History of Grand Theft Auto

jasoncart writes "With the launch of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas this week, Ferrago has taken a look back at everyone's favorite non-linear series."

GTA2

[NereusRen]

Am I the only one who loved GTA2? I still play the multiplayer occasionally with my dorm friends. The balance of power between various weapons and powerups makes it quite strategic, with lots of room for improving your game through intelligence and skill.

Re:Lots of info missing!

[caustiq]

Did anyone else ever line up as many cars as they could, as close as they could get together ... and then blow one up with a rocket launcher causing a chain explosion, and resultant score multiplication? This is how I got to Vice City, by doing this in one of San Andreas' large parking lots. I've never seen this mentioned anywhere, but I remember racking up HUGE scores like this. Would make for a nice screenshot too, my explosions were gigantic, (so large in fact you would have to make sure the explosions wouldn't spread off the screen, as you wouldn't recieve any cash...)

GTA

[ledow]

As someone who owns EVERY PC GTA game, including the london add-ons etc., I think the original GTA was the best. It wasn't the storyline, that was just humour especially with the London addon, but the freeform play, especially when networked.

When I got bored of trying to play it properly (which was much harder in the original GTA than in the 3-D versions), my brother and I would network and that was just fantastic (albeit very buggy in DOS and unplayable on Windows with my machines at the time). Trying to line up a screen full of cars and then rocket-launchering and trying to surf over the top of the cars as they exploded was great fun.

Skidding around on a bike in the middle of machine-gunning gang was just right and if you were quick and smart you could set up booby traps with some cars and blow them all to kingdom come.

The multiplayer was simple but effective, leading to some good car chases and using the local terrain and traffic to avoid each other's bullets.

GTA2 was a bit too much like another add-on, just a graphical overhaul and a slight change in mission structure, and I never really got into that as much. The graphics were also too dark and the "lighting" was just there to be eye candy and nothing else.

GTA3/VC, although good and groundbreaking, just doesn't rock my socks... it's fun to mess about in but you get bored and the missions are just of the save-and-retry type, along with some impossible ones like controlling the remote control choppers.

All of the games, though, have that right balance of freeform and mission-led play. When you ran out of missions in GTA1, you could go selling cars for a while until the police came and you had to make a quick getaway.

GTA2 had a marvellous idea for missions where you have to keep in with a local gang to get more, or defect to another gang to get theirs. GTA3 has been a good translation to 3D and it keeps the same style, I'm just not sure that it's as good.

The fact that you can load up any of them, load in any saved game and just piss about for a while is a major attraction, especially when you can't do that next-to-impossible mission and want to relax.

What I want to see is basically OpenGTA1... same game, same style, loads of new capabilities and missions.