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Grand Theft Auto Retrospective
Sadkey writes "In light of the release of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for the PSP, UGO has posted a retrospective around the GTA games. "Come take a trip through time, and see how a franchise went from a cult hit to a cultural phenomenon, set the tone for an entire generation, and made open-ended gameplay a buzzword of the early 21st century. It's a long, bumpy ride, but at the end, Grand Theft Auto stands tall as the game that changed everything.' ."
I remember playing the top down GTAs and just loving it. Great games.
Two words: Kill Frenzy!
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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But i've learned to prefer the 'from behind' view
...when will they release Grand Theft Auto: Model T Ford edition when you travel the early 20th century speeding around at 15 miles an hour and running illegal moonshine.
I don't get it.
Stop it stop it stop it! You are making me feel old! I am only 21, it was NOT that long ago damnit!
Ok so I did spend two entire days downloading GTA from a Warez site over dialup 2MB zip file by 2MB zip file.....
Ouch that was awhile back wasn't it...
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Ironically, with the huge surge in multiplayer games in the last few years, GTA is one of the few examples of the death of multiplayer in a series. The first two GTAs (the top down ones) had wonderful multiplayer. It easily is in my top 5 list of the best multiplayer games of all time. The shift to 3D, for some reason, meant no multiplayer. Yeah, there is a mod for GTA (MTA I think) which adds multiplayer, and it's good but its still in its infancy last I checked. I really would like to see Rockstar add multiplayer to the game.
I seem to recall a few obscure games from a company called Maxis! Sheesh, GTA3 is great, but they hardly invented or popularized the open-ended game.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
GTA 1/London/2 and GTA 3/VC/SA shouldn't be called the same game series. They're vastly different (in playing style and looks) to the point where they're almost polar opposits. It's like comparing the 3D sonics to Sonic on the mega drive. One was great and the other is good but it's just not the same.
I like muppets.
In my opinion, some things that they've added in Vice City and San Andreas do have value, but some others do not.
For example, I like how Vice City added planes and motorcycles and whatnot, as well as the extra mission types (pizza delivery, "property" missions). I also like how San Andreas was just so big -- unlike Vice City and GTA3, it actually feels like a world.
The thing I don't like about Vice City and San Andreas, though, is how the character has his own personality. With GTA3's "generic thug" character, it felt more like it was you in the game. It's considerably harder to suspend disbelief in San Andreas, since the character has such a strong personality of his own.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I've never really liked the GTA games personally. I've thought that they had alot of potential, but for myself- and I'm sure a lot of other people, the story and the missions never really held much appeal for me. It's not that I'm against the violence in the games, I enjoy violent games quite a bit- but I've never been able to empathise with the characters of the series at all.
What I would like to see is some of the "influence" that the GTA series has supposely had in gaming put into something other than making clones with crappier gameplay and crappier stories. Instead I would like to see developers take the massive non-linear 3D world concept and create more games like Shenmue, or given the emphasis on driving in the games, something like Fast and the Furious where the player starts down at the bottom, maybe jacking cars or working as a delivery boy, and rises on the street racing circut (OK, I would hate that game too, but it's just an idea). What about an RPG that takes place inside of a single living city? Something like Blood Omen where you play a vampire who stalks the streets of a huge vibrant faux-new york city feeding on the innocent and battling for territory against rival vampire gangs?
Of course, GTA wasn't the first game to take place in a large, non-linear city. Shenmue had a much deeper world and IIRC was out a few years before GTAIII. Crazy Taxi had a huge non-linear city, fast dangerous driving and missions as well.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that GTA may have been well executed in a lot of ways, but it wasn't necessarily THAT innovative, and that if it was as influential as the article states, then why are the only games I can find now that are vaguely based off the GTA formula horribly inferior ripoffs with the same criminal motif?
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
No. They've expanded, and they've introduced things like new vehicles, different scenery, etc, but it's the same game, just with new content. Hence the "franchise" aspect. As long as franchises are popular, then each successive game is just an expansion pack that doesn't require the original. Which is great - there are some games I'm dying for sequels because I just want more. But I know that I don't want them to change the things I like - so we expect a degree of permanence in the features and the feel of the game.
