Simple. Answer what your favorite and least favorite GTA games are, and your reasoning behind it. Honorable/Dishonorable mentions are always welcome. I did this on here to see the honest opinions of people that aren't nearly as fanboyish as the GTA forums. --- Post updated --- For me: My favorite is IV. Sure, it may be controversial in the community, but it was beautifully done. Im quite familiar with NYC and northern New Jersey, and I've been to the former Yugoslavia, so the story really clicked for me. I enjoyed all ten cites (Liberty City, Westdyke, Leftwood, Alderney City, Berchem, Normandy, Acter, Tudor, Port Tudor, and the Acter Industrial Park) and both states (Liberty and Alderney). The police chases were very balanced, and the game still felt like a GTA game. It had some of the best pedestrian diologue in the series, and the vehicle variety was amazing. I wasn't personally an EFLC fan though... Kinda felt cheap. On the other hand, I think V is an insult to the series, even worse than advance. The story was rushed and unenjoyable, most of the cars were copy-paste IV ports, the physics were terrible, and the world felt fake and unimmersive. And all the good content, (I'm looking at you, annihilator) was saved for the online aspect. Let's not even get me started on online. It's literally just a cash grab and there's literally no redeeming qualities. Honorable mentions: GTA: VC Amazing soundtrack, environment, and gameplay, but it felt rather crude in places. GTA: SA An ambitious game, especially for it's time, but it lacked tons of polish and I really didn't like the "jack of all trades, master of none" gameplay.
Please press spoiler to read my thoughts on gta games. Spoiler Non Applicable GTA, GTA London 1969, GTA London 1961, GTA 2, GTA III(own yet to play), GTA Advance, GTA Liberty City Stories (own yet to play), GTA Vice City Stories, EFLC (TLAD and TBOGT) (own yet to play) and GTA Chinatown Wars. From least to favorite. GTA V It has a nice story and the multiple protagonist are a good idea. But the map feels so small compared to what they said. (high land area low stuff). Cops are either stupid or overly aggressive. The removal of 6 stars and the end game is so bad that its not fun. Lots of stuff to buy no money unless you want to play the stock market which is a 30% failure rate. GTA Vice City: A clasic. Now because Vice City is low dose not mean I hate it. The only reasion why its here is because the story is quite short but its full of good stuff. GTA IV: IV is the opposite of GTA V and in my opion GTA 4's world feels a lot bigger than 5's but it has the opposite end game problems. Not much to do and too much money. Gta 4's cops can be stupid but they are loyal and are the 2nd least corrupt police force in any GTA game. GTA San Andreas: The king daddy and and GTA game that make rockstar triple A acknowledgement. It had just about everything, 3 city's, large country side with many different towns,villages and (personal option) the perfect story length. It was the first GTA game I know of to introduce vehicle modification through Trans fender. The map feels huge in fact you could drive a train, ship, car ,semi truck with trailer, Jumbo jet, Harrier jet, Attack chopper and many more vehicles. You can buy most of the stander-ed civilian vehicles at the San Ferrio docks.The end game is fun and the game warfare was interesting albeit unfair at points. Edit spaced things out better and added spoilers for phone users.
For me: Actually, GTA 2 allowed for basic vehicle upgrades (car bombs, mounted guns, resprays, armor)
Well I met like changing the tire type, body kits, spoilers, exhaust pipes, nitro stuff like that. Resprays have been in the games for a long time (paint and spray) and car bombs are in gta 3 as well (8 ball)
I like the physics of GTA 4 and the story is not bad, but GTA 5 is much newer with better, cleaner graphics. Plus it gives you more diversity in the environment (Large metropolitan area, desert, and even a redwood forest!)
IV can look pretty good with the right tv settings. V's environment disappointed me. It felt kinda thrown together and unpolished, and the layout is weird.
The Alamo sea was misplaced and way too big, and the desert in the middle felt weird and disorienting. IVs layout was odd, but I personally think the layout of the State of Alderney was genius. Only Alderney City, Normandy, Port Tudor, and the Acter Industrial Park can see Algonquin easily. The cliffs blocked off Northern Alderney, (Westdyke and Leftwood) from Liberty City, and gave them an isolated feel. Western Acter Industrial Park, Tudor, Acter, and Berchem were separated by the plumber's skyway, giving LC a distant feel.
