Ranking Every Rockstar Game From Worst To Best

3. Grand Theft Auto III

It is very hard splitting the hairs necessary to parse out which out of GTA Vice City, San Andreas or III is the best, but if we're talking about them on the whole - factoring in optional open-world features just as much as the designed mission path - GTA III takes the cake.

Being a far more straightforward, grounded crime story, there's none of the experimental off-putting stuff like piloting helicopters around building sites or trying to gun down gangsters in a toy plane like in the sequels. GTA III gets to up its visuals thanks to the world being fairly small in retrospect, but that also means this 2001 version of Liberty City has a really inviting and memorable identity.

A lot of the pedestrian banter is just hilarious, your weapon set is perfectly varied and the hierarchy of cars you "unlock" by finding them only mirrors the swathe of destruction you cut from Portland to Shoreside Vale.

GTA III is just as much a masterpiece now as it was then, responsible for the open-world genre's rise to prominence and every last freeform exploration quirk we've seen the industry create since. The only quibbles come from unresponsive targeting, but when playing now that still won't stop you getting embroiled in one of the best crime capers Rockstar have ever created.