One of the best bugs^H^H^H^H features of the first two GTAs was the fun-packed, sync-less net play! I remember playing it in my school's computer lab (which had a very laggy network) with other "students":
Player 1: HA! Burn, mother fucker!
Player 2: What do you mean? I just ran over you!
Player 3: Hey guys, will you stop walking towards the building's walls?
the good side was that everybody always won.
My other account has mod points.
I realize that GTA has fans, and that this game is unlike ANYTHING that has ever been on a portable platform (self-made portable PS2 hacks notwithstanding). But how can a game with such terrible flaws (read the reviews) as no difficulty difference between early and ending missions (except for the fact your weapons are terrible at the start), a bad camera and terrible targeting system, and mind-numbingly boring/anoying missions get 90+% grades?
Simple: no one wants to risk pissing off GTA lovers and losing them as readers/viewers/subscribers.
Don't get me wrong. I loved GTA 1 and 2. I played GTA 3 and found it fun to drive around but I didn't get far due to the terrible targeting. I loved Vice City even more (great soundtrack) and got farther, but I eventually dumped the game for the same reasons. The game was better, but it still wasn't there. I haven't played San An, and I don't intend to play LCS now.
Bugs and problems were OK for GTA 3, it was a first of it's kind (being a 3D world). Vice City was buggy and they should have done better. I don't know if the targeting was fixed for San An (I heard it was better) but I didn't care by that point. Then they release this game shortly after with all these problems. I realize it's the first on the platform for the series, and that the second analog stick is missing, but come one. You've made THREE OF THESE GAMES BY NOW, can't you fix some of this stuff?
They were rushing it, or they didn't care. Those are the only two reasons I can think of for having the same problems that put me off of GTA 3 four years ago this week.
The sandbox they created is fantastic. The stories and great, and the games have tons of replay value. But playing occaisionally makes me feel like I'm running towards $1,000,000 in a foot and a half of water. There is something great there, I can see it, but getting there is just so hard .
These days I'm getting less and less time to play games. My backlog is piling up. I just finished Pyschonauts (Great game, but the framerate on the PS2 version was a JOKE), and I'm in the middle of Sly 3 now (better than Sly 2!). If I was a freshman in highschool and had the time to commit, I may be able to play it. But at this point I don't need to fight a game to play it. There are a couple of games I've got RIGHT NOW that I know will be good that I won't have to do that for.
Sorry Rockstar. Try harder, huh?
-- A guy who wants to love GTA
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
GTA 1 and 2 are free downloads now from RockStar...
Grand Theft Auto - Free Download
Grand Theft Auto 2 - Free Download
Jeez, pull the stick out. Wether it's GTA3, Doom or Custer's Revenge the appeal of anti-social games is simple: Catharsis. The whole idea isn't that you're doing things which you wish you could do; the idea is that you're getting an oppertunity to do things which you'd never do. It's closer to primal scream than anything else. But if you take gaming that seriously, maybe you should stick to mario 64. ;)
Final fantasy once you get the airship, the "Secret of..." games from the same company, the Legend of Zelda games (moreso than the Squaresoft games). Mario 64?
For my money, the GTA series has to be one of the most overrated franchises currently being milked. While it certainly enjoys lots of free press by virtue of its once-shocking but now-old-news violence and depravity, it really doesn't seem to have grown much since it first went 3D. Rockstar found a working formula in GTA3 (after the the original games failed commercially), and have been suckling at that same teat ever since. I played the original GTA3 for a short while, and saw a little of Vice City, and I have to say, it does nothing for me. Once you get past the shock value of being able to beat a granny to death with a baseball bat, there's really not much in the way of compelling gameplay. The missions are fairly uninspired, the story is utterly generic, and there's nothing in it that really grabs me. I think "open-ended" in and of itself doesn't necessarily make for a good game, and leads to the pacing of the game being very haphazard, depending. I'm sure fans of the series would disagree, but perhaps they're better able to overlook the games' flaws than I am.
I do like the Tommy Vercetti character, for the same reasons you do. Additionally, they managed to not load it down so much as to become obnoxious (unlike San Andreas).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Hate to tell you this dude, my dad has a whole shelf full of his grandparents books from the 1890s and thenabouts. Most of them: crappy, commercial, and pretty trashy. Most of the classics you read in school were commercial failures, frequently published with university or patron's aid (much like the high-brow fiction of today), then, as now, commercial and artistic successes like Dickens were the exception.
