Grand Theft Auto Grieving Thread - Yep, I've been drinkin' again...

[The Last Stand]

It's super jarring coming off of San Andreas which is why I think people in their teens and early 20's don't "get it".

You said you played GTA since 1. How did you hear about GTA? When did you grow into it? What was your reaction when GTA hit 3D?

Have you played Chinatown Wars? If you have a recent smartphone or tablet, I highly recommend it. It's top down like GTA 1/2 but with an isometric view and has the "gamey" aspects of the 3D era while taking place in the HD era.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

You said you played GTA since 1. How did you hear about GTA? When did you grow into it? What was your reaction when GTA hit 3D?

Have you played Chinatown Wars? If you have a recent smartphone or tablet, I highly recommend it. It's top down like GTA 1/2 but with an isometric view and has the "gamey" aspects of the 3D era while taking place in the HD era.

I think a kid on my street told me about it on the bus, which is funny because I was 9 and he would have been 8. I had just gotten a playstation so I went and rented it and I fell in love just doing rampages and fighting cops with cheats cause I felt like The Terminator.

When GTA2 came out I rented it and loved it too. Started actually paying attention to the missions around then. Bought it like a year later when it went on Greatest Hits and saw the GTAIII ad on the back with all the beta screen shots and lost my shit. I remember I thought it was absolutely crazy that the gaming magazines were barely giving it any attention, it seemed like all they did was talk about 8 Ball for some reason. I didn't have a PS2 when GTAIII came out so I basically had to pester my sisters boyfriend to let me play his copy. Loved it so much I ended up getting my first job that summer in order to save up for a used PS2 (I was also going crazy not being able to play MGS2). By the time I saved up enough cash for it, Vice City was only a month away so I ended up just waiting for it and fell in love even more because of the soundtrack and setting (my parents raised me on 80's music and the only vacations I ever took were to Florida). I could keep going but yeah I've just always loved GTA. I think it's why I keep playing GTA Online even though I see all the problems with it.

I bought Chinatown Wars for DS when it first came out and enjoyed it a lot. Really loved the drug dealing aspect. Haven't played it in a while though cause I sold all my DS stuff a while back.

 

[The Last Stand]

ought it like a year later when it went on Greatest Hits and saw the GTAIII ad on the back with all the beta screen shots and lost my shit.

Did it look like this?

This isn't mine; I found it on the Internet.

By the time I saved up enough cash for it, Vice City was only a month away so I ended up just waiting for it and fell in love even more because of the soundtrack and setting (my parents raised me on 80's music and the only vacations I ever took were to Florida).

Around a year after that, the family room had an Xbox and GTA 3/Vice City. As a kid, I vaguely remember doing some missions but mainly driving around Vice City. III felt scary to me at the time, but I progressed further in III than Vice City. The second island.

I could keep going but yeah I've just always loved GTA.

Please do! This thread could always use content.

 

[White Devil]

Legit feel bad for people who started with VI and/or V and think "the older games are boring!111".

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I started with IV but I never got into it due to issues I've rambled about multiple times in this thread (basically technical problems and not so much the game itself, which I actually like).

After that I got San Andreas, which I liked until the halfway point when the missions got too spread out over the whole goddamn map. I quit when I had to do those bullshit plane missions.

So far, Vice City's been the only game that I felt compelled to beat. It's a multitude of things; it's the only one that makes you feel like a crime lord with your own drug empire, and the world is just small enough to where traveling between missions isn't a hassle but also big enough to where exploration is satisfying. The soundtrack's also my favorite in the whole series, but everyone's already brought that up. Frankly, if it weren't for all those things I wouldn't have stuck with it because VC's on-foot controls are garbage. VC to me is one of those games that prove that things like aesthetics and atmosphere can somewhat make up for shoddy gameplay.

 

[Syaoran Li]

GTA IV is the best GTA no contest. It trumps everything else in atmosphere and driving (to me the two most important parts of a GTA game). V is better in terms of story but the open word is seriously lacking

>GTA IV
>best driving

Pick one, faggot.

Also, how is GTA V a better story than IV?

The story is the only truly good thing GTA IV had going for it at all. The rest of the game was drab and boring "realistic steak" garbage, which is why GTA V went too far in the polar opposite route and went with all the crazy sci-fi shit in Online and a storyline involving Hollywood producers, social media CEO's with armies of mercenaries, and stealing a nuke.

You're obviously trolling, right? I can get not liking the 3D Era games but saying that IV had the best driving mechanics of any GTA game while V had the best story is either retarded or "lol I'm just pretending to be retarded" shitposting.

