped after that. I probably would’ve enjoyed San Andreas because it’s similar. GTA4 and 5 just seemed like a different tone and style that I was never very interested in. Also they took too long to bring to PC lol.
I played GTA from GTA 1 to GTA 4. I have always been more interested by the story and the atmosphere rather than the free roaming.
What I can say about them:
- 1 and 2 : a shock. Being so mean and bad was cathartic for me, it was really mind blowing as I am a “too nice” guy
- GTA 3 : a revolution. Discovering the game on the PS2 of a friend, I was drooling over the beautiful 3D models, the music, everything. I had to wait a bunch of time to get it on PC though.
- Vice City : wonderful atmosphere, the colours, the music. The story over the top. My favourite.
- San Andreas: not bad. The missions were interesting, but I felt no connection with the “boys in the hood” atmosphere. At the time, I listened very few hip hop so the whole gangsta rap hype was not interesting to me.
- GTA 4: I liked the settings, “russian immigrants”. The campaign was cool. However all the rest felt a chore… The mandatory mini games with the gangster calling you every 10 minutes and being angry if I don’t go bowling with him was ridiculous.
Then I gave up GTA all together. To be frank, I was a bit fed up with the American settings. Always the same street, atmosphere, culture… On the other hand, other games like Sleeping Dogs were a breath of fresh air. You really feel in another environment, and something as simple as driving left on the road is a great change.
I feel like it’s rare to encounter another person that doesn’t love San Andreas. It was fine, I guess, but I really didn’t find the setting compelling. The kitchen sink approach to game mechanics didn’t help either.
I am playing sleeping dogs right now and really enjoying it! Runs very well on Steam Deck too.
The driving left on the road is proving to be a tougher hurdle than expected though, I find myself crashing into opposing drivers more frequently than desired :).
I came very late to this series. I only played GTA V last year and I have yet to start another one. While I felt it was an impressive experience and had some great moments, I was also quite baffled at some of the design choices: the game often felt quite clunky and seemed to ignore logical steps in game design that other developers have made (constantly tapping a button to sprint, some of the ways the menus behave).
This is going to sound a bit silly, but I also genuinely had issues constantly doing these reprehensible things in missions. The game is very cynical and constantly makes you do selfish acts for the protagonists. While it is at times extremely funny and is on par with some of the best crime comedies out there, doing this stuff for hours on end was really exhausting for me. I play games to relax and started to feel that this game wasn’t giving me that. Compare this to Red Dead Redemption, a game I absolutely adored, where the protagonist is also morally questionable but at least tries to do the right thing within their frame of reference. I have no problem with morally gray protagonists, but something about the dial being turned up to 11 in GTA V really hit me the wrong way.
Right now I am playing Sleeping Dogs on my Steam Deck. It is clearly a GTA clone, but has an interesting twist in setting: Hong Kong is a really cool environment and the combat focusing more on melee and martial arts is also a fun change of pace. The story is quite simple and again you have to look past some ethical implications, but at least the game has some genuine characters and the events and relationships within the organized crime world are exciting to watch. In almost all respects it is clearly a lesser GTA, but I am having fun with it for the time being.
I also started with GTA V in the last few years. I sometimes describe it as an interactive movie rather than a game.
That’s not meant to be insulting. It’s a very well told story with perfect social satire. The characters are excellent. If you judge it the way a movie is judged, it’s very good. The one thing is that the story should have finished with the big three-way shootout instead of Franklin’s choice. Otherwise, very well put together.
As a game, though, it’s mid. There are several mechanics where they teach you to do a thing, but it never comes up again. Money is no longer a limitation after the first heist is done. Owning a business isn’t likely to be profitable for the length of a likely playthrough.
I accepted most of the morally questionable stuff. It comes with the series, and you’ll either have to accept it or not play. It’s balanced out with obvious social satire; it’s aware that this is not how people should act in real life. It’s a game for mentally mature players who understand that none of these are good people. That mental maturity doesn’t necessarily come with age.
However, I drew the line at the paparazzi storyline. Just felt too sleezy. The FIB torture bit also came close to me, but in-game, even Trevor didn’t feel comfortable with that, and he’s a monster.
Only other part I skipped was that damn yoga bit. Glad the game let you skip it while still progressing, because I don’t know what it wanted me to do.
