The GTA series is a long runner, hitting the streets first back in 1997. I’ve played on the PC versions of the series, and the game has evolved a lot over the years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_%28series%29
Many will have had no chance to play the earlier installments, but even from the start the game had the all the key elements which made it a genre-creating game series. The first GTA was created by DMA Design (now Rockstar North), who also created the classic survival puzzle game Lemmings. I played GTA on the PC, and it was exciting. It had a big downside, in its unique save system. Or pretty much, lack of one — you could only save the game when you completed the missions to advance to the next city. I would leave notes on the PC saying “Don’t turn off,” even though that prevented anyone from using the system while I was away. Or even me, for anything else.
It was worth it, though, because the game was very good. It was top down, in 2D but using 3D prerendered artwork, it still looked pretty nice. It was an open world city game, you could drive anywhere and you could – as the game name suggests – steal or hijack any cars you saw, and just drive around for fun. This was and is a key factor in the appeal of the game series. You can just cruise around, explore, do whatever you feel like.
The game started in Liberty City, and also let you progress to Vice City and San Andreas. The cities were fairly large, far more open — a classic element of the open world concept — than many games of the period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_(video_game)
Of course, there were missions and you couldn’t advance in the game without doing them. The gratuitous violence was there too — you weren’t punished for running over pedestrians, and were even offered missions — both the side mission “Rampages” and as part of the main story line — which involved killing random people off the streets. The story elements and graphics were well into the realm of cartoonish violence and thus were funny, not something to take seriously. Though both in tone and content, it was clearly aimed at mature players, not young children, something that is also a factor in the success of the series.
The sound was also a fun part of the game. The cars had radios which played radio stations, with talk and music. While the mission briefings were all text, there were lots of voice comments and sound effects during the game which really added a lot to the feel of the game play.
GTA had two expansions in 1999, London 1969, and London 1961. Besides switching the side of the road for the cars to drive on, the two offered a very different sort of story line. 1969 used a jazzy Austin Powers inspired theme, complete with Union Jack painted Jaguar type cars, and a spy based story to go with it. 1961 had a James Bond inspired feel, with Aston Martin with oil slicks and stuff like that. 1961 was a free PC only mission pack.
The next generation of the game series also arrived in 1999: GTA 2. Set in a new city, with three zones to advance through, it now ran on a true 3D engine, but still used the top down view for playing. The story lines were expanded somewhat by having three rival gangs competing in each zone, with a mission series to perform for each — generally involving doing something bad to one of their rivals. The addition of a true save game capability made playing more flexible, but you still had to get to a save location in order to do it.
This save element is retained throughout the series, and it requires you to complete missions and get to a safe place in order to save and continue your progress. This was a decent compromise, to avoid players using the save and reload methods to get past difficult missions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_2
The size of the city and the quality of the sound and graphics made this game even more appealing to just cruise around in with fancy cars, rather than feeling a need to actually play to advance the story and do missions. This one also introduced a limited multiplayer game, which added to the fun possible.
Both GTA 1 and GTA 2 are potentially available online for download. Rockstar had its Classics site http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/, but at this time it isn’t active.
In 2001, GTA III came out, and it was the biggest game changer yet. It was available first on the then-new PS2 console, and a year later on the PC, and after that on XBOX. With full 3D graphics and a third person view, it was much more immersive than the top down 2D look of the earlier games, though it retained an option to use that view — the last game in the series which would do so. It had a strong story line with voice acting and cut scenes, based on an organized crime gang member who moves upward through the criminal society in a series of missions. Its contemporary setting game with radio stations with licensed music, an upgrade from the previous games and a nice addition for all the time you’d spend cruising around in cars.
This game was a good enough reason to get a PS2 console, and I was one who did that. Sure, there were other advantages, but this game was a key selling point for me and a lot of other people.