 

[{o}P II]

>GTA IV
>best driving

Pick one, faggot.

Also, how is GTA V a better story than IV?

The story is the only truly good thing GTA IV had going for it at all. The rest of the game was drab and boring "realistic steak" garbage, which is why GTA V went too far in the polar opposite route and went with all the crazy sci-fi shit in Online and a storyline involving Hollywood producers, social media CEO's with armies of mercenaries, and stealing a nuke.

You're obviously trolling, right? I can get not liking the 3D Era games but saying that IV had the best driving mechanics of any GTA game while V had the best story is either retarded or "lol I'm just pretending to be retarded" shitposting.

Missions are more fun and have better structure

 

[The Last Stand]

Missions are more fun and have better structure

While V had more variety with missions, many of them were filler. You wonder, why am I doing this?

The heist prep missions come to mind. In one heist mission, you have the option to either fly in, hack a computer and have a shootout. Or disguise yourself as a janitor and mop. Mop. Realistic, sure. In execution, boring.

One of the worst missions in GTA V is Scouting the Port. Basically, you're undercover as a freight worker. And you have to use all this heavy machinery to progress. It's slow, mundane and tedious.

One underreported aspect that the 3D era games had was freedom. This video highlights what I mean.

Basically, the simplicity of the 3D era allowed you to complete missions more than one way. Let's use III as an example.

One mission had you kill a target in Chinatown. Okay. You can run in, spook him and have a car chase with him. OR you could shoot him from afar, or take his car, prime a bomb to it, park it back and lure him to the car.

Another aspect that the 3D era games done well: exploration. There are guns, collectibles, health, armor, side activities hidden inside the city. They're put within the nooks and crannies of the world to reward players for going off the beaten path. Open world.

The game gives you tools and it's up to the player to figure out how they work. Is it perfect? No. Have they aged well? No. Are some missions a drag? Yes. But don't knock an older game just because it's "older."

 

[rVeRSeSI]

Yeah, Vice City is my favorite but I'm aware it's simply because of the soundtrack and atmosphere.

I love all the 3D Era GTA's and still play them today, even LIberty City and Vice City Stories sometimes.

I wouldn't say GTA IV is a bad game, it's just a bad GTA. Too much travel to push expository dialogue, it has a handful of truly great missions but the majority are just repetitive and feel like filler, fun side missions like vigilante/firefighter/paramedic were replaced with boring bowling/pool/darts. It's super jarring coming off of San Andreas which is why I think people in their teens and early 20's don't "get it".

It's a real problem with the modern GTA formula. They're so damn stuck on being "true to their story" and making the map as detailed as possible that the game suffers in the long run. It's also why I think the vast majority of people gravitated to GTA Online because Rockstar goes in the completely opposite direction with it and don't seem to give a fuck about logic at all.

A lot of people loved Vice City for it's 80s appeal, even I did. I still go back and play Vice City even today.

I feel like R* rushed into GTA 4 and didn't put much effort into the game's development. GTA 4 had such awful controls, the texture on the graphics were off and when the city was in night mode you could never see anything (In all other GTA games you can drive in the dark without problems) and would often crash the vehicle. The map and the other problems you had just made the game more less enjoyable.

Modern GTA games are fun but it looks like R* games isn't that focused on the game itself and more interested in keeping the game advanced with the times.

 

[The Last Stand]

I feel like R* rushed into GTA 4 and didn't put much effort into the game's development.

Rushed? I don't think so. Evidently, IV was in development since 2004. And was delayed from 07 to April 2008 because of the new consoles.

I think a lot of time was put into IV. Especially since they were working from the ground up on new hardware and a new engine.

The PC port, that's debatable.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

I honestly disliked how they made Lazlow into a loser in the games after 3. In 3 he felt like the everyman of the game. The only normal dude in the madness. Would have been great to feel more of that in the other games he's in.

And I legitimately believe that the PS2 era games are miles better than 4/5. May god forgive the zoomers.

 

[The Last Stand]

And I legitimately believe that the PS2 era games are miles better than 4/5. May god forgive the zoomers.

@ProblematicUser420 is the real GTA veteran here. WE'RE the hipsters now.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

Did it look like this?
View attachment 1559238
This isn't mine; I found it on the Internet.

Yeah, that's it exactly.

As far as more stuff to add, I'm not really sure. I remember the midnight launch for GTA IV was really interesting. It wasn't *huge* but it was a really diverse group of people waiting outside of Gamestop for it. I remember this jocky looking dude in a letterman jacket and this nerdy guy just gushing about how much they loved GTA.