And as far as immersing yourself in things not OK in the real world, I'd hardly hold up written fiction (or cinema, or opera, or mythology or...) as a good example of the "right" way of doing things.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Because the Bible glorifies "sinful" acts? Ok, whatever.
I already addressed your "point" here. I have to say that it's rather disturbing that so many people can equate containing certain themes to glorifying those same themes.
Taking the Bible as an example, what happened when David slept with Bathsheba, then bumped off her husband? The profits certainly didn't show up and start yelling, "You da' MAN! Those moves are the shizzle!" Try opening the Old Testiment sometime. It shouldn't take you long to find something along the lines of, "Yet XYZ did not turn from their sinful ways, and God's wrath poured out upon them." (The New Testament is a heck of a lot more lenient due to the coming "grace" talked about in Galatians, but it still didn't glorify ugly behavior.)
Or moving onto more complex literature. Was the point of "Gone with the Wind" that Rhett Butler was such a great lady's man? He was manuvering Scarlett O'Hara toward the bed the entire book, but when she finally consented he merely said, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." Why do you think that was, hmmm?
Is there any part in GTA where your character suddenly realizes the toll his lifestyle is taking and wants out? No? Why not? After all, isn't GTA like fine literature, chock full of lessons to be learned and humanities to analyze? Or perhaps it's just one big, antisocial, utterly meaningless, and depraved wankfest? "Look! I slept with the chick and bumped off her boyfriend! I'm the shizzle!" Great.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Have to disagree. Fido (Claude?) was perfect as is. By being silent, he allowed GTA3 to be a true RPG. You never had his backstory, his personality, or any sort of character development intrude into your imagination of what sort of character he would be.
And the missions were perfect. If you avoided the rampages, you never had to kill innocents. So you could easily be a 'noble' mobster who doesn't endanger the lives of bystanders. You save the gun, baseball bat, grenades, rockets, etc., for the people who are soldiers: other gangsters or the police.
That was what was perfect about GTA3: you could make your own moral choices. Even though the game let you play sniper, run over pedestrians, or kill prostitutes for their money, you didn't have to. You could even be especially moral and only steal parked cars or police cars, thus endangering innocents even less.
I liked Vice City and San Andreas, but the games lost something when the main guy started to talk. San Andreas lost extra points by having missions where you had to kill innocents in order to advance.
Mario Crimespree.
I enjoy so called "open ended games" for a few minutes to a few hours, after that I feel that it is a waste of time.
All respect to Rockstar, the game is kickass, I just cannot help it but it leaves me all the time with the game unfinished and me bored to hell of it.
What I find interesting is that the type of games you mention above strike me as incredibly boring! I don't feel like I'm getting anything done, more like just trying to run a race fast enough.
It gets boring very quickly. But, with the "open ended" games, I get the feeling like I can do whatever I want. If I want to break into an airport and steal a plane and fly around, I can. Or, drive a car, or swim across the ocean, or go look for shellfish, or whatever.
Typical gameplay might go something like this:
I do missions for a while, and get bored. Then, I grab a bike, and try to see how much money I can get for an "insane stunt bonus". After a while of that, I drive the bike into a lake, and start mowing down cops just to see what kind of gun I can get. Then, I buy a house and save game to shed the wanted level. (wouldn't it be neat to be able to mix/match Sims2 with GTA?) Do a mission or two. Grab a boat and do some jumps. Then, be a cab driver and try to get 5 people delivered before having to bail the cab. Etc.
If I could do this multi-player, it would just so rock. Also, it'd be way cool if the map could be edited. Can you imagine how lost you'd get if you could make buildings with arbitrary graphics, sorta like the WAD or PUD files of old?
But, whatever you do, don't give me a boring, linear, mono-topic game where I just run around and shoot people. Ayugh!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
So far all they've added since GTA3 is a bigger world, subpar improvements to graphics, new vehicles, new missions and new side-missions. Theres no new physics engine, no new real major additions (still no aircraft) ...
What? Aircraft have been in the game since Vice City.
