12 Most Influential Video Games Of The 2000s

9. Grand Theft Auto III

What were you doing when you bought GTA III? Chances are it was an event of such significance that you probably remember where you were when you bought it, before then recalling your first time playing Rockstar's industry-shaking masterpiece.

By the time GTA III came out, many of us had been blithely rampaging around the top-down cities of the series for years, but the idea that you could zoom in and explore these from an immersive third-person perspective was almost unbelievable.

Thankfully, it didn't disappoint, and completely changed gaming forever. It was satirical, controversial, and sensational. It was the bane of the old conservative media, who couldn't get their heads around the idea that a game could be clever enough to be satirical, and dismissed it as mindless violence when it was so much more.

For years afterwards, games following in its footsteps would be labelled 'GTA clones', before finally settling into descriptions like open-world action games or crime sims - to this day though, that entire movement started with GTA III.