Now that I think about it, GTA V was the last midnight launch I went to. It was way bigger than the GTA IV one but was also kind of a shit show. They had some weird lottery to determine the order they gave out the games and everyone got super pissed cause some of them had been waiting for like 4 hours in line. It was so bad.

And...the only other real big GTA thing I can think of is that I was one of the people that got one of the Sideshow Collectible Claude dolls back for the GTA III 10 year anniversary. About 4 years later I was really hard up for money though and ended up selling it to some dude in Russia for a thousand dollars. That was kind of cool cause I think I only paid like 150 for it, but I kind of regret it too.

I don't really know what else to talk about lol. I can tell you that the gaming press and it seemed like the video game community as a whole didn't seem to give two shits about GTA III. I know I kind of talked about this before, but like it felt like absolutely nobody had faith in it. And once it released it immediately got huge thanks to all the controversy and it was damn near impossible to find a copy for months. That started the whole "pre order now to avoid disappointment" thing that would pop up in all the pre-release GTA trailers and websites and such.

 

[The Last Stand]

As far as more stuff to add, I'm not really sure. I remember the midnight launch for GTA IV was really interesting. It wasn't *huge* but it was a really diverse group of people waiting outside of Gamestop for it. I remember this jocky looking dude in a letterman jacket and this nerdy guy just gushing about how much they loved GTA.

When I heard about GTA launches, I think of this.

Complete irony.

There are some crazy people out there.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

LMFAO he's even wearing the Niko Bellic track jacket.

 

[The Last Stand]

LMFAO he's even wearing the Niko Bellic track jacket.

I would've tazed him then and there.

You recall the GTA IV launch not being as spectacular. Going through some YouTube videos now, the midnight launches of GTA IV were something. Lines were long, hype was intense, people got along.

Video games were reaching their peak of technology and popularity then. So you could argue it's that culture and time period, not just GTA IV.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

I would've tazed him then and there.

You recall the GTA IV launch not being as spectacular. Going through some YouTube videos now, the midnight launches of GTA IV were something. Lines were long, hype was intense, people got along.

Video games were reaching their peak of technology and popularity then. So you could argue it's that culture and time period, not just GTA IV.

It wasn't huge but I also lived in a more rural area at the time so it might have been huge for the area. GTA V seemed bigger but that was in a bigger location, but that one was way lamer.

GTA IV felt more like...I dunno, everyone was a really big fan of GTA and we were all getting together and having a good time just waiting a few hours for the doors to open. Almost like a little meet up or convention? It may have been my first midnight launch too, I can't recall it was definitely one of the first so I probably just have a little spot in my heart for it cause of that too.

GTA V's launch just felt like a bunch of people going through the motions. It could have simply been because there were so many more people, or the system they set up had everyone in a bad mood. It just wasn't as fun, but it kind of felt like the end of an "era" because digital was starting to take off. Like I said I never felt the need to do a midnight launch ever again but by that point I was like 23 about to turn 24 and really enjoying my sleep.

 

[White Devil]

I don't really know what else to talk about lol. I can tell you that the gaming press and it seemed like the video game community as a whole didn't seem to give two shits about GTA III. I know I kind of talked about this before, but like it felt like absolutely nobody had faith in it. And once it released it immediately got huge thanks to all the controversy and it was damn near impossible to find a copy for months. That started the whole "pre order now to avoid disappointment" thing that would pop up in all the pre-release GTA trailers and websites and such.

I remember things very differently and when the GTA 3 marketing first hit, people were going apeshit about it. In 2001 that was one of the games you had to have, especially if you had played any of the previous GTAs (which were all top down games). Shit, the first commercial I saw for it, I was watching either WWF Raw or Smackdown with my dad and it looked absolutely amazing, I remember begging him to get it for me when it comes out. Confirmation bias sure, but I remember all my friends were excited for it as well.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

COUNTERPOINT: Grand Theft Auto: LONDON 1969 is such an under appreciated game.
I’ve been trying to find the physical copy for a couple of weeks now.

 

[The Last Stand]

I remember things very differently and when the GTA 3 marketing first hit, people were going apeshit about it. In 2001 that was one of the games you had to have, especially if you had played any of the previous GTAs (which were all top down games). Shit, the first commercial I saw for it, I was watching either WWF Raw or Smackdown with my dad and it looked absolutely amazing, I remember begging him to get it for me when it comes out. Confirmation bias sure, but I remember all my friends were excited for it as well.

GTA 3 was so controversial at that time, they even made a commerical with people denouncing the game. it almost sounds scripted.