Here I am on a beautiful sunny day, and I'm rolling down the street in my car. A car that I stole. I'm weaving through traffic at a high rate of speed with the police hot on my trail. Why? Well that's because I committed a major crime. the crime you ask? We'll just call it murder. I took out a few citizens at the strip club. Now I need to get away before the cops bust me. What do I do? Well, let's take a deep breath, and think things out while I take Johnny Law on a ride of their lives as well as eliminating a few uniformed officers for shits and giggles. It's all in good fun. Besides, it's only a game. A really run game. A game called Grand Theft Auto.
With the release of Grand Theft Auto V on the horizon, I decided to take a moment and reflect on the series of games that I enjoyed...and at times didn't enjoy. Rockstar Games brought me into an open world full of crime, drugs, prostitution, vigilantism, rampages, and plenty of over the top gross out humor that had me laughing for hours. Sure the games were violent, but that's not what these games were all about. Grand Theft Auto is not what some media and politicians describe as "a murder simulator". No, Grand Theft Auto is a game that has a story. Sometimes it's about revenge, creating an empire, or it's about achieving the "American Dream". It's also a game where I can vent out unwanted stress from a dreadful day at work or school.
Let me share some of my GTA moments with you.
Liberty City, 2001. This is where it all began. Grand Theft Auto III introduced me to the world of the sandbox. A virtual playground where I can go wherever I wanted to go, and do whatever I wanted to do. After the opening moments, it didn't take me long to become fascinated by this new world. I explored the city, took in the sights, and became addicted to radio stations like Chatterbox and the station that played the soundtrack from Scarface. My character was silent, but my actions spoke louder than any word could describe when I wreaked havoc across the entire city. One of my favorite moments was when I learned a little trick about how picking up a hooker and taking her to a alley for a little fun would give me a much needed health boost. Then as she left I beat her with a baseball bat to get my money back. I was doing this trick, before all the magazines and the internet websites made it popular.
Grand Theft Auto III was a blast. The game did have a story about revenge, but there were plenty of times where I didn't care about the story. All I wanted to do was shoot some guns and blow some shit up. I wanted to achieve a six star wanted rating just so I can steal a tank and really have some fun. Grand Theft Auto III brought a big smile to my face, but it would be the next GTA game that I consider the greatest of them all.
Vice City, 1986. Cocaine was at an all time high. There was no place bigger than the city based on Miami. The tall buildings, neon lights, and the ocean. What's not to like? Grand Theft Auto: Vice City had it all along with the ambiance as well as plenty of references from Scarface, Miami Vice, and so much more. I can go all day with all the awesome references. My character finally had a voice, and who better to portray the antihero than Ray Liotta as Tommy Vercetti. He was my own personal Tony Montana. As a child of the '80s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City attracted me more than any other game. It was with this game where I found the story just as interesting as rampaging through the city. One of my favorite moments was just a mere hour into the game where I had a screwdriver and stabbed someone only to realize that it was a cop. The chase was then on, and with the first car I stole I was running from the cops as Quiet Riot's "Cum on Feel the Noize" played on the radio. Priceless.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was amazing, and it's a game I still enjoy playing today on my PlayStation 3. Many years had past since the game's 2002 release, but I knew that Rockstar had something brewing. Who knew that it would be a return to a familiar place.
2008, Liberty City. When Grand Theft Auto IV arrived on the scene my excitement was at an all time high. GTA was back in high definition, and this time it was time for me to achieve the "America Dream". However, with every step Rockstar took forward I felt like it took a few steps backwards as well. This was the first time I felt like Rockstar was mortal when it came to Grand Theft Auto. Sure the game was fun at times since there was so much to do, but there were also moments where it was quite annoying. One of my biggest memories came when I was ruining from the cops with a four star wanted rating. I was in a big jam and all of a sudden I get a phone call. "Hey Niko, it's your brother. You want to go bowling?" Are you serious? Bowling! I'm in the fight of my life here against the law, and my brother wants to go bowling? It was at that moment that all the fun as sucked out of me. The online game was pretty good, but it also had it's limitations. The main game was not very interesting, however the DLC campaigns of The Lost and The Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony were awesome since they both felt like the old Grand Theft Auto games I loved.
Now the new Grand Theft Auto is about to take me to Los Santos, and this time I'll be in control of the lives of three unique characters each with their own personality. Can I juggle this much, or will I screw it all up? I'm sure that I can as I continue to do the things that made me enjoy the Grand Theft Auto series in the first place along with a plethora of new activities to keep my interest for may years to come. Hopefully while I'm reviewing the game next week, I can share a new GTA moment that will eclipse all others. Maybe it will be a drive-by shooting to the tune of Eddie Murphy's "Party All The Time". We'll just have to see.
