c/d s/d: the GRAND THEFT AUTO series

Vice City shines for me still, it's like GTA3 gone on holiday. The music is fantastic and is the best out of all 3 games, as well as the hilarious talk show stations. I think I prefer the graphics on VC to any of them, especially the beach front at night time. Missions were slightly easier than GTA3 but only just, and the whole purchasing property and working your way up the ladder of the city was genius. There was something genuinly slicker than GTA3 when you first played VC, the improvements were obvious and life felt good.

SA was the easiest of the lot, finished it in less than half the time as the previous two. Sure they improved the control system for shooting when on foot but then this just made those types of missions a doddle, no challenge in them whatsoever. Lots of unused map areas, surely they could've put that space to better use. Awful awful radio stations, I turn it off most of the time. Dreadful pop up of graphics on PS2 and Xbox when in flight or driving fast. Nice idea to include the change of clothes feature, gives the game at least some variety but the eating and other character development feature is totally flawed and pointless, I never go to the gym and my muscle stat is maximum. Physics on SA seems to have taken a dump too, car upside down rolling down a hill? get out and watch it stop dead (??) No rampages? Explosions were way less satisfying, collisions with other vehicles were drab and lacked impact. There some minor HUD annoyances too ie fonts, health bar design rushed, irritating radar blue blips difficult to see, wanted level stars don't flash clearly when you reverse into a cop car out of the pay'n'spray.
On the plus side, it looks great most of the time, the swimming is a god send as is the climbing fences. tons of vehicles to choose from. I've still yet to find a couple of tags and some horseshoes, other than that I've done everything. The side missions had some meat to them, more so than the main game which again was just soooo bloody easy. I enjoy the gang warfare sometimes, though it's a little frustrating when your zones are invaded but you miss the tiny message the comes up (due to being in another battle or something) in the corner of the screen. Cops aren't as brutal as GTA3, meaning longer 'being-on-the-run' shoot outs.

SA is a great game don't get me wrong, I still play it and enjoy myself. But in comparison to the previous two, it just doesn't hold a candle and I just wanted to some things off my chest.

Anyway, all 3 games - CLASSIC
I might even go so far as to say the very first two top-down viewer ones were great, GTA London was just awful though.

a)nobody ever came there to pick a fight with or
b) on the beachfront ones the baddies respawned like 100 yards out from shore and got trapped underwater? I tried many things to kill these underwater baddies, such as dropping lots of package bombs down there and hoping for the best, or even sinking boats atop them, but nothing seemed to work. Ideas?

The only area i had trouble picking fights with was at the corner of the road at the far east beach, where there's a small pipe sticking out of the sand. But I managed to get this one last night funnily enough.

oof, really? the other two took about 35-40 hours each to get 100%. SA took me 180 hours (admittedly, I did leave the console on overnight a lot back then - but still).

you reminded of the other thing that endeared me to SA so much, which was the wardrobe. 90 of those hours were probably spent staring at the wardrobe loading screen as I'd try on millions of different outfit combos :'(. lol i'm so queer :'(

That's something that made me like SA even more though, the things that were completely pointless yet had been created in just as high detail as everywhere else. Like all the factories on LV or the stately home place in LS that has a huge garden, mountain path with ramblers, a pond with people sitting on benches talking, and is all completely pointless apart from having a spray tag on it.

Gang territories from hell = the 3 foot wide stretch of pavement just mentioed, and the Bayside one (no one ever spawned). Due to some creative methods of getting my flying skill up early in the game the first time I played I ended up with some territories in other places. Most of them were easy enough, but the ones in the middle of the countryside never had anyone spawn, and the San Fierro ones where they spawned rarely and the other gangs killed them before I had a chance, were impossible.

I really have no interest in firing up Vice City again, the soundtrack's completely classic but the story's dull, and the city is SO FUCKING FLAT, the little overpass near the shopping mall is the highest point on the map. It feels like one of those 'continuing the brand' games made for Crash or Spyro after the original team has gone on to something interesting.

San Andreas needs no defense.

Okay, might have exaggerated a *little*, I'm talking about the main game not 100% anyway (still haven't one hundred percented SA, damn tags). I don't remember having to retry many of the SA missions at all, whereas GTA3 had me tearing my hair out. I think they just made the on foot shooting parts too easy, I walzed through them.

you're right ste, GTA3's missions were monstrously hard. and it wasn't just like a handful of really tough ones - they ALL were hard. hell, there were a lot of rampages that i needed to repeat. that said, I felt like a lot of the big set-piece missions in SA were pretty tough, some I had to do over quite a few times. i dunno, i just ENJOYED the on-foot shooting more. yes gta3's on foot stuff was challenging, but it's not really a challenge you can overcome... you just work around it. it's like a handicap.

i have to say though, you're right about GTA3 and its gritty atmosphere. vice city has made me really appreciate how much character and grime and bleakness was in that game. it was a very well-realized world, i just didn't enjoy playing in it that much.

such a shame SA never had rampages, apart from the 2 player ones but who the hell plays GTA with two players.

I like the story & characters & humour in VC better, and really, flat it may be, but I love the location. Even though I completed the game, & found all the secret bits, I like to get it running in the computer & have a drive around from time to time, like I'm visiting it. I wish the game had never ended, really.

Also, the submarine up north of the shopping mall, and the big sunken ship by the stilt houses really creeped me out when I found them for some reason. I still get this uneasy feeling when I go out in a boat and sail over the submarine. It feels kind of wrong somehow. Ugh. There's nothing like that in GTA3 that I've found anyway.

I haven't played SA yet. I'm scared to get it b/c of how into Vice City I was, and how much time I spent on it..

