Which GTA to play?

[MrHoatzin]

I wish you wouldn't discount 3 just on the grounds of simplified popular opinion. All (except for the Vice City people :shifty:) have given valid and nuanced reasons for preferring one over the other two, but also how they compare in all of these different dimensions.

Edited July 4, 2011 by Kingzjester
"Everyone have given…"

[Jayel]

Vice City for sure! no need to explain, really.

[Sno]

I didn't make a case for it earlier, so let me state my opinion on this - If you're only going to play one of these games, San Andreas should probably win out simply on grounds of it being the last arrival of the GTA3 ilk.

I mean to say that you saw a lot of refinement in Rockstar's craft by the time they got around to San Andreas. It's the easiest game to go back to, having the best control and most likable characters, and it's just an absolutely enormous game with so much to do. (It can't be said enough, San Andreas is an immense game. It's not just one big city, it's three and the wilderness in between.)

[elmuerte]

I wish you wouldn't discount 3 just on the grounds of simplified popular opinion. All (except for the Vice City people :shifty:) have given valid and nuanced reasons for preferring one over the other two, but also how they compare in all of these different dimensions.

You don't need to think of excuses for VC

I think VC > SA because I like the setting and music more. SA has a huge area, which is great, but also a down side. A lot of stuff is just tedious padding. Also, SA's story doesn't really develop that nicely, it's all over the place. Gameplay wise not that much has changed, except that in SA you can't really build up an empire, you keep getting kicked out of everything. GTA3, it wasn't a good port, it was unplayable for me when it came out. So I never played it.

[MrHoatzin]

I played GTAIII on the pc. It was better on the PC.

[miffy495]

I too played GTA3 on the PC. I totally love that game. Hell, I totally love all of them. I wrote my recommendation for SA based on the thinking that he'd only play one of them and be done with it. SA is, I feel, the pinnacle of the series. That includes GTAIV in my mind. I frankly don't think GTA gets better than that. I believe there was another thread not too long ago where I talked about my fondness for GTA3's Liberty City. How, after my time there in GTA3 and Liberty City Stories, I know that place like the back of my hand and could still tell you the quickest route from one point to another from memory. GTA3 is the closest a game environment has ever come to feeling like a hometown to me. That said, it's a limited game in what you can do (adding bikes and diving out of cars to Liberty in LCS made it an even better place, [though limited by the PSP] imo) and everything by SA was much more refined so as to make the overall game better. I feel that way about certain areas in Vice and San Andreas (Grove Street and the surrounding area, for example, or the North-Eastern small towns above Las Venturas, or Mount Chiliad) but not the whole map.

So certainly, if you have time, play all 3. Vice City is actually my least favourite of them, but I still love it to death. If you can only play one though, I think it should be SA.

[Erkki]

You want variety? San Andreas

You want style? Vice City

You want knowledge? Get yourself a scientist! KJAH!

The first 3D GTA has it's advantages, which Kingz mentioned. I played a pirated version first, which was without the radio as I recall, so I didn't appreciate it as much as I could have the first time. I also remember it's map the worst for some reason. I can still picture almost every corner of Vice City, though. And I loved flying around in helicopters collecting money from my businesses. But the landscapes were the most boring of the three.

I'd love to see any of those three remade in the new engine (not necessarily keeping the story).

[Gwardinen]

Somewhat related, since it's Rockstar. I noticed Bully: Scholarship Edition is on sale on Steam today and wondered if anyone had any opinions on whether that's a game that's still worth playing? I only ever played a couple of hours of it and don't remember much.

[thl]

Somewhat related, since it's Rockstar. I noticed Bully: Scholarship Edition is on sale on Steam today and wondered if anyone had any opinions on whether that's a game that's still worth playing? I only ever played a couple of hours of it and don't remember much.

I mentioned it briefly above, but I really loved Bully. Since the protagonist is a kid (who's not the Bully by the way, you don't spend the whole game picking on kids), a lot of the side activities make much more sense to me, like collecting rubber bands to make a kick-ass giant rubber band ball or playing the video games. The classes also give the narrative a break whenever you feel like taking them, and most of them are pretty fun. The story is pretty similar to all GTA games, but it's funnier when translated to a school setting, with different factions being the computer nerds, jocks, greasers instead of Haitians and Cubans or Triads and mob goons. You can't kill anyone (but you can beat them up or stuff them in trash cans) and there's a curfew at night, so the general mayhem gameplay constantly tempered by the fact that you're a kid really amused me.

