GTA III vs Vice City vs San Andreas vs GTA IV

[1987_Lakers]

Which is the best GTA game?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/be/GTA3boxcover.jpg/250px-GTA3boxcover.jpg
http://gtaarea.webs.com/gta_vice_city_ps2_usa.jpg
http://gtahelpers.webs.com/gta_san_andreas_cover.jpg
http://www.totalpcgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/gta4cover.jpg

Best Storyline: Vice City
Best Gameplay: San Andreas

Overall:
1. San Andreas
2. Vice City
3. GTA IV
4. GTA III

[DC's Finest]

Your list was perfect. :cheers:

[branslowski]

SA>>>>All


CJ>>>>All


Me being CJ woopin the Ballas ass...GOAT.

[kentatm]

hmm

for me it would go

Vice City
GTA III
GTA IV
San Andreas

the last two were really kind of boring for me. I felt that the gangsta theme of SA was already way played out by the time the game came out so the storyline really did not hold me for very long at all.

[brooks_thompson]

vice city was and always will be the peak of video games for me. it came out at the end of high school, and it seemed like everything i loved about games growing up + innovation + 80s nostalgia all rolled up together.

[1987_Lakers]

I personally think VC & SA were superior to III & IV. I remember the first time playing SA & was amazed by how many things you could do in that game & Vice City has my favorite character in Tommy Vercetti.

[ukballer]

San Andreas for me.

[playtetris]

gotta go with san andreas. best map, best vehicles/gameplay (taking the context into account, of course), best music, two player simultaneous mode... it had it all. i still play that shit on occasion.

[El Kabong]

I dislike Liberty City a great deal, so any game set there always goes on the bottom of the list. I like the wide open spaces where you can just go and do crazy shit, that's why San Andreas is the best. I loved Vice City though, that 80's style always amuses me.

[LongBeachLakers]

For me it's:

1. GTA3

I got this game the day it came out because I've been following it ever since it was announced. I played not sure what game on the PSx, but it was a sandbox/walk everywhere do anything kind of game, I think it was Driver. I've been looking for a game like that on the PS2 and found GTA3. Played it and was blown away by how amazing it was. I remember rolling down the bridge for the first time, getting out jacking cars, with K-Jah playing it the background. I was literally at how amazing it was. At the time I've never played anything like it. So GTA3 was the most amazing one of them all.

2. GTA:SA

Bigger maps and more things to do. By the time it came out, the whole sandbox game world wasn't that innovative or new so I thought it was good, better then Vice City, but not mind blowing. Because you knew what you were getting into./

3. GTA: Vice City, not very many new things, i thought the map was kinda small, thought it didn't really live up to the hype. Thought it sucked because you couldn't swim.

4. GTA4: Haven't really played it, thought it was okay.

[caliballer]

Overall:
1. San Andreas
2. Vice City
3. GTA IV
4. GTA III

I'm gonna have to agree with your list OP. :cheers:

[chains5000]

Vice City's the best for me.

[Qwyjibo]

San Andreas.

It had the best variety of gameplay and settings. Once you got out of Los Santos and into the country areas and the other 2 cities, it was an amazing experience. It had some good voice acting and some truly funny moments. The only bad part of the game was that damn friggin god forsaken flying school! I hate flying planes.



Overall:
1. San Andreas
2. Vice City
3. GTA IV
4. GTA III
I think I agree with that. Vice City had the best overall atmosphere which puts it a notch above GTA4.

[HisJoeness]

Vice City clearly has the best selection of music.

[chains5000]

Vice City clearly has the best selection of music.
Radio Espantoso!

[HisJoeness]

Radio Espantoso!

Lol. Pepe.

[brooks_thompson]

i can still remember grabbing the pcj or whatever out of my condo garage and using that stairway ramp by the police station to get the slow-mo jump with the intro to "where the streets have no name" playing on the radio. yeah, i was a dork and put my own 80s songs in there. but it's the most fun i've ever had with a game.

