With the impressive ambition of Grand Theft Auto V nearing, the open-world crime drama is the talk of the town. It's also the talk of the IGN office, where numerous editors have been thinking back on the history of the franchise and remembering what it means to them.
It may not have been the first sandbox-style open world game, but Grand Theft Auto III was for me. My favorite memories aren’t about any particular missions or cutscenes; they’re of just driving around aimlessly, chuckling along to the hilarious talk-radio channels, and marveling at how a game as massive as this was even possible in 2001. As much as people focus on its over-the-top violence and lurid content (I was too much of a goody-goody to bash a prostitute’s head in for cash after being “serviced” – even a virtual one), people seem to forget just how legitimately funny GTA III is, especially its laugh-out-loud radio commercials and billboards.
GTA: San Andreas ended my career on the games side of IGN. I used to head up the Guides, FAQs and Cheats team (for six years!) and San Andreas was the straw that broke the camel's back. I started out loving the game, but nothing will kill a person's enjoyment of something more than having to dissect it in excruciating detail. That's what I did for 16 hours a day two weeks in a row to get that guide ready for launch. By the end, I was an anxious mess and my exodus from strategy guide writing was solidified. Although I love the franchise, I haven't played a GTA game since.
The week after GTA: San Andreas came out, my wife and I headed off to Hawaii for vacation. She started laughing at me when I packed my PS2 slim and GTA in my carry-on bag. “When are you going to have time to play that?,” she kept asking.
Over the course of the next 10 days rain poured down in what seemed like biblical proportions. While my wife sat around our rental place bored, I was happily playing San Andreas until 4am every morning. Who had the last laugh then, huh? Yes, I’m a horrible husband.
It's virtually impossible to pinpoint a favourite moment in a series I've been playing religiously since 1997. The macabre humour associated with your first bizarre 'GOURANGA' bonus for running over an entire procession of Hare Krishna in GTA. Realising the Dodo in GTA III could fly if you could finesse the controls in just the right way. The perfection of stepping into your first car in GTA: Vice City to hear Billie Jean on the radio. Leaving Los Santos and cruising into San Fierro in GTA: San Andreas and realising just how vast the world really was. Protecting Phil Collins in GTA: Vice City Stories long enough to hear him launch into In The Air Tonight's stabbing drum fill. Realising you've just spent an entire evening in GTA IV driving a bus the wrong way down the freeway simply to poke the simulation and see what happens. No missions. No Achievements. Just emergent fun. I'm cheating, I know. But I can't choose a single moment; there are too many.
There's a lot of game to game in the world of Grand Theft Auto, it's not easy to see it all. But if you don't play every one of these games all the way through, you probably won't believe the crazy s*** that you missed. The one that trips me out to this day is the in-game Phil Collins concert. You might be asking, "Wait, there was a freaking Phil Collins concert in GTA?" Sure is. Several hours into GTA: Vice City Stories, you are on stage with Phil in his Su-Su-Sussudio prime, trying to stop assassins from interrupting the greatest drum solo all of '80s rock.
And you think about it, that in this PSP sequel to an under-performing handheld game by a then-second-tier development group, Rockstar & Rockstar Leeds still went to the trouble of getting Collins as a character and licensed "In The Air Tonight," that they custom-rigged its animation system just to have accurate drumming, all for a mission so deep in a spin-off game that a good portion of the audience would never play it, but there it is -- you killing thugs while Phil Collins performs live for you in a video game. That's GTA to me. There's passion for making sure that these games deliver moments you've been waiting for all your life.
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Vice City is probably my favorite Grand Theft Auto ever. Sure GTA III was the first to do the 3D open world thing, but Vice City added Ray Liotta and motorcycles! I have fond memories of driving around on a dirt bike in that Hawaiian shirt doing tricks off walls and occasionally landing on an unfortunate pedestrian. The soundtrack, including Flock of Seagulls, was also an incredible choice, but it was the return of the fabulous radio banter that I really enjoyed. To date it's the only Grand Theft Auto game that I've been able to play through to completion. The stories twist and turns combined with the countless hours my friends and I would go on mini-rampages gave me countless memories I'll always look fondly back on.
When I look back on my time with the GTA series, I can't help but gravitate towards my own dynamic moments of musical brilliance. It's no secret that Rockstar has transformed the act of curating licensed music into an art-form, but it's in the way that those soundtracks are married with my own interactive narrative that sticks with me.
Driving through the neon hell of Vice City while listening to The Outfield's "Your Love," trekking across the countryside of San Andreas to the tune of Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day," and ending my white-knuckled escape from the Liberty City Police Department in a burning mess while Kanye West's "Flashing Lights" comes to a crescendo are just a handful of moments that are both wholly personal and completely unforgettable.
My mom was mortified by GTA III when I was something like 13. She wouldn't allow it in the house, and the local shops were thorough about asking for ID from punk kids looking to get their M-rated gaming on. So my best friend had his older brother buy it for him, and we all dove into Liberty City for the first time, totally enamored by its sprawling space, intricate detail, and excessive profanity. This was a crime film you could play. We could do whatever we wanted! Few moments in my gaming life have the lasting impact of GTA III's freedom -- even if it doesn't hold up quite as well compared to its successors.
Growing up, GTA was the ultimate party game. Sure we dabbled with games like Goldeneye, Smash and Guitar Hero. But GTA is the game my friends and I always came back to. We took turns passing around the controller, holding ad-hoc contests to see who could wreak as much havoc in Vice City as possible. Even though you didn't get a chance to play very much, it was still awesome. GTA is one of the rare games that's almost more fun to watch than it is to play. Shouting instructions to your friends, telling them to jack the police car, or try to find a boat. Good times.
There are two things that always stick out in my mind - either 1. finding surprisingly endless enjoyment in riding a motorcycle off the top of the Empire State Building (or whatever it's Liberty City title was), finding out just how many flips you could do before you turned into a streak on the pavement below and sometimes being lucky enough to defy science and survive; or 2. attempting to master the Dodo in Vice City. It took hours of practice, but I finally managed to fly for more than 30 seconds without slamming exploding over the ocean...or a playground.
GTA III was the first game I had seen that was truly open world. I remember my friend Sean McGrath and his brother bought a copy, and we all stayed home from school the day it came out to play it. It was one of those mind blowing "I can't believe this is even possible in a game" experiences where your imagination just runs wild with all sorts of new possibilities. The whole day was filled with "What if we parked this car here and then did this?" or "What would happen if we climbed this with a bunch of Molotovs." Those experiences with games have become increasingly more few and far between as our expectations get higher and higher, but I'll always remember that initial experience with GTA III.
That's a lot of memories. What stands out in your mind? The GTA IV wedding? Tommy Vercetti's shirt? Stealing your first car? Let us know in the comments below, and for a lot more on Grand Theft Auto V, stay tuned to IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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