"I. WILL. KILL. YOU!!"

"You can't say that! It's against the rules"

etc.

Submarine - take a boat or a helicopter out to the north of the east island. Line up w/the west side of the shopping mall, and sail/fly directly north. You might have to go up & down a few times.

Sunken ship 2 - position yrself directly over the submarine, and sail/fly directly east.

they're just set dressing, but great. The submarine especially - you could explore & play the entire game to 100%, and never even be aware of its existence.

Pash, am in agreement with you all the way about VC - half the time I load it up was just to see how gorgeous it all looked driving around. Come and live at my house, you will be welcomed with open arms where GTA is on the consoles almost 24 hours a day. (although Res Evil 4 did hog the limelight for a brief moment)

One great thing about SA's size is the relaxing boat rides around the coasts, that can just go on forever.

In fact I take it all back, I fucking love all three of these games, each for different reasons.

She's opposite the gym in some bushes, I think.

Totally agree. SA is fun, but VC is way better. I can listen to VCPR over and over again and still laugh at the jokes, but I mostly groan at SA's jokes. VC also has much more of a unified style, from the art to the music to the dialogue. It also has motorcycles. SA is visually kind of a mess in parts, the rpg-ish stuff (losing/gaining weight) is kind of neat but gets silly after a while. The driving physics is a lot more forgiving in it, too, and I think that detracts. Once your motorcycle skill is up high enough you can crash into stuff full speed and not fall, you can unflip cars WAY to easily, etc etc. All stuff that detracts from the experience imo. The shooting is way better in SA but the GTA games were always about driving for me.

Motivate, Demonstrate, then Motivate Again

Think, Hold that thought, Complete

Learn, Start, Doing

har har har.

the more i think about it, the more impressed i am with the middle island from GTA3. it was just an uncannily evocative environment, and all the missions on that island took advantage of the fact. i really didn't see anything like that at all in VC, it was visually attractive but it never felt like anything more than a lego city to me.

Also, wtf is the sports staduim for? there's no way of getting into it, is there, apart from mastering flying the dodo, which I gave up on after 2 nights, fuck that, it's no fun at all. Is there anything in it, dodo masters?

There's that whole thing in GTA3 about the missing mission as well, the story (which is kind of credible, once you untangle it from all the fluff about "carcer city") being that as originally envisaged, there was amission where you had to hijack/steal a plane and fly it into love media's skyscraper. Obviously, I can see why they pulled that bit & clipped the dodo's wings, but it's still annoying that there's a/ a bit missing and b/the dodo is (nearly ) unflyable.

It reminds me of the old spectrum game "dun darach" where if you mapped the city out, there was a missing section in the middle - the red light district, apparently pulled b/c of distribution fears!

I might pick up SA on the way home tonight.

yeah i totally kept getting lost on the third island, it's a nightmare and don't even bother attempting the paramedic mission there.

I just don't like that third island. The two halves that are connected only by the one bridge (or by going underground which always invites disaster) completely suck.

I did have fun messing around on the drawbridge thingy. If you can get someone out of their car on the bridge, when it goes up, the person sinks into the pavement as the bridge rises. Or - if you stand in front of an automobile and wait until the bridge goes up, step out of the way, and sometimes the car will keep driving off the edge and float on back to Staunton Island.

I also drove a Perennial into the subway, parked on the tracks, waited for a train to smash into it, got on the train, and watched the explosion as we pulled away from the station.

I've got 19 more missions to go. Haven't even seen anything close to resembling this dodo thing.

Bill Fiore was cast in the role of Darkel, which made it into the pre release version. But for undisclosed reasons, the producers decided not to include him in the final version, which has become the subject of hot debate for fans. The most popular reasons for his absence include: Darkel was going to be a revolutionary street urchin who vowed to bring down the city's economy. Rumour has it, is that many of his missions were based on terrorism and even included an aeroplane explosion. Thus, due to the games releases proximity to the events of [September 11], he was promptly removed from the final version. The final and most popular reason, stems from the fact that Darkel was originally going to give out Rampage esque missions and even had his voice recoreded for this part. Rockstar games then decided that they would like to go back to the original system of giving out rampages as featured in Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2.

Also, Originally the police cars were going to use the NYPD blue and white paint scheme. A few screenshots of them can be seen in the map/poster that comes with the game (the best one is right under the word "Liberty" in the title "Welcome To Liberty City"). It is believed that the police cars were changed to the standard black and white paint scheme to make them not look like the NYPD cars because of the terrorist attacks on the USA of 11 September 2001.

Vice City's map, for me, was always its main drawback, as it is largely flat with grided streets. Andreas was the perfect mix, with grided cities and winding country roads and freeways.

I prefered the plot of III the best, especially the fact that you don't talk, as it always creeps me out when Ray Liotta chimes in with some catchphrase as I'm crushing some grandma's skull.

Since this thread started I've been playing SA quite a bit, in fact found two more tags at the weekend. Having lots of fun with the handheld gattling gun and the police choppers, not so much fun for the choppers mind.

Still can't finish last mission though.

saboteur: lol this game. i will play any gta clone it seems, cos this is Not That Great and i am into it.

perfect summation is the horribly vo'd vamp sex interest, the only posh englishwoman from the 40s named... skylar

ha! that sounds dreadful!

I remember enjoying this game for the $5 I got it for from an Amazon sale. Worth a try, at least.

strangest quirk i've noticed in it: the enemies are called "nazis," "krauts," and i think "jerries" but not "Germans," ever. i know there are laws in .de about presence of swastikas etc in media, is this a choice related to those restrictions? or sensitivities, or something?

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