October 1997. It was a momentous time, even more momentous looking back through a lens of retrospectivity, than anyone could know in the moment. It was the month that the original Grand Theft Auto hit shelves amid a storm of marvel, excitement and controversy.
It was a game in which you could go where you wanted, when you wanted; where you had the free will to decide who to kill and who to save; where you took on a vast criminal underworld and made it work for you. It was truly the first of its kind.
Fifteen years later the Grand Theft Auto franchise has spawned no less than six full games (not including expansion packs and DLC), countless imitators and has a hungrily anticipated fifth-in-the-series bun in the oven (as I’m sure you well know).
Details are scant about what’s to be on offer in the new game, but we know one thing: if the standard is even close to their last offering in IV, then we’ll all be losing another chunk of both time and change to Rockstar soon enough.
With no solid idea exactly when GTA V will hit shelves, we decided we simply must get our violent crime fix by pulling IV off the shelf again and exploring some of the reasons we’re still so hopelessly drawn in.
So belt up, let’s hit the road…
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13 Comments
“25 years later…”
You just gave me a heart attack – I’m sure I’m not *that* old.
Haha me neither. I must have lost time, been abducted or something. It’s 2001 right?
I think someone did there math wrong… 25 years??
Lol: writer brain fart. I’m working on it…
Fair point. The driving has always been a bone of contention i guess. Some love it, myself included. Others hate it. GTA IV really split the fans down the middle.
The driving mechanic in IV was spectacular. I found it incredibly easy to get the hang of. I love the fact that the cars actually drift. I love the fact that if you try to take a corner at full speed, the car punishes you for it. I love racing and driving in both games and real life. I’d have to say that aside from the exaggerated suspension, the cars in GTA operate under many of the same laws of physics you’d encounter with the real thing. Maybe they could come up with an option to switch from a simulation style driving experience to an arcade style experience for those who don’t wish to be punished for poor driving habits.
I still cant figure out how to enter huge multiplayer, quick-pace, non-mod, on-hacking DM or TDM on gta 4… been trying for 4 years, maybe its the lousy PSN service, idk. Im surprised this didnt mention the replay value, I personally went through the storyline 5 times, making radically different choices at every turn, learned something new I could do each time. Sometimes I fiddled with the control setup to keep it edgy, sometimes I only used pistols for huge firefights, turned off auto target, etc. Nice article, but some of the stuff is reaching… Id say try out TLAD and BoGt, very edgy if you arent already tired of LC. :) Piratebay has some nice rips of SA, III and Vice as well. Its tying me over until Nov. 22nd
The building from the picture in number three looks like the San Fierro’s Big Pointy Building.
Good list, but u didn’t mention 1 very important aspect of this game’s superiority; cinematic cam driving mode. Once mastered (which is relatively easy – just remember to flick the right joystick every few seconds), u get a much more full, multi-angle view of the buildings & streets. The best time for cinematic is when being chased by the cops, b.c then u literally have a realistic & badass police chase movie
That’s a very good point; I don’t use cinematic mode as often as all that (for crashing reasons) but it is actually pretty bad ass. Consider this an honorary mention!
“easy to access” multiplayer?
I wouldn’t agree with you there. Everytime I enter free mode I end up in a game where you can’t shoot people because friendly fire is off which kinda makes the game pointless for me. Then I try join a new game and it just brings me to the same one – there’s no lobby where I can choose the specifics of the game I want to enter.
This next point is just me being stupid at these things but then again, if it were easier to use, the problem wouldn’t exist. When I try to create my own match I can’t for the life of me figure out how to turn friendly fire off. I see the setting there but I can change it even though I’m the host. Also, when I select quick match or custom match they both seem to always bring me to the same thing.
I hope they improve this in V anyway.
Buy it on PC. We have an in game server browser that lists servers ran with Trainer(mods) and servers that run clean. You can’t join a clean server running trainer on your install, but you can join a trainer server running a clean install, though will be owned by people using trainers if you bother them. I don’t know to what extent multiplayer filters there are for consoles, if any because I haven’t played it on one. Personally, for people on PC, the game is perfect!
yeah, good points, but 5 years on and most of those things are either getting boring or have been done many times already. I WANT GTA 5 NOW!!!