[1987_Lakers]

Radio Espantoso!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNmGCWv9BNE

[chains5000]

Lol. Pepe.
♫♫♫La vida es una lenteja o la tomas o la dejas♫♫♫

[Kebab Stall]

Vice City and San Andreas were two of the best I've played.

Vice City (it was my first GTA game, I got GTA3 after VC) came out when I was a bit younger and I loved the 80's style. It might be me just looking back on my childhood and thinking that this game was fantastic because it just blew my mind away. The challenges, the story, the cars, the music, the style, the gameplay was just brilliant and me barely being a teenager, I must have only been 12 or 13, just captivated my imagination.

I sort of knew what I was getting with San Andreas, but it was still great. The map size was unbelievable. There was no way in hell you could run from one place to another, like you could in Vice City, it would take f*cking ages.

GTA3 wasn't that great, it was quite boring, but had some cool stuff. GTA4, you knew what to expect, the map was pretty damn good and the detail was great. Missions were decent, but the storyline took too long to get into at the beginning. The additional games (The Ballad of Gay Tony and Lost and the Damned) were great. LotD wasn't too great, but TBoGY was awesome, I had so much fun with that game, especially with the mini drinking/dancing games.

If I had to rank them, it would be,

Vice City
San Andreas
GTA4
GTA3

[fiddy]

1. San Andreas (no doubt on this one)
2. GTA4
3. Vice City
4. GTA3

[macmac]

Not to sound like an old school purist, but the first GTA was my favourite and the only one I really dissected every inch of...I remember just killing that demo before the game even came out, doing three-four missions within the demo timer....and godayumm, when I hacked it and took off the timer, all hell broke loose....

[Fallguy20]

San Andreas was banging and my personal fav, but IV was also legit and a close second imo

[JohnnySic]

1.) GTA IV - Niko was the best protagonist in the series. Game is almost perfect; only weakness is lack of stuff to spend your money on once you're done.

2.) GTA III - classic; coolest missions; violence is more cartoonish, which now looks like a plus and is funny as hell

3.) Vice City - Close to being as good as III, but with a less interesting city and some goofy missions

4.) San Andreas - Lamest protagonist (CJ just wasn't interesting); too "all over the place" without focus, too much "stuff" (getting fat? haircuts?)

[PowerGlove]

Vice City was GTA's peak hands down. I dont remember another game having the same kind of impact that it had, and I cannot recall another GTA game coming close to recreating an enviroment such as that one. The game just engulfed you, after playing for a while, you really felt as if you were in the game and the characters were playing with your emotions. The soundtrack perfectly captured the feel of the city and the timeframe.

VC was GOAT.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that has felt that GTA has gone downhill since then either.

[LJJ]

I liked the first one better as well. The 3d ones never had as much appeal to me, although they are still good for a couple of fun hours. I agree that it all went "downhill" from Vice City. San Andreas was sort of a mixed bag. The setting was a success if you ask me, and all the true GTA stuff was exactly how it should be, but they also started having more pretenses. Adding stuff that truly does not need to be in it. GTA4 carried it to the next level. Even more pretenses, and somehow the makers felt like the game would be better if they added some gameplay mechanics stolen from The Sims.

[DRoseOwnsACamry]

4.) San Andreas - Lamest protagonist (CJ just wasn't interesting); too "all over the place" without focus, too much "stuff" (getting fat? haircuts?)
That's what made SA interesting.

I hope they remake SA for the newer consoles, and keep all of the "stuff".

[Thorpesaurous]

There's a similar thread in the video game forum, and I'll sort of re-say what I said there, and retouch on some of the stuff in here.

For me, Vice City is easily the best of the GTA series. It's obviously flawed by it's technical shortcomings at this point. The loading from area to area is something you may not even remember that was a huge step up when they went to San Andreas. But the heart of the GTA games to me is the social commentary, the satire. And Vice City has the biggest sense of time and place of any of the games. And the story's were more dramatic, less gritty and real, sure, but the rediculousness of it all added to it's appeal. And the voice acting was incredible. Every character that came up was fun just to find out who'd be doing the voice. Tubbs, Dennis Hopper, Gary Busey, Jenna Jameson, Lawrence Taylor, and of course Ray Liotta.

