The M-rated/18-certificate gameplay of GTA IV is the pinnacle of an eleven-entry series that began life in 1996 on the Commodore Amiga. As the Amiga grew old and technologically infirm, GTA’s creator, DMA Design, switched the development of the original game to the PC. Grand Theft Auto eventually hit the PSone in 1998, where the mighty Official PlayStation Magazine praised it to the heavens as “one of the most original, innovative, technically impressive and controversial PlayStation releases ever”.

Looking back, the core gameplay elements that define Grand Theft Auto are present in this first title. The game cast you as a small-time car thief with big-time ambitions. Featuring six levels split between three cities - Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City - there were over 200 vehicle-based tasks to complete. These missions (received via payphones) were often timed, challenging you to ferry passengers across the city chunks, assassinate rival criminals or act as a getaway driver. Complete a mission and you earned greenbacks for your efforts - amass $1,000,000 and you could advance to the next city.

The appeal of GTA wasn’t the way that it looked. The game was functional rather than fancy, using a top-down 2D perspective and crude sprite-based graphics. Instead, GTA’s strength lay in the vast scope of its gameplay and in the freedom it gave you to stray from the guiding mission structure. You could steal cars and sell them at the docks - there were over 20 different vehicle types in each city (all drivable); or set fire to drum-banging groups of Hare Krishna worshippers. You could even rampage through crowds of Saturday shoppers with a machine gun.

GTA gave you entire cities to act disgracefully in, cities that felt real and alive. It reveled in detail. Pedestrians wandered the streets, cars obediently halted at traffic lights, ambulances and fire engines responded to death and fiery destruction. To play this game with any success, you needed to spend time learning the layout of the city to avoid the police, perfecting Micro Machines-style driving on the wide freeways and narrow side-streets. It was easy to ignore the fact that GTA’s gameplay was actually all-too-repetitive. But at the same time, it was also irresistibly immoral, allowing you to live a cartoon life of crime complete with Bullitt style car chases and Heat-style shoot-outs.

Inevitably, GTA’s degenerate gameplay (killing cops, murdering passers-by, stealing cars) stirred up an international controversy. Despite its mature rating, there were protests against it in Britain and Australia, while other countries - such as Brazil - banned the game altogether, imposing fines on anyone who tried to sell it.

So great was the hoo-ha that GTA’s seediness even became a topic for discussion in the UK Parliament's House of Lords, where crusty peers questioned its impact on impressionable youngsters. An outraged Lord Campbell of Croy asked whether: “[the government] propose to modify the system of classification under which the computer game Grand Theft Auto, which allegedly involves thefts of cars and driving at excessive speeds to evade police cars, has been granted an 18 certificate?” The word ‘allegedly’ implies Lord Campbell had not actually played GTA and was irritated by his assumptions rather than directly annoyed by its often indistinct mayhem. Lord Campbell also didn’t mention what age people should be assumed to be adults, if not at 18. Retirement, perhaps? The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office (Lord Williams of Mostyn) replied at some length to Lord Campbell’s excellent question, and basically said: “No.
Lord Campbell, still piqued, would not be swayed from his moral course. “Should criminal offences be allowed to be presented as games?” He ranted. “Is the Government now ready for computer games on burglary and mugging, bearing in mind it is mostly young people who play these games and not the adults who bought them?” Lord Avebury replied: “Demonstration copies of Grand Theft Auto are being distributed with magazines. My 12 year-old son, who has played it, assures me he is not motivated to go out and steal cars.” Could it be that criminals are not innocent victims of games, but criminals? That ordinary gamers will remain just that after playing GTA? The debate raged - the moral minority had clung to an anti-GTA bandwagon without actually seeing or playing it, setting a strong precedent. With its profile boosted by the controversy-press, GTA strode on to become one of the biggest-selling PSone titles of the year. Adults openly adored it, while kids sent their moms to buy it for them, so they could adore it in secret.