GTA Vice City (2002) and San Andreas (2004) used the same basic PS2 engine design but added new features and expanded environments to the game. Both also came out first for the PS2 console, later for PC. These are all set in the same game universe and continuity, with Vice City based on gangster and crime movies and TV of the 1980s and San Andreas on the west coast urban movies of the 1990s. Both also had glorious licensed soundtracks with loads of great songs from those eras. I actually got both soundtracks and had fun playing them while driving my own car, especially with passengers unaware of the game listening. The DJs, talk show hosts, and commercials were also a great source of entertainment, very funny and interesting. The Love Fist band created for Vice City had two very funny and actually decent heavy metal songs, which are otherwise obviously not available. The Flock Of Seagulls “I Ran” song used in the ads and trailers for Vice City did a great job of instantly providing the nostalgic feel that the game actually had.
The use of well known actors and celebrities for voice roles added much to the humor and appeal of the game, but even the relative unknowns did great work for all the voice acting in the game. It made you feel like you were playing your part in the movie world recreated in the game. While GTA III had no voice for your own character, all the later games added a nice bit of steady commentary from you (and big bits for the cut scenes and missions). It was always cool when you first recognized a new voice in the game.
There is just so much to do in these three games, you can play them again now and still have fun. I still have all three installed, just because it can be relaxing to just fire it up and explore those worlds again. On the PC, mind you — I got the games for the PS2 first, and then all three for the PC later as well.
The PC versions did (and still do) offer much higher resolution than the PS2, but no new features. The game play and graphic design are pretty much the game in all versions. This could be considered disappointing, but the game play more than made up for any shortcomings. Even though I’d finished all three games on the PS2, not only did so again on the PC, but I replayed the story yet again more than once (taking advantage of the “Game Plus” start where you get some advantages if you start a new game after loading a completed save). Timewise, I’ve spent more on these three than all of the others combined.
We had to wait until 2008 for the next generation of the game, GTA IV. This rebooted the series, with a new very much expanded version of Liberty City. It also gave a very different sort of protagonist — Nico Bellic, a generically Eastern European, maybe slavic, immigrant looking for new opportunity in the America of Liiberty City. The new generation of consoles (XBOX 360 and PS3) also offered improved, more realistic graphics. The game gained a newer, grittier, darker sort of look, losing forever the brash, bright colors of the earlier installments. The story and situations were also based on a more realistic, darker and edgier feel. It lost some of its arcade-game elements, a key one being the the change from picking up “evasion stars” from the map to escape a police chase to actually evading the chasing units and getting to a safe, isolated location.
I only played the PC version of GTA IV, and while it is absolutely an amazing game, the implementation on PC was not as well optimized or upgraded (compared to the consoles) as it could have been. I fired it up recently (after just getting GTA V), just to compare. The game looks OK, but the overall appearance of the city just feels a bit dirtier, and even five years later hits spots where the game performance isn’t what it could be. That said, the story and the world is simply so good, that just like its predecessors this doesn’t stop it from being awesome.
Well, this week — April 14, 2015 — we finally got the long awaited PC version of GTA V. I haven’t had a lot of time to spend on it, but on the technical side it is perfect. Running good settings it easily does 1080 at 60fps, and there are loads of options to allow exploitation of hardware upgrades in the 4K video era. I’ve seen the game on the XBOX 360, but it is much nicer to actually play it on the PC. Definitely worth getting if you are truly into this game series.
I got a copy off Amazon.com, a bit cheaper than Steam for me, but then decided to also get a Steam copy as that has advantages for playing with friends. I think that for me, I would have been better off getting both our copies off Steam, even though it would have been slightly more expensive.
I’ve used the Amazon digital download service before, without problems. But the 56 GB download of GTA V turned out to be a big hassle. First, the downloader defaults to the C: drive on PC, and on that machine I hadn’t cleared the space on that drive, and wanted to use a different one to download and install it to in any case. That could have worked OK, but the downloader ran into network problems from time to time, and couldn’t automatically restart it. I had to manually reselect the download location each time. Now, network issues can happen, but I had no problems at all with the Steam download and install. Overall, I think it would have been just as well to order the physical copy and do it that way.