San Andreas is a close second. It's technical superiority was a big leap especially considering it was on the same platform and all. And a lot of the extra character building was cool. The map is definitely the best of the bunch. It's the best for driving around and exploring for sure. But the story was drier. It was spread so thin among environments, you never got the feel for the early 90s south central LA like you did with Vice City. And in a lot of ways, there was just too much to do. Constantly running back to take out girlfriends and the such became tedious.

IV, again is a technical achievement. That city is probably the most alive environments achieved in gaming. But while the Liberty City/NY gives a better feel for place than San Andreas did for me (and that may be in part to my having spent a ton of time in NY over the course of my life, so maybe I'm picking up on things that I don't in SA that someone who grew up around LA would), there is no sense of time. Part of the problem with doing something in the current setting and trying to keep a running dialogue about pop culture at the same time is that you really don't know how that pop culture will stand the test of time. So the music, and even the TV shows, and radio dialogue will have all rusted to some degree. If a song from the 80s was still relevant at the time Vice City was released, it has a certain life to it that overarchs time.
And a few of my bigger issues with IV. The map was not great. It looked great, but it wasn't as playable as even VC, let alone SA. All the streets are short, bisected turns instead of arcs, and it just makes it less fun to drive around. Even some of the city's strengths, like it's huge bustle of activity, is a problem, because there's so much damn traffic that it's hard to get a good run going. It's realistic sure, but I play games to have fun because I get stuck in traffic in real life, I don't want to be tied up in traffic in a game too. And the other, is that I felt like SA was a little too busy. Some stuff I liked, like the property aquisition, the collection stuff, but others were just tedious, like the eating, working out, and learning new fighting moves for a game that's not really a brawler at all. IV actually ramped that up a notch. Going to bowl, or play some ill concieved billiard simulator, when I'm in the middle of getting into the story, was annoying as hell. And unlike all the extra stuff in Red Dead, which I loved, it felt more necessary in IV because if you didn't do it you'd lose status with your friends. It became more tolerable once I had maxed everyone out and could turn off the phone, but in that first third of the game it's borderline excruciating.
Between adding more mandatory side stuff, and taking away good stuff like the map layout, the planes, the sense of era, it almost felt like it regressed in some ways.
Still an incredible game. And even saying all this, I was not disappointed while I played it. All these thoughts were upon reflection.

And III, gets lots of credit for innovation. Bringing in the 3D. But it's just not up to snuff with the others. Although it still seemed like Liberty City was more fun to drive through back then.

[JohnnySic]

The strength of III is that the missions were more grounded in reality. You felt that Cluade could possibly pull that stuff off in real life. With Vice City and continuing with SA and IV, it got to the point where the main protagonist became a one-man army (sometimes with backup) that could take on whole gangs and even the entire police force.

My biggest beef with IV is that there were too many damn cops everywhere. You couldn't have as much random "fun" killing random pedestrians and such because the cops were always around, and even when they weren't, they were alerted. Sure is was more realistc but a certain fun factor was lost.

[lakers_forever]

1.) GTA IV - Niko was the best protagonist in the series. Game is almost perfect; only weakness is lack of stuff to spend your money on once you're done.

2.) GTA III - classic; coolest missions; violence is more cartoonish, which now looks like a plus and is funny as hell

3.) Vice City - Close to being as good as III, but with a less interesting city and some goofy missions

4.) San Andreas - Lamest protagonist (CJ just wasn't interesting); too "all over the place" without focus, too much "stuff" (getting fat? haircuts?)

:applause: GTA IV is easily the best for me too. I rank them the same way you do. San Andreas was the worst for me too.

[Rake2204]

I was a big fan of San Andreas. I loved the map variance. There was so many places to be explored and tinkered with. GTA IV was great too, but I really missed the small things, like riding a bicycle of the top of a mountain and parachuting to the ground, or installing hydraulics into my ride, or flying a jumbo jet, or driving a four wheeler through a forest. There just seemed to be a wider array of possibility in San Andreas.