Grand Theft Auto: London 1969
PSone / PC / April 1999

Originators DMA morphed into Rockstar, and GTA was transformed into the big-bloused, bellbottomed GTA: London 1969 - all the car-jacking, pedestrian-squashing gameplay of the original but with a 1960s London vibe.

Far from being a true successor, GTA: London 1969 was essentially a stylistic add-on that required ownership of the original game. The changes were mostly cosmetic - Chevrolets became Capris (or non-copyright-infringing ‘Crapis’), Greyhound buses were transformed into the capital’s iconic Double Deckers and the mission dialogue was now inspired by slang from classic Brit TV and movies such as The Professionals and The Italian Job.

But underneath the paint-job, the gameplay was identical. While GTA: London 1969 featured a whole new environment, the go-anywhere, do-(almost)-anything gameplay remained. As did the familiar top-down 2D perspective, the phone-based mini-missions and the radio stations, now complete with hand-picked ’60s tunes. But for half the price of GTA, you were treated to half the content - GTA: London 1969 only featured one city map (compared to GTA’s three). Admittedly, the visuals were a little better, the framerate a little faster. But this semi-sequel was still an ugly duckling of a game, boldly trading on its gameplay rather than its graphics.
Sold for only half of standard full-price games (and later in a handy Director’s Cut set with the original Grand Theft Auto), GTA: London 1969 offered cheap, extended GTA play. With hindsight it was a cash-cow, designed to hold our collective attention until the sequel arrived six months later...

Rockstar’s mantra was this: “Respect is Everything”. Why? Crucially, by allying yourself with one (say, the Zaibatsu), you upset their rivals (the Yakuza or Loonies). Gaining Respect from one gang meant losing it from the others, which in turn could make your life hard. And because you needed to work for more than one gang in order to make enough money to progress, a certain degree of back-stabbing and betrayal was necessary...

While GTA 2 was an improvement, many were disappointed. The novelty was wearing off and its controversial gameplay, aging 2D form, huge size and freeform(ish) gameplay didn’t generate the raw excitement that they once had. Despite its innovations, the sequel did not reinvent Grand Theft Auto - it merely tuned it, refined it. Sales were poor in comparison, and nothing like what Rockstar expected. Or wanted. What the public (if not the House of Lords) really wanted was Grand Theft Auto 3D - all the lawless thrills of GTA and its expanded, extended sequel, but with the immersive, believable graphics of the much admired Driver...

One PS2 and a year later, GTA in 3D is precisely what Rockstar delivered. But few expected a game with so much detail and depth. Again, the gameplay dynamics in GTA III are almost identical to its predecessors - starting on foot, you can drag hapless motorists from passing vehicles and then drive off into the vast and virtual Liberty City (one of the three cities that featured in the original GTA). As per usual, various paying jobs are available via payphones and you can stray from the mission structure to raise a little unscripted hell. Once again too, the environment was blessed with an extraordinary degree of detail, intelligent AI and more filth and wicked brutality than ever before.

This is classic GTA with a 3D face. GTA III’s detailed Liberty City is irresistibly immersive. Viewed via a third-person perspective, the posh suburban areas contrast with grimy downtown districts; Triad gangs operate out of Chinatown laundries, while sharply-dressed Mafia kingpins live it up in hilltop mansions calling themselves ‘businessmen’. The city feels alive, almost real. Day turns to night as you play, sunshine turns to rain. And fog. Lots of fog. Warring gangs and commercial radio station chit-chat add to the big-city atmosphere. If you stop and stand still, you can expect GTA III’s digital life to go on without you. And eventually steal your car.

As usual, most of the game’s action takes place in a variety of vehicles, each one with handling that feels realistic enough, but has an arcade edge that favors easy street-cruising and frantic car chases. On foot, things are a little less perfect. Aiming the weaponry can often be imprecise and when some missions hinge on your ability to hit-and-run, this can be frustrating. But the crime missions give GTA III the feel of a gangster movie.

