So all the Grand Theft Auto games for all their difference in environments, graphics and the occasional mix-up in gameplays are arguably the same type of game time and time again. So instead of sitting here talking about each game individually I decided to compare them.
All the way from Grand Theft Auto 3 to 5. And when you hear that you think ''oh 3 games, that's simple'' but then you remember the Grand Theft Auto really doesn't like numbering conventions and decided to name all their games incorrectly.
I also made a graph to identify my preferences for each game and to give a clear understanding.
Gameplay: It's the physics engine, Mission structure and the variety of the missions.
Story: Self-explanatory. Literally what are they trying to tell us in the game. What are the characters motivations (do they have motivations) who do they interact with? How do those interactions react with other things in the game.
now all three of these categories intertwine quite a bit. Radio stations are part of the storytelling experience and the overall story can affect the atmosphere of a game and can even give brevity to some of your actions later on.
GTA III: The first game to be introduced into the 3D environment. What are fairly simple story and straightforward gameplay. Grand Theft Auto 3 has a unique position. Despite being in a 3D environment with a ''realistic'' World it still maintains a great deal of zaniness from the old 2D top down Grand Theft Autos. With over-the-top characters, strange awkward missions and ridiculous gang Warfare that don't seem to interrupt the Casual lives of those around you.
You as a character don't really matter. You're just some guy who's going around doing what everyone else tells him to do.
And the closest thing you have to a motivation is to seek revenge on some girl who shoots you in the back after a bank heist. But even that's not made entirely clear.
You just Bounce from one gang to the other causing problems, fixing problems, eliminating old problems and creating new ones. All while a much bigger story is unfolding around you. There's a massive power struggle in this city and everyone's looking to take their piece of the pie. They also all seem to know that you're the guy to make it happen.
You're less of a character and more of a tool. You're just a giant walking hammer in a world full of nails.
The characterisation of everyone in this game is great.
Everyone's a walking stereotype and they're all one-dimensional. With absolutely no illusion of trying to make them anything more. And I like that. It's fun to have a Godfather rip-off Mafia Don who wants you to go and attack the very stereotypically old-fashioned Chinese Triad gang and then later on get accused of betraying the mafia when you decide to help out the over-the-top Yakuza gang with their strange kind of lesbian Gang leader.
We have one of my favourite environments. The actual Liberty City* It's this wonderful City, that's just big enough to tantalise the imagination and your sense of expiration but not so big as to get lost or confused while navigating it.
And it feels like its own City. Obviously it's partly based off the city of New York but it's not a copy of New York.
But it still uniquely its own place. I just find it so much more fun to get lost in a world created all its own. No matter how cool it is to drive around New York we've seen it before. It also means you can create a city more conducive for the missions. Thus creating a more streamlined experience. it also means you have the ability to really let your characters go wild. You don't have to worry about the NYPD being offended by a video game when the police force isn't truefuly based off of them.
I also really enjoy the motif of Liberty City. It's this dark and kind of dingy City that's just coming out of the technological Enlightenment of the 1990s. But it's criminal elements seem to think it's 1972 still and the entire city is over grits with crime and gang Warfare. It's one of the few games where I don't mind they slightly darker tint filter that was put over the screen.
This also helps when it comes to missions. No mission in this game will take more than 5 minutes to drive to. Everything is quick and to-the-point. It's the biggest strength of this game. It's focused on the game play more than any of the other Grand Theft Autos. The story is but a Prelude to get you to the action. And it makes it quite enjoyable.
It's only negative is that it can be a little forgettable. Most people won't remember anything Key about the city or even the game.
And the music in this game is very reminiscent of the older top down Grand Theft Autos. Lots of weird underground hits and music that was actually made for the game. At one time I thought all the music in this game was made for it I had no idea who Amy Holland was.
Grand Theft Auto 3 has the second best pace of all Grand Theft Auto games. Your character moves quick, the action moves quick and your cars move just as quick as the action. And you can get straight into combat anytime you want. From the second the game starts without even completing the first mission you can go into another car, drive anywhere you want on the first Island and start shooting everything up.
You can even decide to try and find all the secret packages on the first Island before ever going to your original save spot. And most of its achievable because the game isn't designed with any future gimmicks later on. There's no flying cars, helicopters or planes that get you the special new locations. Every location (excluding the major Bridges) is accessible from the beginning of the game.
The only things you get more access to in the future are guns at the gun store. But even these aren't absolutely needed. If you know where the secret guns are you can just acquire them whenever you like and go on with your day. And money is next to useless in this game. With the sole use being to buy weaponry and and spray jobs for your car.
Both of which are so cheap that you'll never run the risk of going broke**. And even so you can get money from Taxi jobs, Ambulance jobs or sometimes when your car crashes into other cars you'll just get cash. You can also put cars in the car crusher which was the way I made money when I first played this game.
Ultimately it's a good Grand Theft Auto. Solid game play, good environment, fun story.
Vice City: Is the only Grand Theft Auto game that already have a review done for it. And at this point it'll be the only one unless. Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out and proves to be the greatest thing ever made.