[G-Funk]

San Andreas

[Jailblazers7]

My favorites in order:

1. San Andreas
2. GTA IV
3. GTA III
4. Vice City

I never really played Vice City all that much tho.

[AznTacoLover]

1.) Vice City Man I never got to finished it. :(
2.) San Andreas
3.)GTA IV
4.)GTA III

[HylianNightmare]

gimme vice city
SA
III
IV
II
I

[craigthomasb]

lazlo FTW!

[B-Low]

Never played III, but out of the ones I played

1. SA by farrrrr
2. IV
3. Vice City

[embersyc]

They are all great, keep in mind I played them all on PC, although I've seen their console counterparts as well. I'd rank em as:

San Andreas: This game is just epic with all the different chapters, the collasal maps, and just so much to do. Yeah running on the treadmill to stay in shape sucks, but it didn't kill the game.

GTA IV: The city looks beautiful, the game is huge. I haven't beat this one yet, but its very fun. I agree with some of the complaints about not being able to get up speed, and traffic problems, but hey thats what they made the sidewalk for.

Vice City: A classic game, and the first truly brilliant game in a franchise that had been all about mindless fun to this point. However it just seems small after playing the more recent games.

GTA III: It was a great first effort at remaking the GTA series, completely enjoyable at the time, but completely forgettable now.

[The_Yearning]

Vice City
San Andreas
GTA III
GTA IV


Vice City- Your an idiot if you dispute this.

San Andreas- 3 cities with the country separating each and hell lot more. Finally able to swim, eat, buy clothes, get a entourage, ride a bicycle, and work out.

GTA III- It's better than GTA IV and changed the whole video game world.

GTA IV- the most shit storyline ever. The characters sucked. The driving mechanic sucked...I don't know what they did to it but it sucks.

One thing for sure, RockStar should stick to the rags to riches, the bottom to the top type of story lines. Anytime they stray away from that, it makes for a shitty story.

[Styles p]

1. gta3
2. san andreas
3. vice city
4. gta4

[rawimpact]

Vice City clearly has the best selection of music.
:bowdown: 80s music FTW

1) San Andreas - Massive map, allowed us to finally jump over things and we could go from land to sea
2) Vice City- took on a complete different look, besides feeling like you're on shrooms, the music was undeniably good.
3) Grand Theft Auto 3- This was the start, nothing was better than stealing that black beemer and going driving through the triads
3)GTA4- nothing new added besides controls and better graphics. Sure there are a lot of small missions, but nothing really impressive.

[lilojmayo]

GTA III started it all, it was a new idea putting it in 3-d world. I was hooked actually beat the game only one in the serious mode.

After that it got I won't say boring, but predictable, at the same time interesting enough to where I would buy it and try to beat it, but stopped playing in the middle of game.

They are all so close, but I am a sucker for technology give me GTA IV if I had to pick between the other 3.

[Styles p]

hows it feel to still want evan turner lilojmayo?

[lilojmayo]

hows it feel to still want evan turner lilojmayo?
Evan Turner was amazing for the buckeyes. He is the real deal. However, I think he is more of the perimeter version of Okafor. A monster in college, but in the pros just a pretty good pro player with solid numbers, but not a franchise player. I would have been great if Grizzlies had the 2nd pick this year, and had Turner running point guard at 6'7 next to OJ Mayo at shooting guard.

I hope I am wrong though, and he turns out to be the Next Penny Hardaway.

[rawimpact]

Vice City
San Andreas
GTA III
GTA IV


Vice City- Your an idiot if you dispute this.

San Andreas- 3 cities with the country separating each and hell lot more. Finally able to swim, eat, buy clothes, get a entourage, ride a bicycle, and work out.

GTA III- It's better than GTA IV and changed the whole video game world.

GTA IV- the most shit storyline ever. The characters sucked. The driving mechanic sucked...I don't know what they did to it but it sucks.

One thing for sure, RockStar should stick to the rags to riches, the bottom to the top type of story lines. Anytime they stray away from that, it makes for a shitty story.


No, you're an idiot... san andreas is the first one where you can jump over walls and gives you the ability to swim and even dive.