You can collect and sell cars, find hidden packages and locate hidden vehicles. And should you want to, you can live life as a taxi driver or play at being a paramedic, ferrying injured citizens to the hospital in a wailing ambulance. Or be a fireman, squirting out car fires with your massive pump. Or a vigilante, squishing criminals in a cop car. Or a psycho, running heinous rampages. Or a stuntman, squealing through the streets looking for sheet glass to shatter and ramps to hit. Or a pilot... you may think that planes, New York-style skyscrapers and a 2001 release were a bad mix, and yes - the terrorists scored another little victory here. Changes were made. But it was to the cop car liveries, not the Dodo. The wings on this horribly tricky light plane (registration Y-ME369) were clipped well before 9/11 - perhaps because of what lurked behind the reservoir of the Cochrane Dam...

GTA III just keeps on giving. It also illustrates how gamers have changed over the years. A demanding adult audience now wants more than cute furry animals (armed with oversized weaponry) bounding around gaudy platform worlds in search of floating coins and orbs.

And let’s face it, the PlayStation 2 was a big part of turning this successful and respected (by knowledgeable people rather than ignorant and self-righteous moralists) series into a phenomenon. The PS2 built a bigger, hipper and (to generalize) more culturally savvy audience than powerful but cantankerous PCs ever could. And, again counter to the proudly stupid assumptions of the “I’m all for the rights of the individual, but that individual is me” brigade, not all PS2 owners are goggle-eyed, blank slate 12-year-olds.

If Gran Turismo satisfied players’ need for fast cars and Pro Evolution Soccer sated their dreams of football glory, then GTA III recreated the gritty, violent action of gangster movies; the wild chases of cops ‘n’ robber shows of many a childhood. It may be seedy and nasty, but it’s proud of it, delivering ‘escapist’ entertainment that lets you play a sinner in Paradise Lost - rather than standing by, tutting, and watching everyone else have all the fun.
GTA III shifted over seven million copies on PS2 alone, winning the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association’s first ‘Diamond Million Seller’ award. Incredibly, GTA III appeared in the top ten of the official Chart Track listings for over 50 weeks. Not even the hotly anticipated PS2 exclusive Metal Gear Solid 2 would compete with that.

You may have forgotten just how much stuff Vice City added, especially in the wake of San Andreas. It was a long way from being just a pinked-out GTA III with bikes. Trust us. Need convincing? To get into some cold, hard numbers for a second, at over a hundred vehicles, Vice City had two and a half times as many as GTA III. It also had 40 weapons as opposed to 11; more than 60 internal locations instead of, well, none; and was at least twice the size of Liberty City. You had to contend with a brief, postcard-style loading screen every now and then, but only when crossing the bridges between the islands. It wasn’t too great a price to pay. Want more of those devastating digits? OK.

Vice City had eight hours of scripted speech, nine hours of radio, 80 types of pedestrian (including rollerbladers and people who looked suspiciously like Michael Jackson and David Hasselhoff), 8000 pedestrian comments and one targeting reticule. The last may not sound like much, but VC’s lock-on was a huge improvement over the haphazard shooting of old - though it still didn’t totally fix the awkward combat.

Vice City offered many more minor, yet equally welcome tweaks. For instance, you could now fire weapons forward from bikes and boats instead of just out to one side, you could kneel behind cover (though not move once you’d done it), shoot people through car windows, snipe vehicle tires and - most usefully - leap from moving cars. This was particularly handy if you were being shunted sideways along the speeding highway by a phalanx of angry SWAT vans, burning furiously and about to blow at any second, or slithering horribly toward one of Vice’s lovely, sparkly bodies of water. No, you still couldn’t swim, but previously you could only sit in the car and await your doom - you had to be stationary to get out. At least now you could leap out when things got too hot and wet and take your chances.

