Rundown: Your favorite GTA games and why.

[MinisterofDOOM]

With The Lost and the Damned's phenomenal suck confronting me right now, I keep comparing it and GTAIV with the best of my favorite games in the series. So that got me thinking...which ones are my favorites...and why?

The Good:

#1: Vice City.Why?The story was brilliant. An admittedly bad guy who is put into a bad spot by even worse guys. He manages to flip the situation on it's head and steals a whole city from under the real bad guys. Tommy Vercetti was a charismatic bad guy you loved to root for. He was a good bad guy...a nice guy, a respectable guy...but still a bad guy.The setting was beautiful, the cars were sexy, there was a car in the mall, the cars handled better than ever, airplanes and helicopters added new craziness to the mix, and motorcycles presented a way to kill yourself in new and original ways.

#2: Liberty City StoriesWhy?LCS told one of the best mob rise-to-power stories ever told. The main character is a guy you want to see succeed. He works his way to the top with sweat and blood. He endures morons at every turn. He earns his respect, like a proper Italian goodfella should.The rise-to-power story is especially powerful since LCS was a prequel to GTA3, during which Toni has lost most of the respect he worked so hard for and become a low man on the totem pole.

The Bad:

1: GTA: Vice City StoriesWhy?This game took all the WORST elements of Vice City and crammed them together in a crappy sequel. All the almost-unbearable characters of VC are back but now with starring roles, and they're even more annoying than before. Top that with a HUGELY altered vehicle mechanics system that turned driving through Vice City on it's head and ruined some of the most fun-to-drive cars ever to appear in a GTA title, and you've got a recipe for some serious suck. Supporting suck includes broken ally AI, a story you REALLY don't care about at all, a main character that doesn't matter, and not being able to kill Lance.

2: The Lost and the DamnedWhy?The entire cast of the game is not only unlikeable, they're jerks you spend most of your time hoping to see die. The setting isn't particularly endearing, the story is just as stupid and unlikeable as the people driving it, and none of it is remotely compelling.The missions (at least early on) consist of biker gang shootout after biker gang shootout. Uninteresting and not fun. The bike caravan sequences are tedious and boring.And for a game centered around motorcycle riding, the bike handling in the game is garbage. I genuinely wonder if anyone at Rockstar has ever been on a motorcycle. The lack of traction and tendency to oversteer is game-breaking. Bikes should be able to outmaneuver cars, but instead you end up having to take everything slow or risk hitting something and getting launched. When a game about biker gangs drives the player to seek out the crappiest car he can find to get away from his bike, something is very wrong.

The rest of the series and their ups and downs:

GTA 3:Good: Excellent map, fantastic radio offerings, good mob story.Bad: Limited features compared to the rest, no real aircraft.

San Andreas:Good: Even better map, tons of vehicles, hitchable trailers, variety everywhereBad: The hood gangster story got tedious, although it had it's laudable points, and was nowhere as fun to participate in as the VC or LCS stories.

GTAIV:Good: beautiful game, lots of side-attractions, multiplayer free mode finallyBad: Relationship management, too much focus on combat missions, lost sight of the over-the-top satirical hang-the-world feel that made it's predecessors so endearing and addictive.

I know I'm ignoring some, like the originals, but the originals have obvious appeal and are so different I don't think they're relevant for direct comparison like this. And I ignored the Nintendo Handheld adaptations because they've been crap (I'd like to see Chinatown Wars break that trend, but my hopes are not high).

[Axel Grungy]

vice city as well. Best atmosphere ( i love the 80s) story was great, and bikes were actually fun to ride, unlike in gta4.

[Otto.]

Vice City and San Andreas were my favorite. I recently bought Vice City Stories for the PSP and am enjoying GTA on the go but the characters suck and it just doesn't feel like Vice City as much as it should have in my opinion.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Get Liberty City Stories instead. It's much better.

[mmm240]

San Andreas FTW! I love everything about it; the gangland battles, the skill upping abilities, map, gameplay...

GTA Vice City is a close second though.

I thought GTA 4 was crap. I really didn't like anything about it; the driving, the missions... they took a lot away. Okay the strip club and getting drunk was cool, but got boring quickly.

I'll have to look into liberty city stories if San Andreas ever bores me

[Shadowanight]

Well i only played San Andreas, So Ill go with that one. I found my little AE86 and s13 in there so I was quite pleased with myself.

[nismo_boy240]

my favorite gta was vice city,i loved the soundtrack