We were expecting problems with mod support, but there are a lot of other issues.
This is why you get the GOG version on gog you can select the version of the game to download.
On pc fallout 4 fallout new vegas and skyrim are all broken on steam because they all got the same "next gen" update.
Skyrim dec 2023
https://www.pcgamer.com/sky...
Can not find new vegas but anyone that modded it knows the script extender there was also broken
Not accidental, they want modders to stop modding their older games to force them to mod Shitfield.
There doing the same on starfield with a mods store and blocking mods
There goal is like blizzard and what they did with fallout 76 you make mods they can sell and you become a slave.
On skyrim they have "trusted" mod devs now basically a badge that lets your mod on the store you get a crumb of the sale when someone buys it.
lol to the disagrees, the last Skyrim update broke mods too. They've been trying to kill mods to monetize them in creation club for years, it's not a stretch that they purposely put out patches just to break free mods.
The disagrees are from people who have common sense. They aren't trying to kill mods. Most mods for any game will break with a new update because they rely on files/code that have been changed. This isn't new. Even with Bethesda this would happen way before the creation club. Mod support is literally one of the things that got Bethesda to where they are, and they're one of the only devs that releases comprehensive mod tools for each of their games.
Over 14 GBs and doesn't change much at all? What? Taking up that much drive space for a pathetic 'remastering' is shameful.
Par for Bethesda.
LOL people are actually expecting massive improvements or something? From Bethesda?? the same people who released Skyrim multiple times and the all look like shit? THAT Bethesda? are people for real?
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
Eventually they’ll realize the value is with the employee not the company. Buying an IP means nothing if the people who contributed are let go. They’ll get it one day.
tech is different because they buy threats and then kill them. Twitter bought Vine and did nothing with it. Despite people seemingly liking it. Could've had tiktok a decade before bytedance. go figure.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
A voice actor from The Coalition's third-person shooter series, Gears of War, has hinted at a new game announcement coming in June.
Hopefully Microsoft will go back to the original story line and get away from that woke nonsense from the last Gears game Gears of Woke! But were talking about Microsoft so all the betting money is on more of the same woke nonsense.
I didn't see San Andreas in the blog... Come on man, if you didn't play it then you should soon! It is still really fun :D
Anyway, that was an interesting blog, just got some flashbacks at the time when I was playing GTA III, VC, SA, and IV... Man, those were good memories (Not so much with IV but I still had fun). Thank you for the blog :)
PS: Roman is Niko's cousin, not brother ;)
I still remember playing the demo for the original GTA on PC. It was a time limited demo in the first city (Liberty City) but it was awesome. Me and my brother played it countless times taking turns to do as much as we could before the time ran out.
Since then I've bought all GTA games on PC. Few games have given us as much gaming pleasure as the GTA franchise though GTA4 is the only one I haven't played more than once.
It's funny to think that the first GTA was an overhead... Still boggles my mind to see how far gaming has come to this day.
this is the biggest fail in the history of fails. No San Andreas, then you have no GTA frame of reference!!!! Geez, some people these days.
At the time of GTA III's release, I hadn't played any GTA. I had just gotten a PS2 for my birthday and the new GTA was coming out. My parents bought it for me and... it was probably the greatest game I've ever played. It was the first of it's kind and something I'd never seen before. I enjoyed taking a stroll, blowing things up, messing around with pedestrians. The amount of things you could do outside the main story was simply amazing. Most games at the time had you run from point A to point B, get some story, rinse and repeat. But GTA III was different. It allowed you to do whatever you wanted to do in between and it was just awesome.
Vice City, the music was awesome. That's all I remember lol.
San Andreas, now there's a game I couldn't stop playing. The story was compelling, the game was huge, there was lots of side content, and the end game was a lot of fun. (NO spoilers here). It's my favorite thus far. But that may change tonight!
Finally, GTA IV. I went to the midnight release, got home, installed the game tried playing online which it crashed and I went to bed. Things got worse from there lol. The game was gorgeous, the car physics were impressive at the time, but the game was just too serious. I did end up beating the game, but never wanted to go to back. There was side stuff, but it just wasn't all that fun. This may sound morbid but my favorite thing to do in GTA IV was drive cars around as fast as I could and see how many times I could flip it. I gave up on pigeon hunting. I gave up on Nico's sad attempts at finding a girlfriend. I eventually gave up on the game itself. It just wasn't as much fun as I'd hoped.
And now, looking forward to GTA V, I hope it goes back to the good days of GTA III or San Andreas and doesn't take itself too seriously. I really missed the RPG elements that your character had in SA and I hope that comes back as well. =)