But until such a theoretical day comes along this Grand Theft Auto still maintains the number one spot.
It's a lot of what Grand Theft Auto 3 was but was even more put on top. The environments are bright and vibrant the city is absolutely fantastic and the overall atmosphere is great. This is the only Grand Theft Auto that I think does really well in all three major categories.
And yet despite saying that I think I put the story a little too high on my chart. I put it above the game play and I'm not entirely sure I agree with that. Don't get me wrong it's a great little story. You play is a semi fleshed-out character who has his own motivations. Going around the city and doing pretty much the same things as your character from Grand Theft Auto 3 but with more purpose. And you get the sense that you're becoming a power force in your own right. Tommy Vercetti is a walking breathing character who can actually make his own decisions or at least gives you the illusion that your make your own decisions. At the end of the day you're still taking orders from everyone around you even that stupid lawyer of yours is telling you to do stuff.
But it doesn't matter most of what you do prove to be quite fun and it's really enjoyable to play through the missions and see the different ways you can accomplish something.
That's something that both 3 and Vice City do much better than every Grand Theft Auto after this point. Your free-roaming abilities can actually be utilised in missions. That is to say you can take different objectives to finish something. Don't want to drive a car through a certain destination because it's too difficult not to get shot. Take a helicopter.
don't like that there's one guy in the game who drives so well that it makes you look like a pile of garbage no matter what you do. Shoot out one of his tires and then drive your way to Victory.
The game's environment is actually utilised for the missions and you can use that to your advantage to avoid certain situations.
There are a couple of missions that won't let you deviate from the main path but these are mainly races or games we have to pick up certain packages in a row and most of the time it's not too bad. Some of the missions that people complained about I had no problems with it at all. Like the one we are a tiny toy helicopter placing Dynamite inside of a building. I thought this mission was the easiest thing in the world but apparently it's on a lot of people's top 10 most difficult Grand Theft Auto list.
That does bring me to one negative point with Vice City that I didn't have with Grand Theft Auto 3. Some of the missions in this game are hair-pulling frustration.
Now most of them are fine. There's a bank heist mission you can do later on that's incredibly difficult but it's also built up is the most difficult mission in the entire game and it's not meant to be easy. But sometimes you'll encounter a mission that just feels cheap.
there's a mission where you have to save one of your cronies who's being tied up inside this car garage somewhere. And you have to get to him through a hail of gunfire save him make sure he doesn't die and then drive him back to a hospital all while being attacked by a different group of assailant. And it was annoying if your friends died you have to do the entire Mission over again.
And it could get a little tiring. Because some of the mechanics in the game weren't ironed out yet. The introductions of bikes might have been a fun side distraction but using bikes in the mission was the most annoying thing. Almost anything could knock you off those darn things and your character would die within a second if they were hit.
But all that aside I'd still say 80% of the missions were very fun to do and only 5% we're Dreadful.
Now the environment is where this game shines both figuratively and literally. The son of facts the vibrant colours and the feeling that you live in some 1980s hollywoodized vision of Florida is a wonderful thing. And once again Vice City is its own unique City it's based off of Miami but it's still its own thing. And it's this beautiful circular Road system to the whole thing. You can drive around the entire city in about 10 minutes and it's fairly easy to do with nice straight roads and enough cars to keep it interesting without being overbearing. And the quickness in this game. You're an Olympic runner in this game sometimes you can run quicker than the cars can drive.
You're an Olympic runner in this game, sometimes you can run quicker than the cars can drive.
The entire game is quick, every car is quick and with the Advent of helicopters and an airplane you can get around even quicker. The only negative here is that there are certain objectives that are only obtainable once you get a plane or a boat. A problem that didn't really exist in three (for the most part.)
the game also at side objectives you can purchase buildings and real estate that add additional missions and even more income. Not only does this add to the enjoyment of the game but it flushes out the environment as well making it even more alive. And money finally has a used in this game. You'll need it so you can buy more save spots places to store your cars and of course those businesses. And all of this adds to the power Dynamic you acquire throughout the game as you feel that your character gets stronger and stronger as they progress.
And it's for all of this that I feel my charges so much higher for Vice City than any other Grand Theft Auto game. Each category compliments the other. Making it not just one of the best GTA games but one of the best games ever made. It's a sand box full of gold, a golden sandbox.
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas: Now we have a problem. San Andreas is the ultimate example of a yin yang game to me. For every good thing I love about this game there is something horrible. San Andreas is huge, it's not just physically big but it feels big. Bigger than just about any game I've played and that involves some Modern games that are easily 3 to 10 times bigger than this.
San Andreas has one of the best environments of any game. You're driving through an entire State and every state has its own unique feeling. There are places to see small towns to go to a Marietta radio stations with some of the best license music again could ever have. And there's so much work in care put into this. It feels like a mega project.
But unfortunately the environment doesn't mix up the Gameplay. At least not when it comes to missions. A mission in this game can take forever to do it requires driving long distances and if you screw up you have to do it all over again. And God help you if you're playing this game on the personalised computer half of these missions won't work. I've gotten to the point where I will go online just to find someone else's save file that I can then put onto my own computer. Because this game becomes unplayable. And it wasn't all that playable on the consoles either.