I’m a little surprised it got so many 10 out of 10 reviews at launch. I guess the draw distances are impressive for a game that worked on the Xbox 360, and it uses those draw distances for important artistic effects. It makes it feel like a real city. But there are bugs that prevent progression years after release (albeit with workarounds most of the time), and some of the mechanics are bolted on. It’s a 9/10 movie and a 7/10 game that averages to 8/10.
I 100% see that it is satire and respect almost all of its narrative choices, even the torture scene. But that doesn’t mean that it is fun to play. It just felt really draining to have to inhabit these characters for dozens of hours, rather than watching a film about them. Something about playing a game forces you to empathize more closely with “your” character, and it is so draining for me when that character is a dick.
I think it gets 10s because of the attention to detail and vast amount of stuff in it, but I agree that underneath all the polish and glamour it is just an average game with some very dated mechanics.
Weirdly enough, it is the story that makes it worthwhile, even though it was not relaxing to me it did have some amazing moments of both satire and just hilarious situations. I also really enjoyed Franklin as a character and the contrast with Michael (who you could argue is actually a worse person than Franklin).
I miss the kill frenzies. GTA4 was an absolute nadir of the series feeling like a job rather than fun - I get that they wanted you to to get drunk with Roman to experience the drunk controls and have to stop at the toll-booth like a commuter, but both things quickly become tedious.
most of my hours are in 2. there was something very compelling about having a toy city with clearly demarcated areas to move around in. complete with shittons of easter eggs for pulling off weird stunts like ramping off of a subway station stairway and onto a roof.
the physics of the top-down GTAs just can’t be replicated in 3D, like how the tank just rolls over every vehicle in its path.
also the radion stations are insane.
I’ve only played the first installment of the series and I admit it always felt too fast and hectic for me. Somehow, I always viewed it as a heist game and not as car jacking game.
Adding swimming into san andreas was a big deal to me.
I’ve played them all on release since GTA3 and of course I loved 3/vice city, but the addition of stats and being able to get jacked meant I was able to basically live in the game.
I don’t know how, I don’t know why… But no other game, even those inspired by and basically copying GTA, feels as good to move around in. Whether you’re on foot or in a vehicle, the GTA series just has this nice feel to it that I have only seen come close to being replicated with the very first Saint’s Row. And even it wasn’t as tight.
You can copy everything else, it seems, from the giant detailed cities, to the format of missions and the gunplay; but the driving always feels garbo compared to GTA.
Maybe with a gamepad it’s fine, but with keyboard and mouse, moving on foot in GTA IV and V feels really bad, as if you’re pulling a trailer
Having played Grand theft san Andreas, and Grand theft Auto V, the best part for me is driving around and exploring. I’ve tried doing the missions and such and I dunno, just not my thing.
So, a way I would enjoy the series more is like a free roam mode or something, maybe a crime spree mode too now that I’m thinking about it, where basically you could get away with whatever and not have your star level increase.
I guess just the regular game is a free roam mode, at least in GTA V. San Andreas locked parts of the map behind a “Hurricane preparation” excuse till you did more missions.
I didn’t think that gimmicky game where you run over lines of people (monks? cadets?) would become that popular. Never figured what they were exactly but it was fun. Quest system was a dealbreaker for me. I didn’t know English that well and timed missions suck.
- I skipped 2 based on experience with the first. I think I missed more colourful lighting but not much more than that.
- Couldn’t ignore 3 which was technically impressive but was kind of boring otherwise. Played it to kill time but Tony Hawk was still better at that.
- 4 ran like shit but the story kept me playing. This thing needs a proper remaster to evaluate.
- 5 was an all around achievement and a landmark in a video game history. It’s probably the closest thing to a modern Blizzard game - not exactly innovative but really polished and treated reasonably well for years.
Never touched a game with predatory monetisation so I never touched multiplayer. Heard it sucks but somehow it’s making a bank.
Hare Krishna monks, AFAIK. 2 was indeed largely the first game with improved lighting. Was still pretty great for the time.
I think 4 runs decently now though? I have it installed on Steam Deck and that seems to handle 60fps well. I have only played around an hour of it, as I didn’t feel in the mood for that type of game then.
According to pcgamingwiki it has frame pacing and stutter issues even on high end systems. I’m okay with how it runs on current PCs and Xbox Series X but that’s because I can stomach 40 fps with inconsistent frame pacing - many people can’t and at this point it’s probably best to hope for some updated version.
gta london is so underrated and it deserves an hd remake i said what i said
1 and 2 are great, even GTA London 61 and 69
I never got into a GTA game. But I liked Mafia (1&2) and loved Sleeping Dogs.