[Andrei89]

Can't decide between Vice City and San Andreas

But San Andreas amazed me the most. So much stuff to do, so many missions, so many vehicles. It was just Amazing

1: San Andreas
2: Vice City ( the athmosphere, just great)
3: GTA 3
4: GTA 4

[Bosnian Sajo]

You CANT beat GTA4's graphics.

[Bosnian Sajo]

Although gotta say, if they at least had a cheat for no cops like they did in SA, it would make GTA4 MUCH better.

[LJJ]

So, thread is done, next subject:

Is Saint's Row 2 is better than GTA4?

I personally thought so, even though production values are a bit lower. GTA4 looks better and the story is far more developed, but all in all Saint's Row 2 was a much better sandbox experience.

[Kebab Stall]

So, thread is done, next subject:

Is Saint's Row 2 is better than GTA4?

I personally thought so, even though production values are a bit lower. GTA4 looks better and the story is far more developed, but all in all Saint's Row 2 was a much better sandbox experience.
There's a lot more to do in Saint's Row once the story is over. GTA4 is very limited, with that sort of thing and there's not much to do. All there is, is finding the jumps, killing pigeons (which is actually fun as hell, but I've killed them all now) and doing those base jump missions.

[JohnnySic]

One thing that really dates GTA III now is the limited artificial intelligence. For instance, the cops would only go after you even if gangs were having a war in the street. And the cops were so easy to kill - I'd start wars with them and literally kill hundreds of cops, FBI guys and army guys. I'd use the big garage as my base, draw them in, and invent new ways to kill them. For example, I'd trap 10 cops behind a large vehicle like a bus and unload with the rocket launcher, sending both cops and bus straight to hell. Hours of fun. :oldlol:

[Andrei89]

Shit now i am thinnking of redwonloading San Andreas

[brooks_thompson]

Shit now i am thinnking of redwonloading San Andreas

i just got vice city again. i'm about to have a lot of time off so i'm looking forward to it.

thanks, thread.

[Andrei89]

i just got vice city again. i'm about to have a lot of time off so i'm looking forward to it.

thanks, thread.


I am tyring to join that big 350 people multiplayer server in San Andreas

it's like a big ass mod for the game. Where you play online with a ton of people and can do tons of stuff.

U can like make money, join the police, taxi drivers, gangs, military:lol

gonna try it out

[Kobe Jnr]

For me San Andreas is the best gta, plus it's my favourite game of all time. There was so many things you could do in that game, I finished the story around 5+ times, I never got sick of it, I'd finish the story and just cause chaos for a few hours, then go and do the story again. My cousin borrowed the game and lent it to a friend a couple of years ago... haven't gotten it back.

I'm currently looking on ebay trying to get this game, but I'm not paying 30+ bucks for it, game stores only have it for the ps2..

Vice city is the 2nd best gta, the atmosphere was great and it had the best soundtrack out of any gta's. It was like san andreas.. you can just keep playing and playing and never get sick of it.


GTA IV is next.. it was a great game, but it was a bit repetitive. Drive to this place, kill this person and escape. It never had that replay value like san andreas and vice city where you could just cause mayhem and muck up.


GTA III was a pretty good game also. I was blown away when I first played that game.. then vice city comes out the next year.. :eek:

I don't really remember the mission but I don't know why the main character never talked...


Nostalgia man.... I'm gonna get all 3 of these games...

[JohnnySic]

This thread inspired me to plug in my PS2 and play San Andreas. My last save was in 2004 :eek: and I'm only anout 25% through the storyline. It is better than I remember it - it is great.

[JayGuevara]

I think San Andreas was my favorite, with Vice City being a very close 2nd.

I didn't really like 4. I bought it like right when it came out, and then played it for a couple days, and it didn't excite me. I also remember being slightly aggravated at not being able to consistently make out the words in the Eastern European accents. And I think I was kinda bored of the "Liberty City" setting. Maybe the game itself had just lost it's luster (for me at least) by the time I actually started playing 4. :confusedshrug:

Maybe I'll pop it in today and try it again, I don't have shit to do today anyways.