I have promised myself I won’t buy any more games until I make a significant dent in my backlog, and with the recentish news of Grand Theft Auto: Horse Edition 2 I thought I’d go back and see what started it all.
Gameplay
Grand Theft Auto is a 2D top down open world action/crime simulator, and early precursor to Sandbox games. You are relatively free to do what you want, and your aim is to score enough points to move onto the next level. You do this through completing missions; obtained from phoneboxes, random mission cars, or getting points from committing crimes.
As you complete missions or find bonus crates, you will gain extra points multiplier, get the maximum (5), then, if you go on kill rampages, you’ll rack up points so quickly that a single tank related adventure will see swifly move onto the next city. There are 6 levels and 2 for each city, which breaks the game up into smaller more manageable chunks.
Kiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllll FRENZYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
The 3 cities are Liberty City (very closely based on New York), Vice City ([loosely based on] Miami), and San Andreas ([best of] Los Angeles) but the city design isn’t the best. The layout can be very confusing on all 3 cities. You are encouraged to use the maps until you learn the level, but it does still stink a little of poor level design how frustrating navigating can be. Having said that, each city is choked full of secrets, encouraging a thorough rummage.
The controls take some getting used to as they use heavily bastardised tank controls. You press X to move forward, Triangle is reverse, Circle attack, Square enter/exit vehicle, plus the shoulder buttons for weapon change, handbrake, fart/car horn etc. It takes a while to get used to it, meaning running and driving around can be difficult at first and you’ll be getting in and out of cars instead of reversing/shooting. But once you get used to the controls it starts to feel a little more natural, but always remains on the clunky side.
The topograpgy of the maps and areas are fairly accurate to the original cities. Image knicked from Imgur
PC Version
From what I can tell there really isn’t any difference between the Console and PC versions. On the PC version you got 8 (instead of 4 playable characters), with all the female characters removed from the console versions.
The only other thing I notice is that there are trains in the PC version and sStealing a train is sadly not as fun as it sounds…
Tanks are surprisingly susceptible to machine gun fire…
Graphics/Camera
Grand Theft Auto falls into that category of game where it gives me a headache if I play for too long, and this is mostly because the camera will annoyingly zoom in and out, and jitter. The camera will zoom out if you’re going faster, and zoom back in when you slow. Or if you’re going full pelt in a fast car, the screen violently shakes as the camera tries to decide what to do next. If you’re doing large loops of a city on the long fast roads, it’ll make you feel queesy.
Looks alright…
Overall
Grand Theft Auto is fun enough in short bursts, and having 6 short missions caters to this well. After that, the main reason to play is to create carnage and fuck shit up, and this gets very boring very quickly. There isn’t much variety in weapons, so kill sprees get a little boring, especially after the Tank blows up [it doesn’t respawn], so having 5 lives starts to feel redundant when all the fun things are gone after first use.
Adding in the induced vertigo from the constantly jittering camera means that the original Grand Theft Auto isn’t really worth a visit. It is decent enough in short bursts, but falls into the more meh, than good.
Pros: Fun in very short bursts, decent variety in cars, minigame/kill frenzy(s) are fun, GOURANGA!
Cons: Camera, pretty boring, city layouts are poor
67%
Back in the day
This game was a fucking big deal, but it was released to largely mixed reviews and holds a 68% score on GameRankings.
I'm awesome. I write about videogames occasionally but spend most time painting and playing Warhammer in varying formats.
Games Revisited 
This was a big deal when it came out, largely due to the explicit violence. I think it’s aged well and could be adapted into a fun indie title. The big problem in ’97 was the lack of a save feature… it’s so weird you’d have to do it all in one sitting. No idea what they were thinking of at the time. I’m not much of a fan of the series but I’ve got fond memories of this.
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I can remember all the hype when it came out I was in my first year of Secondary School (13/14).
You could save at the end of levels on PS1.
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Ahh okay. You didn’t have that on the PC. It was weird. Every time you started the game up you had to begin again, or use cheat codes to skip to the other stages. Fun enough game, though. The soundtrack was revolutionary at the time, too.
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I loved the chit-chat on the radio, I loved when they went full on for the 3d ones. Flock of Seagulls is imprinted in my head.
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I remember buying in to the hype this game had rolling on to PlayStation from PC, but ended hating it. I never felt like I accomplished anything and didn’t care for the viewpoint or controls. I’m glad it eventually became what it is now, although I’m still not the biggest GTA fan.
I’ve been trying to do the same thing, in regards to buying less and focusing more on my backlog. Mine is atrocious!
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I have gotten through 7 of the 290 in my backlog. I have been doing too many quick arcade games though. Need to hit a Final Fantasy or Knights of the Old Republic.
I can remember liking GTA2 more than 1, but yeah I loved 3 and VC. SA was fun, but the series was becoming too poe-faced. Hated 4, not played 5.
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Yeah, most of my backlog consists of meaty RPGs. Right now I’m juggling Fire Emblem: Awakening on 3DS and World of Final Fantasy on PS4, but I did manage to knock out a few smaller games beforehand (and treated myself to the Titanfall 2 campaign, thanks to Red Box!).
I liked Vice City and San Andreas, and had a decent time with 4, but I’ve had 5 for nearly 2 years and haven’touched it.
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I think I’ll pick an RPG to start this week, my problem is I try to balance the games/consoles. And get into a “can’t do a PS1 game because I just did PS1”, or “I have loads of Capcom games, no more Capcom” so end up never choosing.
Think i’ll get all rpgs off shelf, and eeny meany miny mo it.
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I get that way sometimes. “I just beat a Vita game, so I don’t want to play another one right yet,” or replace Vita with any other console. I like variety, really.
Since RPGs are huge time investments, I usually try to narrow down what I’m in the mood for (be it turn based, classic, JRPG, or whatever) and give each one an hour or so to see which one clicks first.
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The best thing of the game? GOURANGA!!! A good way to have all the police, the army, the salvation army and even the Empire hunting for you…
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Awww, shit, I forgot about that! When you ran over the group of 8 Krishnas!
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Okily-dokily-doo!
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