This edition also upped the city simulation, too, bringing us pedestrians - and police - who interacted with each other to a far greater degree, rather than wandering around being a simple background for our idiocy. Watch and the pedestrians don’t simply wander up and down but sit and laze on benches, chat to each other, read papers, rollerblade, fight with one another, have accidents, commit serious crimes and get chased down (and often run over) by the cops. There’s a much greater sense of a city living around you, and the technical improvements - such as better textures, smoother animations and even quicker streaming - means it pretty much keeps up even as you scream down its seafronts, flat out and wheelying on a stolen PCJ. Go back to GTA III now and you’ll be surprised by how basic it was in comparison - and especially by how much the camera has improved. Go back to Vice City, however, and you’ll be surprised by how much fun it remains.



True Crimes
A car thief in the US state of Pennsylvania was caught after he left a rental receipt for GTA III inside one of the vehicles he had stolen. Police were able to nab Jabari Wallace, 24, of Warrington (Penn) using the receipt from Blockbuster Video, which helpfully detailed both Wallace’s name and his home address. “He did this because he wanted to be a big man in the neighborhood,” said the right honorable Judge Kenneth Biehn at Wallace’s trial. “Well, now he can be a big man in the state prison system.”
“I’m for freedom of speech but... Grand Theft Auto is heinous.” So ranted Washington Post columnist Mike Wilbon on ESPN’s commentary show, Pardon the Interruption. “The people who put it together should be stoned in the street.” Yes, that’ll stamp out street violence.



Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
PS2 / PC / Xbox / October 2004


 

San Andreas was the big one. And in so many ways. This expanded the GTA idea from a city to a state, introducing countryside for the first time to a game that, in all other respects, was the very definition of ‘urban’. And while all the familiar elements - do-anything chaos, Hollywood voices, gritty stories, action movie physics - were there, San Andreas expanded on seemingly every element to a nearly insane degree.

Certain elements are reworked for every GTA, and SA was no exception. Dual wielding debuted and targeting was improved again, inspired by another Rockstar game, Manhunt, with some of that title’s stealth elements coming along too - donning a mask let you creep into certain houses at night and rob them. Melee combat was hugely expanded, with extra moves available for those who trained in the gym. And, at last, you could swim.

Driving physics and car explosions were brushed up, and for the first time you could tune and customize cars, even adding hydraulics or nitrous. If your car was big enough you could also recruit a three-homie gang to help out with drive-bys, while it was even possible to respond (either positively or negatively) to the comments of passing pedestrians. Their responses would be influenced by another new feature, your character CJ’s evolving look - unlike previous characters, he could gain or lose weight, get stronger, become more adept at skills such as swimming, driving or cycling and change his hair, jewelry, tattoos and clothes. San Andreas was a whole lifestyle.

Opposing gangs have attacked players on sight since GTA 2, but for San Andreas this was expanded - CJ could take control of areas of ‘turf’ by provoking a gang war and surviving the waves of gangbangers until everyone was dead. The flipside was that rival gangs attacked CJ’s turf while he was elsewhere, requiring some tiresome commuting to deal with the threats - the answer was to take control of every bit of turf (not that there’s much grass in all that concrete) and leave no base for any other gang to attack from.
And of course, there was more here than just new cars. BMXs and mountain bikes joined a wider roster of motorcycles, while air travel expanded to include everything from light aircraft to private jets to freight transporters… to military fighters to huge helicopters to jetpacks. You could even buy a ticket for a commercial airliner, or take a ride on the train. Or just steal the train.
With such a vast space - each of the three cities was around the size of Vice City, while the often spooky, hillbilly-filled countryside covered the same sort of area again - there was inevitably a vastly increased amount of hidden, unique or just plain weird things within it. There was also a hugely expanded amount of things to do in San Fierro, Los Santos and Las Venturas when you weren’t on a mission. Go gambling, dancing, play pool, train in the gym, commit burglary, enter sports events, bet on horses, race mountain bikes or build a property portfolio… there was more to do just living in San Andreas than many games offer full stop.
San Andreas really brought Rockstar full circle. Rockstar’s key players had long been in love with the rap scene. San Andreas was their homage to it, to the early 1990s, the gangsters and ghettos. If there was a criticism, however, it’s that the first five hours or so are consequently grim - the cartoonish, Die Hard-style action takes a back seat to Boyz ‘N The Hood poverty, squalor, bickering, drug abuse and egotism. It’s hard to like the cast. And after a gorgeously silly middle section that includes jetpacks, alien conspiracy nuts and giant chickens, San Andreas returns to the theme of idiocy, misery and squalor with a crack house-set finale. If nothing else, it does make it clear that GTA is very much an adult game for adults.


Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
PSP / PS2 / October 2005

The very idea of portable GTA was enough to get most people wet - the game that almost single-handedly defined PS2, on a near-PS2 spec walkabout. How could it fail? It was, as the Official PSP Guidebook put it, ‘GTA on the crapper’. It’s worth remembering two things at this point: it didn’t fail, and Official PSP quite possibly oversimplified things there. Also, yuck.

Though similarly oversimplified by its detractors as an add-on mission pack for GTA III or - worse - a cynical re-heat, Liberty City Stories was quietly revolutionary in its own right. Yes, it brought technical improvements from further down the series retrospectively to Liberty - half-decent aiming and camera systems, for instance - and it brought more advanced stuff, too. Chief among these were motorcycles (though sadly nothing really new, and still nothing sporty over 600cc) and some great comedy costumes.
But these things clearly aren’t revolutionary, no matter how welcome. What was amazing is that Liberty City itself didn’t need to change - and bar the placement of a few ramps and the opening of a few doors, it didn’t. The fact is, Liberty is a place of such astonishing definition, character and detail that you only need change the start/end point of a mission and the player will see new things, experience new challenges, and face new difficulties anyway. Vast areas of the city never needed to be visited at all in GTA III. Now they did. What other game could offer exactly the same locations and remain fresh?
Yet LCS did more than simply change the start points of GTA III’s events. It added new missions, new characters, new storylines and - holy of holies - a multiplayer mode, the first of GTA’s 3D era. Featuring races, objective-specific battles, deathmatches and more, it was the first (official) party in a truly populated GTA city. Sweet. Liberty City Stories was ported back to PS2 in June 2006.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
PSP / PS2 / October 2006



You know the drill - new cast, story and feature set in a familiar city. But now Rockstar Leeds knew it too: Liberty City had taught this Rockstar splinter group much about PSP. Consequently they pushed it far harder, and framerate, draw distance and loading times were much improved. In some ways it even improved on the original Vice City - its expanses of water gained hugely in terms of realism, even if some still preferred the stylized colors and sun-flashed twinkles of the original.

VCS made no concessions to quick-burst, handheld play, with multipart missions often involving all types of transport - including ‘copters - for lengthy challenges. Being able to swim (for a bit) and buy back weapons after being wasted/busted lowered frustration and reloading, but VCS took a patchwork approach to design fixes - the taxi back to the mission start, for instance, was all but redundant. Empire building - where you buy property and run missions - also brought the dreaded random attacks from San Andreas, which soon boil down to a long drive and unwanted cop attention (starting/exiting one of these missions in a suitable vehicle makes it all go away). Still, Empire cash is paid straight into your account. At last, direct debits in GTA! Vice City Stories was ported to PS2 in March 2007.

GTA IV!!!

Of course, to call games as vastly ambitious as Vice City or San Andreas mere ‘expansion packs’ seems childish, but nevertheless, the downloadable content (DLC) coming for the Xbox 360 version of IV has repositioned those games in just this way. DLC so far has meant the odd new car, jumper or bit of horse armor, but GTA IV is set to completely redefine the idea with expansions that are to GTA IV what Vice City or San Andreas were to GTA III. Yes, Rockstar is clearly hinting at new downloadable cities; and the chances of them being London, Vice or SA again are slim to none. So that’s new as in brand new. GTA IV’s Liberty City is the beginning. Think about that. And be excited.

Apr 24, 2008




THIS IS THE END OF THIS EPIC STORY! BUT THERE WILL BE MORE!!! THANKS FOR READING!