So we can't have multiple votes then? I've played from GTA 3 through all the way up to V, all of them have their faults, and their strong points. The only title I didn't like as much was Vice City Stories, even though chronologically, it's the first that starts off the "GTA Timeline" (Yes, I know the original GTA was the first game, but I'm talking about the year the game is set in.) Prequel games are an iffy thing for me, I've played the original Vice City alot, but going onto VCS, it just felt like, nothing was "there". Soundtrack was alright, and the storyline was decent, but overall, all the stuff that you've seen in Vice City either didn't exist yet, or changed drastically. Liberty City Stories was an exception, even though it was set before the events of GTA 3, but ironically it's the other way around with LCS having more content in it. San Andreas, I've played it long enough that I know the whole map as if it was on the back of my hand, compared to GTA V, the map did feel "bigger" but that was because the roads were laid out in a way that driving felt longer than it should. But I loved driving from Los Santos, to San Fierro, then eventually to Las Venturas. The only thing that I didn't like was the fact that Carl always kept getting hungry at the wrong times, and sometimes it was tedious to execute the "No Hunger" cheat. GTA V, I've heard alot of people say negative things, some prove their points with Online, some just make assumptions, and jump to conclusions that it goes to the point that they say "Screw Rockstar, the whole GTA franchise is shit." I mean, I met a person who claimed that he only played 5 minutes into the game, and that he hated it, he didn't even get past the first cutscene, and automatically calls the whole game "shitty". Yeah, perfectly logical right there /s. I've had a love/hate relationship with the game, there was a point that I didn't play it for a few months just because I simply got bored of it, but the "nostalgia" feeling gets to me, and I'm back playing it again. The problem that I've seen with alot of people complaining about the layout was that it was "all too small, there's nothing to do, it's not like Los Angeles, or the layout is all wrong", I've all seen they just ignore everything, and speed through it all, but they all don't see the attention to detail that was put into the game, the small little things that just makes it realistic, some argue that IV was better, and I wouldn't disagree, but I personally don't see how the map is "horrible". One trip around the whole map, no speeding or whatsoever, even maybe just following the speed limit, the map feels much bigger than it is rather than flying down the highway at 100+. It took me a fair bit of time to get from Paleto Bay up north, to the southern part of Los Santos roughly 15-20 minutes on driving the speed limit, minus the AI traffic, I realized how big the map is actually is, and it still throws me off. I'll admit that I do still actively play Online, but I refuse to buy any of those Sharkcards, and play Online as how originally it was supposed to be played as, run missions, and grind for money that way instead of simply buying it, of course there's the time difference, and the fact that everything has severely inflated price tags, but it doesn't stop me from having fun in the game. I also wouldn't try to compare IV with V, IV has it's faults, and V does as well, doesn't mean that they're "better" than the others, considering the fact that both are based in the same universe, I'd also like to see how Vice City would look in the HD universe as well, and also, what San Fierro and Las Venturas would look like as well.
Ditto, as far aesthetics go VC is definitely my favourite Would be awesome if R* made their next GTA set in 80's Miami
The best in my opinion is San Andreas. A lot of locations with completely different biomes (barren deserts of Tierra Robada, farmlands of Red County, mysterious and foggy forests of Back-o-Beyond and Shady Creek) and different cities (business-oriented Los Santos, fashionable Las Venturas, relaxed San Fierro), vehicles (80s-90s cars that I love the most, hovercraft, jetpack, The Damn Train, a ton of air- and watercrafts) and customisation options for them, side missions, places of interest to visit, myths that I desperately want to believe in , ability to participate in gang wars, ability to buy safehouses and ability to make out with girlfriends. Honorable mentions: Vice City: wonderful 80's atmosphere, city looks beautiful and full of sunshine. Again, 80s cars that I like. GTA 4: interesting storyline, a large selection of ordinary cars (unlike 5 where 40% of all cars are super and hypercars), realistic car handling (those 5 playing kids be like: boo, driving in 4 sucks, I can't even go through a 90 degrees corner at 100 kmh) and most realistic car damage in the series.
I've played III, SA, IV, and V only. Out of all of those though, IV is by far my favorite. The physics feel right to me, and with a decent shader and texture pack, the game can look even better than V. It also runs great on my computer which is a plus
GTA: SA - This was my first GTA experience, I was like 7 back when I first got to play it. It felt great to hijack a plane just to crash a minute later. I never fully completed the game, because I was playing on cousins' computer when I was visiting them. GTA: VC Stories - This was the first GTA I actually completed. I had this on my PSP and this game provided young me hundreds of hours of gameplay like 10 years ago. So much memories with this one. I knew pretty much all the map and I think I remember most of it after all these years. I never appreciated the Phil Collins song back then, but I like it quite a bit now and it always reminds me of my young school years and this game. I also liked playing wlan multiplayer with two classmates who also had PSPs and this game. GTA IV - I have newer owned and really played this game, but it's one of my favourites due to how much innovation it had - completely different graphics, crash physics that still runs laps around most modern games. I didn't like the greyish overall colour of that game. I wanted to pick this game up for my PS3, but I never managed to find the base game in any store near me. As I found about it a few years after release (I was about 8 at the time of release), there were really no base GTA 4's in the stores, just those story expansions or whatever they were. I tried to pirate the game last year to run it on my poor laptop to see what the game was like, but I managed to find a version that had a DRM that was basically a drowsy drunk-like screen after first 30 minutes of playing. I deleted it and didn't bother, because it was not worth the hassle for a game I didn't really care much about to begin with. GTA 5 was good ofc, but I didn't vote for it just because they are pushing the cash-grabbing online so much, but the single player got few updates with nothing much in them. There were so damn much things that could have been done with singlep, but they forgot about it soon after release and didn't bother. It was good still, but could've been better. By a ton