[1001] GTA made me do things

Believe it or not, GTA has been part of my life for the best part of 20 years. And over those years, playing through pretty much every GTA there is*, it has made me do things.

Yes, it turns out all those news reports that come out every time a new sequel is released are true – GTA is a dangerous bit of gaming history, one that can manipulate a soft human brain (like mine).

Here’s just a small list of things that Grand Theft Auto has made me do.

GTA1 made me…
Realise that PCs were better than consoles

This realisation came when I found that after I had been enjoying stealing fire engines and crashing trains into eachother on the PC version of the original GTA – the poor old PS1 had no such luxuries. Not a train in sight! PC FTW! PS1 SUXBALLZ!

GTA: Vice City / GTA3 / San Andreas all made me…
Appreciate a good soundtrack, and love the sound of 80s hiphop (amongst others)

All GTA games have had fantastic soundtracks – but it was the Vice City incarnation of GTA that struck me the most. An amazing soundtrack made up its many radio stations, full of licensed tunes and original musicians hired back to act as radio DJs. Brilliant stuff, especially ‘Wildstyle Pirate Radio’.

GTA: Chinatown Wars made me…
Discover that mobile gaming on smartphones could actually be good.

Who knew? It’s not all Angry Birds and minigame crap.

GTA3 made me…
Get into PC customisation

GTA3 was the cause for much excitement – finally the series has broken into the 3rd dimension, no longer a top-down violence sim. Would it work? Apparently not, as my old Voodoo3 2000 graphics card (with an impressive 16MB of memory) wouldn’t cope. And so began my first foray into PC customisation, with the purchase of an incredible Nvidia Geforce3 Ti 200.

GTA: Liberty City Stories (though pretty much all GTA games) made me…
Smash things in frustration – due to savepoints and checkpoints, or lack of.

Fail near the end of a mission? Too bad, now you gotta drive all the way from the hospital for about 5 minutes just to try again – from the beginning.

GTA4 made me…
Get an xbox360 pad

Whether you love them or hate them, the sad truth is GTA4 is a bitch to play unless you get a Xbollox360 pad plugged in to that PC of yours

The entire history of GTA made me…
Get completely caught in up in one of best series ever made.

And it really is – no matter how many hours you sink into GTA, in any of its incarnations, you’ll always come back for more. My advice – go back to the original, and be amazed simultaneously at how far it has come, and how good it always has been.

Roll on GTA5!

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*encompassing (but not limited to) 1001 no. 69 ‘GTA’, no.70 ‘GTA2’, no.71 ‘GTA3’, no.72 ‘GTA4’, no.73 ‘Ballad of Gay Tony’, no.74 ‘Lost and the Damned’, no.75 ‘San Andreas’, no.76 ‘Vice City’, no.77 ‘Chinatown Wars’, no.78 ‘Liberty City Stories’.