by Chris Beattie

Created on: August 16, 2007

When it comes to gaming, I'm not just fanatical. I'm overzealous. I'm an elitist, pretentious git who glares at "casual" gamers with my arms folded. I'm the type of person who mistakes "progress" for "desecration", and when a new game is released in a series, boasting better features than its predecessor, I simply scoff and go "it'll never be as good as the old one". And the series that causes me the most anguish and inner turmoil is the Grand Theft Auto series.

I lost days to the original Grand Theft Auto. Weeks, in fact. I was so taken in by its revolutionary concept. Back then, gaming was still very naive: very noble, all about heroes shooting up bad guys, etc. Dungeon Keeper was released in June, 1997, and people were relatively impressed with it; not only because it was a solid, functional game, but because it toyed with the concept of being evil.

A few months later, Grand Theft Auto was released. And that changed everything. The whole concept of playing the bad guy was taken out of a fictional, fantasy reality and put straight in the middle of a modern, crowded, living city. There were weapons, there were cars, and there were thousands of innocent pedestrians that nobody was going to miss. And, perhaps most morally bankrupt of all, it was fun.

I hold the original game, in all its pixelated, top-down goodness, with very high regard. The second game was really just more of the same, with a few new features that were quite nice, but nothing ground-breaking, and nothing that could shake the original from its top spot. And then Grand Theft Auto 3 came, and ruined everything.

For a start, I'm a PC gamer, and GTA3 was originally a console exclusive. Heresy. Sheer blasphemy. GTA started on the PC, and that's where it should have stayed. Secondly, it wasn't top down any more, but third person 3D. Once again, sheer blasphemy. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" was my view. I refused to even show interest in the game out of principle.

Then it was released on the PC. It was my birthday and I had a few notes kicking about doing nothing, so I begrudgingly bought it. And, much to my disbelief and annoyance, it actually turned out to be quite good. And not only is this where the problem lies, but this is also where this article starts becoming relevant.

And I played all of the games that were released since (except the PSP exclusives), all of which were great fun. And I was constantly thinking to myself "I know I shouldn't be liking this - this goes against everything that

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>