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

[Syaoran Li]

I'm honestly surprised nobody has made this thread and if they did, it must've been long enough back that I missed it. I think it's time we had a general discussion threads for one of my favorite video game franchises of all time, the one and only Grand Theft Auto.

So yeah, I figured I'd make a general thread for GTA and similar games like Saints Row, Mafia, the myriad one-off clones of GTA III that were popular back in the PS2 era like The Simpsons: Hit & Run, The Godfather, Scarface: The World Is Yours, and so on.

Feel free to discuss the classics like GTA III and San Andreas, the newer games like IV and V, GTA Online, or even the 2D games that nobody cares about.

Hell, you can even discuss Bully and Red Dead Redemption in here if you want, since they're also made by Rockstar and have a similar open world approach.

To start this thread off, I'm wondering if anyone here still plays the old "3D Era" GTA games? I dusted off my old PS2 and I've been replaying both GTA: San Andreas and GTA: Liberty City Stories.

Personally, I really love Liberty City Stories and I think it's one of the more underrated GTA's, especially since it never got a PC release, just the original PSP version and a somewhat improved PS2 port. Toni Cipriani is one of my favorite protagonists and I really like the late 90's setting of the game. Plus, there's the fact that you can run with two handed weapons like the baseball bat and the shotgun. Even San Andreas didn't let you do that.

I wish we could've got a PC port for the 10th Anniversary back in 2015, but we only got the mobile port while IIRC, the other three GTA games from that era got ported to the PS4 and Xbox One in addition to their mobile ports. I think the problem why LCS became so underrated and forgotten was because it came out right after San Andreas and felt small by comparison, which was intentional since it was originally a PSP release.

Toni can't swim in LCS but I like how they explained why (the water in Liberty City is toxic because of the heavy pollution) and given the fact that the game uses a modified version of the smaller map from GTA III, it would be a game breaker of sorts if Toni could just swim to the other two islands at the start of the game.

I've seen videos of people making mods for Vice City and San Andreas, and GTA: SA still has an active modding scene and somewhat active multiplayer scene to this day, even with GTA V/GTA: Online being out for the past six years.

Not gonna lie, I always wonder what LCS mods and online multiplayer could have been (I know the PSP version had a limited multiplayer, but it wasn't much and is long dead)

 

[UE 558]

inb4 this thread gets derailed by “RDR2 is for cucks” aspergers

Edit: guess I was wrong, please proceed with the dumbs, alogs, and autsims, men

 

[NerdShamer]

LCS was kind of fun on the PSP was kind of decent, but you couldn't replay that mission were you're shouting "O'Donavon is an communist!". Chinatown Wars is kind of dumb with the plot. But at least that fat guy was pretty funny...until you have to clean up after him.

 

[Syaoran Li]

inb4 this thread gets derailed by “RDR2 is for cucks” aspergers

I hadn't thought about that. Don't really play much RDR 2, but my uncle and my brothers both love it.

 

[Clop]

My favorite will always be Vice City because that was the turning point for the series to go all serious, and while GTAIV had some extremely impressive details that even GTAV just fucking threw in the trash, I just wanted mindless fun from a series that earlier had me delivering busloads of people to a Russian hot dog factory. Trying to act serious after that just can't happen anymore for me.

And no, Saints Row didn't fair as a substitute for long, they went the other way. Saints Row 2 was the perfect balance between silly and badass, then it just went completely silly and no badass can work with that amount of silly.

 

[Shitpiss Babylord]

One of these days I'll get around to doing the online heists, but wrangling my rl friends proved impossible and I really don't want to try it with randoms.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

GTA III was so much fun!
Not that I didn't like the newer ones, but there's a charm to the 16 bit style (shut up, I know it was 32 bit) that just isn't in the newer ones.

 

[UE 558]

I hadn't thought about that. Don't really play much RDR 2, but my uncle and my brothers both love it.

Spoiler: Autism

Shit like this is kinda why I hate the game/movie analyst circlejerk on Youtube. Not just this guy, but guys like Joseph Anderson or CrowbCat too.

It’s not even so much the videos themselves, the RDR2 video itself was just meh.

It’s more the fact that the moment one of these guys makes a “big brained” analysis on a game or movie it suddenly becomes the “right opinion” and anyone who disagrees with it will be met by an army of that analyst’s angry, autistic sycophants.

Not too keen on these long-form nerd analysts, but I can live with them; their fans on the other hand are some of the biggest spergs on the planet

If me posting this causes an autistic inferno, I’ll be sure to hide

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

My favorite will always be Vice City because that was the turning point for the series to go all serious, and while GTAIV had some extremely impressive details that even GTAV just fucking threw in the trash, I just wanted mindless fun from a series that earlier had me delivering busloads of people to a Russian hot dog factory. Trying to act serious after that just can't happen anymore for me.

And no, Saints Row didn't fair as a substitute for long, they went the other way. Saints Row 2 was the perfect balance between silly and badass, then it just went completely silly and no badass can work with that amount of silly.

I enjoyed the "chaos code" that gave all the citizens weapons and made them fight each other.
I don't think I ever played that game seriously, I just like shooting random people and breaking shit.
I think I ONE TIME made it to five police stars.
Not easy to do before you get wasted, lol.

 

[crocodilian]

I still respect GTA III the most because it was the first to make me go "wow, I can actually do whatever I want." In a weird way it was like playing Fallout except I was in a three-dimensional world. Vice City was good but felt like an expansion pack; San Andreas I respect too because there was simply so much content packed into it.