No physics impovements? Did you forget that Rockstar added motorcycles and playable pool tables in VC? How about the bicycles, base jumping, and the ability to swim added in SA?
Other additions since the original GTA3 include tons of new weapons, the ability to enter stores to either buy stuff or rob them. You can now eat food, buy clothes, get tattoos, workout, get a haircut, and customize your cars with paint/suspension/nitro kits. You can then take your tricked out rides into bounce competitions. They even added schools you can attend in game for various types of vehicles (cars, motorocycles, boats, aircraft) to improve ingame control of said vehicles.
They added stats like respect, strength, body fat, and dating progress with girlfriends (yes, you can get girlfriends in the game now). Also added are mini games like gyruss, flying bee game, a DDR game, pool, and a few forms of gambling.
SA added gang wars with the ability to take over turf, getting a posse and doing drive bys, and home invasions.
Have you even played latter these games?
"But if you take gaming that seriously, maybe you should stick to mario 64. ;)"
That is all well and good , till someone jumps on your head , flattens your family and steals all your gold coins .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Theres no new physics engine, no new real major additions (still no aircraft), and the graphics are bland
Why do you bother to comment? You obviously have not player Vice City let alone San Andreas. Those things are in both games.
Only a matter of time till someone takes this and runs with it. I mean, christ, think how amazing it would be to play online against 5000+ other people trying to steal your car. Driving along, heading to do a mission, and BAM, your radio, pants, wristwatch, and anal virginity get stolen.
My first experience with the GTA series was renting the top-down version and thinking "this game sux", I promptly took it back to the blockbuster. When GTA III hit with the third person perspective I was willing to bive it a try and from the first meeting with the Leone family sluming for work I was hooked, even though the system of opening up the islands sux. Vice City was craaazy and added to the excitement of the franchise with Tommy doing his own thing was nothing like chasing them fools on that motorcycle or running from the cops with 5 stars trying to get to the ocean view then hard braking and sliding up onto the steps popping out onto the hood with police slamming into you trapped taking incoming til you could wiggle a space between the car to enter the door and feeling like whoah I made it. I still wished I was able to buy lots of clothes from Rafaels, pimp that club I brought more, and make really good porn flics. But hey, I was just a game right. Then Uber-Hyped SanAndreas hit the pipes and I gotta have it, the whole switching from Tommy/mafia to CJ/gangbanger thing some getting used to, and what was with that orange blurr heat wave effect. It looked for a few minutes like I was headed for gamers hell trying to take a g back I didn't want. Once I got pass the culture shock I was sucked into the modding cars (nitrous... how cool is that), rapid fire missions... come on who didnt just love the mission with smoke shooting from the back of the motorcycle being chased into the aqua ducts. Wow. The schools system was a blast and the selection of cars, boats, and bikes was awesome, not to mention my favorite talk radio station... nothing like going berzerk listening to talk radio. But for me, loading up on molotovs and rocket laucher shells, securing 5 stars baiting them back to CJs moms house, climbing atop the alleyway rooftop letting them have it til the tanks came was priceless. Though I did get a bit annoyed with the relentless dating, just for a few suits.
To quote Walter Neff, the evil hero in "Double Indemnity", "Do I laugh now, or wait 'til it gets funny?"
IHBT?
The Holy Bib... oh wait
"Come take a trip through time, and see how a franchise went from a cult hit to a cultural phenomenon, set the tone for an entire generation,..."
Are you kidding? Looks like the editor has lost the ground.
After all the GTA series is just a bunch of games. Very good ones, at least the 3D games. But there is no way these games a "cultural phenomenon, set the tone for an entire generation". Not for a generation of people, maybe for a generation of games. Depens on how you read it.
If you look at the culture portrayed in the games... Vice City is clearly 80s Miami Vice style and San Andreas uses all the gangsta stuff.
and learn to enjoy games for what they are. a bit of fun to play sometimes.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I don't know about the last two games, but I know GTA3 has the helicopter (top-down) view. all ya gotta do is press Select and BAM! Helicopter view.
Incidently for those that may have missed the 'original' series. Rockstar released updated versions (support for recent hardware) of 1&2 some time ago as free downloads. Enjoy!