[mikemariano]

I mentioned it briefly above, but I really loved Bully.

I was playing a lot of Bully and was having a moderate amount of fun with it. There are minigames everywhere, and the changing of the seasons is done well. You can run around in your underwear in the snow!

But I put Bully aside for Portal 2, and then months and months of New Vegas. I will have to get back to it eventually.

[Thompson]

Play GTA IV with this installed for amazing.

AXjsMRDPrls

Download a .txt containing a link to the actual mod on Mediafire here.

[Wrestlevania]

...wow!

[ThunderPeel2001]

Indeed. I wonder if it increases the req specs?

[ThunderPeel2001]

Yikes, apparently it does. From the readme:

!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!

This version uses the 0.082 DLL as a base

Which means :

Overheating of videocards NVidia GF8800, high end from GF2xx series and most from GF4xx, GF5xx

Be careful.

No one is responsible if you have any hardware problems.

Just try to avoid overheating using a better fan.

But normally, it'll work fine.

!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!

In other news: I had no idea that the GTAIII Era games had so many stars in them! I started playing San Andreas and heard Samuel Jackson's unmistakeable voice. I looked it up online and it turns out all the games have pretty awesome casts -- or at least interesting ones. I had no idea having only played GTAIV with only a few famous people -- who are mainly on the radio.

It almost makes me want to play GTAIII and Vice City just to hear Dennis Hopper, Kyle MacClachlan, Burt Reynolds, Gary Busey, etc.

[Gwardinen]

It almost makes me want to play GTAIII and Vice City just to hear Dennis Hopper, Kyle MacClachlan, Burt Reynolds, Gary Busey, etc.

Gary Busey was in a GTA game? That's interesting, didn't he do those anti-GTA trailers for Saint's Row?

[ThunderPeel2001]

Gary Busey was in a GTA game? That's interesting, didn't he do those anti-GTA trailers for Saint's Row?

Probably.

[miffy495]

Yeah, Busey was the crazy Vietnam vet amputee who ran the gun store out of the junk yard in Vice City. He only factored into a couple of missions, but as those missions involved driving a tank with Busey yelling at you, that was ok.

[Thompson]

I wouldn't be too scared of that install warning, just use a program like this to monitor your temperature, i'm on a 560 TI and it runs great.

I've been trying it out and it really does make GTA IV one of, if not, the best looking video game I have ever seen. It's beautiful.

pEHtzSz8FT0

That video is outdated now, but shit it looks great.

Oh, also:

KVIlAsTjr1E

There are two of these projects for Vice

. Edited July 17, 2011 by Thompson

[ThunderPeel2001]

I wouldn't be too scared of that install warning, just use a program like this to monitor your temperature, i'm on a 560 TI and it runs great.

Yeah, I guess... I'm a little scared because I'm running an 8800 that's pretty old now.

[miffy495]

Oh, also:

KVIlAsTjr1E

There are two of these projects for Vice

.

I want this so bad right now. So very, very bad.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Well I finally played GTAIV PC, but it seems you need a pretty decent rig to get it to play smoothly.

I've got an Intel Core Duo 6600 with 4GB RAM (running x64) and a GeForce 8800 GTS. It's old, but it's still pretty beefy, but it's not enough to allow you to ramp up the draw distance, enable high-res textures, or enable AA. It runs just about smoothly at 1280x800 with everything set on Low or Medium.

I'm guessing this mod would cripple my rig.

[Murdoc]

I dunno about that mod, the cars look nice and I see differences in everything else, even slight, but it looks like realistic cars running around the stylized GTA world.

I get it from a technical standpoint, but to me it looks off and weird.

[Patters]

I dunno about that mod, the cars look nice and I see differences in everything else, even slight, but it looks like realistic cars running around the stylized GTA world.

I get it from a technical standpoint, but to me it looks off and weird.

I think it's more of a problem with the depth of field. Also the GTA physics, an R8 is not going to bounce like it does in the video.

[ThunderPeel2001]

The colouring is pretty awesome, though. It's not just the cars, it's the world that looks more realistic.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Ugh. Just actually enjoying playing through GTAIV on a PC (the sound is SO much clearer with five speakers, and I'm noticing more things about the world) but then it goes and crashes after 5 mins of play. Is it generally unstable?