Oh sure the shooting segments are fine but the DDR sections and all those mini games that you had to do to progress in the game just drag the whole thing down and if you're somebody like me who as a young teenager just couldn't understand those Dance Dance Revolution games you'll be stuck here trying to do the same car Hydraulics Mission time and time again. And that's to say nothing of Carl and his attempts to get on top of that train. A moment so notorious that it's become a meme all its own. It symbolises the worst aspect of Grand Theft Auto all together and it's something that they had to this day haven't truly grown out of.
It's story is kind of crummy. That's not to say that I dislike a lot of it. Carl Johnson as a character is fairly enjoyable and he's a little bit more realistic than Tommy Vercetti the over-the-top ridiculous man who was willing to shoot his way out of any situation. But Carl just feels like a sucker the whole time. It's one thing to have to put up with the racist and corrupt cops who screw you over from literal point one in this game. That I can understand, that has some real-life connotations to it. But then having to put up with your dumb ass gang family is just something I've never liked.
if you one thing if you were just playing us some mindless hoodlum. Then it's okay, Viking the Warriors game you're just some guy who's following a bigger more impressive gang leader. But Carl Johnson is shown to be not just tougher than all the rest of his gang but smarter too. He should know better than to deal with any of these idiots as to just try to get away from them. Heck why not go to the extreme route and just destroy the lot of them be done with the whole thing. He certainly has the power to do so
With all that said I still like what this game try to do. It tried to create a more Slow Burn of a game something where you built your way up from the ground down.
And don't get me wrong this game is huge. It's not just the environment that's big but the story too. There are so many missions and so many objectives to do you mean a ton of different people and go through so many environments. It's like a Mega Quest buy some sort of Don Quixote-isk character.
Only you're actually going on that Grey Quest. You're going to deal with the Moors and the Turks and you're going to over throw the dragons. And at the end of the day you'll become that dauntless night who brings back order and Justice to the world. I think I might be getting off track.
It's a mighty conundrum to talk about this game. The story aspects just doesn't work, it becomes exhausting after a while even if you're invested in the story. But the actual free roam the ability to just go around the entire State the multi-state even and see all the different sites hit the gym play at the casino go boxing take a boat out to the river fly a plane for miles upon miles on end go on dates get your flying license fly a little toy air plane eat burgers get fat get fit go to dance competitions build and design your own cars there's so much to do. and if it was all separate and independent of the main game it might be okay. Because all of this stuff affects the main game. You need to eat food you need to get fit sometimes you might need to go on a date to get someone to help you. And it can really bring the game down. But then the other problem, if all of this stuff is secondary and had no effect whatsoever nobody would do it. People would complain that it was just there with no purpose at all and that it shouldn't exist. You can even play video games with in the video game.
And the graphics in this game are kind of strange. They're technically better quality than 3 or Vice City. But they don't look as good, there's something about the slightly polish to look and he added joints that just don't work for this type of graphic. It's the old adage of less is more sometimes. San Andreas just doesn't look as appealing because it's starting to hit certain uncanny spots. And the lighting in this game is just awful. You have this strange yellow darkish filter over everything which really doesn't help you when your last game was vice city which was so vibrant and alive.
hear everything looks hazy because you're based off the city of Los Angeles which is a naturally hazy City.
And your movements are much slower than in Vice City too.
Add on the giant environment and it becomes an even bigger problem. They are able to make up with some of that but having your character able to jump over fences and grapple over certain other obstacles. The use of ducking and moving is a lot better too. You no longer have to duck in a corner shoot your gun stand up and then move again. You can actually Crouch and move.
My recommendation, find a save file that gets you passed a great deal of the missions but hasn't actually completed the game or beating all the side quest. Or if you own the game on Console try to go through the story. It's not a particularly bad story there's just a lot about it that gets annoying. And some of those missions can be incredibly difficult. There's only one or two missions that if you fail it in the middle actually start you back at a certain point. Otherwise you're back at the hospital and you have to do it all over again and they can take you up to a half an hour to travel to certain places depending on your mode of transportation. If nothing else I admire what this game try to do. Maybe it was too much, maybe we just weren't ready for it. Or maybe it's the best we could possibly achieve³. I've seen other people make games bigger than this in every way and they just become so daunting and disinterested that you stopped caring.
As I stated originally this still feels like the largest game I've ever played.
* I say the ''actual'' Liberty City because the one we get in 4 is just New York.
**I guess you can also use the money for hookers but the game never tells you to do that and never even leads up to that. The only reason I know you can do that is because I was sitting around listening to the radio station once and some random lady came and sat in my car.
³The technical answer is we are just a bunch of annoying whiny people who are never satisfied with anything. Even when we achieve something good in life, it's never good enough. It could always be better, humans always strive for better things but then we're never satisfied even our philosophies can't answer us, our Gods fail us and we're doomed forever to achieve more and more all the more realising that it means absolutely nothing in the long existence of all Humanity. Oh God I'm trailing off again. This thing's already long enough, I'll write my own Don Quixote.
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