Feature: Time Capsule - Grand Theft Auto

GTA III

With Grand Theft Auto V gripping the conciousness of the gaming world -- have you read the "14,633 Small Touches of GTA V That You May Have Missed" click-bait feature yet? -- I thought it might be a good time to jump on the bandwagon by beating open a time capsule then running it over to see what The Armchair Empire was saying about past Grand Theft Auto games.

Review: Grand Theft Auto III (PC)
More than a decade old at this point, GTA III was released on PC in 2002 to the kind of acclaim that greeted the Playstation 2 version in 2001. Nevermind that this game kickstarted the oft-repeated phrase, "Have sex with a prostitute then kill her to get your money back," GTA III may not have been the first open-world game but it did it with enough style and content to allow it to hold up today. The review is notable for this line: "[Online play] was never promised, and was likely always a pipe dream, but it would be infinitely cool to wonder around the world of GTA3 with, say, 32 real people scattered amongst the computer AI crowd."

Review: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2)
Released in 2002 and taking place in an alternate universe Miami cirac 1980's, our reviewer summed up Vice City as "a fine game, one of the best on the system, and anyone who doesn’t own it can consider their collection suspect." Around about this same time in history, Chechen separtists were holding about 700 theater goers hostage. Thank goodness there's always an escape from reality with video games!

Review: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (XB)

GTA: San Andreas

In 2005, GTA: San Andreas arrived on Xbox. I recall one of the main selling points was the fact the protagonist, CJ could pedal a bike and get fat/buff depending on the kind of side activities he completed. Marred by the overblown "Hot Coffee" controversy, the game itself was a huge place to explore with a very long story campaign. Oddly enough, San Andreas was released a year after it's Playstation 2 release -- Playstation 2 seemed to always get first dibs on GTA.

Review: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (PS2)
Ported from the PSP original, Vice City Stories didn't sit well with critics, especially Hardcore Gaming 101's Kurt Kalata. Kurt concluded his assessment like this: "The whole thing looks pretty pitiful too. Instead of just using the engine from the PS2 Vice City and implementing new missions, it looks like they just ported the whole thing straight from the PSP, resulting in a game that looks significantly worse than any of its predecessors." Ouch.

Review: Grand Theft Auto IV (360)

Grand Theft Auto IV

In GTA IV, Niko Bellic comes to America to escape some horrible past life. But like they say, "You can take the boy out of the horrible past life, but you can't take the horrible past life out of the boy" or something to that effect. It quickly becomes apparent that Niko is either an full-fledged psychopath or simply so destroyed emotionally to the point where human life is about as cheap as a $0.10 cup of coffee. After the initial critical ejaculation about the game (which went on to sell more than 10 million copies according to some sources), popular interest was maintained by a couple of pieces of downloadable content: The Lost and Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony.

- Aaron Simmer

What are your favourite GTA moments? Comment below! We triple-dog dare you!