 

[UE 558]

As for GTA, my favorite’s either 3 or San Andreas for the pre-RAGE games and 5 for the post-RAGE games.

I respect 1&2 for what they were, but I feel like 3 fully realized a lot of their ideas more, Vice City’s fun, but 3 felt like a more consistent game. The shittier side activities are what brought down Vice City for me, they made it SUPER obvious that VC was an extended expansion pack made in 10 months.

SA is probably the perfect bridge between the RAGE era and the DMA era, it’s got the more linear storytelling and the attention to detail of the RAGE games and the insanity of the DMA era.

I never played Advance, Chinatown Wars, or Vice City Stories.

I remembered liking Liberty City Stories, though in hindsight, it was probably a decent at best retread of 3.

I only played an hour of 4 vanilla and never touched the DLC (buddy rented it from Redbox) and that was enough to rub me the wrong way, I didn’t like Niko, the heinously anus driving controls, or the stripped away SA features and passed it up in favor of RDR. I dunno, maybe if I replayed it, I’d like it more and I hear the standalone DLC is a pretty big improvement over the base game.

As for GTA5: I’ll probably never play Online (on either GTA5 or RDR2) because I’m not a faggot who likes paypig mmos, but I’ve played about 10 hours of the story campaign and I’ve definitely enjoyed myself. It’s a mindless game that doesn’t require much skill, but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy Trevor’s insanity or the batshit, yet endearing story

 

[Coolio55]

I like the PS2 era ones because they all have this surreal quality to them

Also pissed off that rockster refuse to put them outside America but in the current industry I guarantee they'd stick their dick in it so crisis averted I guess?

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

My opinion on GTA is rather mixed. I can respect III for what it is but the game's aged horribly in terms of control. The lack of map hurts it too.

Vice City is my personal favorite because the soundtrack and city are the best in the series in my opinion. Controls are still awful, but the game felt like it knew how to get around it in ways III didn't. That and the combat was somewhat improved (gunplay in III was ass). It's also the only GTA to make you an actual crime lord, which is shockingly rare for the series once you think about it, and it does a good job making you feel like you're rising to the top.

I want to like San Andreas, I really do. It's got the best controls in probably the whole series and the opening 4 or 5 hours are excellent. But once you leave the Grove, the story flies off the rails and the game forces you to drive across its absurdly large map to get to the next mission.

IV is a weird one for me because I like it more than most, but the game suffers from crippling audio problems in the cutscenes, at least on PS3. There's a 90% chance the opening cutscene's audio will drop out, which is a massive problem for a story-driven game. I can't get invested in the game when at any given moment the sound will just drop out. I've thought about getting it on PC to get better audio but I've heard horror stories about its optimization.

I have no solid opinion on V. I don't find it memorable despite getting like halfway through. I dunno, I wanna like it but I don't find it captivating.

 

[The Last Stand]

Ah, Grand Theft Auto. One of the first video game franchises I started as a child growing up. Which has gotten me into gaming; I loved playing it. It felt revolutionary to me playing GTA 3 on the PS2.

After that, I've gradually played every other game in the series over time. Vice City was my favorite growing up because of the atmosphere and soundtrack, although I never beat it then because I was spending money on weapons and not property. I had that issue with San Andreas (and the size of the map and no GPS). Console GTA as a kid was mainly doing missions and rampages. Even had cheat codes on a sheet of paper then.

Will share current feelings about it later. For now, it's my nostalgia talking.

 

[UE 558]

Ah, Grand Theft Auto. One of the first video game franchises I started as a child growing up. Which has gotten me into gaming; I loved playing it. It felt revolutionary to me playing GTA 3 on the PS2.

After that, I've gradually played every other game in the series over time. Vice City was my favorite growing up because of the atmosphere and soundtrack, although I never beat it then because I was spending money on weapons and not property. I had that issue with San Andreas (and the size of the map and no GPS). Console GTA as a kid was mainly doing missions and rampages. Even had cheat codes on a sheet of paper then.

Will share current feelings about it later. For now, it's my nostalgia talking.

Know that feel, I have fuzzy memories of sneaking onto my cousin’s PS2 to play GTA 3 and said cousin’s dad getting me a bargain bin copy of GTA1 when I was like 6

 

[Chaos Theorist]

Ah, Grand Theft Auto. One of the first video game franchises I started as a child growing up. Which has gotten me into gaming; I loved playing it. It felt revolutionary to me playing GTA 3 on the PS2.

After that, I've gradually played every other game in the series over time. Vice City was my favorite growing up because of the atmosphere and soundtrack, although I never beat it then because I was spending money on weapons and not property. I had that issue with San Andreas (and the size of the map and no GPS). Console GTA as a kid was mainly doing missions and rampages. Even had cheat codes on a sheet of paper then.

Will share current feelings about it later. For now, it's my nostalgia talking.

>he didnt just spawn a hydra or a jetpack and just fly across the map doing missions

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

There will never be a better open-world game than San Andreas.

V would have been better if it had just been a San Andreas remake with an appropriately scaled-up map and cover shooting.

 

[Freedom Fries]

@Syaoran Li One of my friends who really liked the games has been reading Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto and is really liking it. Can't give my personal opinion because I don't think I like GTA enough to read it, but it may be worth a look for you.

 

[MuuMuu Bunnylips]

inb4 this thread gets derailed by “RDR2 is for cucks” aspergers

I thought that said "R2D2 is for cucks".

I laughed.

 

[UE 558]

I thought that said "R2D2 is for cucks".

I laughed.

Well your statement is just a fact