Grand Theft Auto is a top-down... thing. It's a driving game. A shooter. An early open world title. It sparked the beginning of a global phenomenon and helped raise what was once considered one of the greatest development studios in the world to prominence.

It's also crap. It's crap now and I can almost guarantee it was probably considered crap in '97, but I was but a wee lad in 1997 and was more concerned with trivial matters like being fed from a bottle and having my bottom cleaned - which is how I intend to go out in 2097, by the way.

GTA takes place across three cities: Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas. If all of these sound familiar it's because they were done extremely well in 3D and do not work in a 2D environment. Repetitive missions, nightmarish cutscenes and an often confusing map layout lead to not a whole lot of fun. GTA is a curiosity. DMA Design used the British press so well to generate controversy and sales for a game that, to a modern audience, seems remarkably tame. The gore is cartoonish, the existence of a dedicated fart button is wild, and the driving... the driving is dogshit. The gameplay itself is actually insufferable.

Get me outta here. How about they do a game set in London in 1969 next?

Incrível ver como a franquia está hoje com um primeiro jogo tão escabroso como esse.

É um surto como tiveram a capacidade de colocar um controle de tanque no personagem fora de um veículo, além do fato de ser horrível fazer as missões somente seguindo uma seta q nem funciona pra se localizar.
E oq falar da câmera ficar tremendo mais q tudo quando se está dirigindo.

Inimigos do game desing. Péssimo.

I tried with this but I gave up only four missions in because these are some of the worst controls and camera I've ever dealt with. The lack of an in-game map makes it even worse too. I can see why they made the jump to 3D just two games after this. Literally the only reason to play this is if you're a GTA completist or you're interested in how this series started. If I cared about how the rest of the game goes I'll just look up a walkthrough on YouTube.

This has also killed my interest in playing the two London packs which just look like even more of the same anyway.

To think there was a time I picked this game up with a friend (without any parental approval) assuming it was just Micro Machines with guns...

The first iteration of the now genre defining series was considerably less expansive and brilliant than what was to follow but the wit and sheer irreverence of it all was there to see from the beginning.

I absolutely would recommend going back and experiencing it for yourself to see just how many of the now uniquely GTA elements that we know and love were there from the outset.

Even though this original/first GTA game will never be placed high alongside the other games in the series, it served as the foundation for the series and I thought it was a pretty fun title back in the day.

The over the top view limits the presentation greatly and convolutes the controls making things fairly unintuitive at first. Most missions are timed and don't allow a whole lot of room for mistakes so the frustration factor is fairly high for new players but if you manage to get past that point and become familiar with the controls, the game becomes very fun.

I was never able to fully complete the game but this game made me appreciate and keep an eye on the GTA series ever since it came out.

A part of me feels guilty as I didn't spend that much time on it, but I judge this game not worth the time.

The camera is headache-inducing and the controls are awkward. These two factors alone make the game nearly impossible to enjoy, I'm not exaggerating when I say this is probably the worst camera I've played with.

Everything else is either lame or fine, the missions are repetitive and generic, the harsh timer on missions is just annoying, the world is poorly designed and as forgettable as it gets, this goes for the story as well. Forgettable.

Aesthetically, the GTA flare is there, as it's got some fun music and a solid art direction, they just didn't have the game part figured out yet.

The very original Grand Theft Auto is somewhat of a frenetic mess that was somehow really damn impactful and controversial enough to make one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time, and it's funny considering how the game is as rough and outdated as it is and yet somehow retains the raunchy, comedic charm that would forge the series identity from here until forever.

Grand Theft Auto is a 1997 crime simulator with a sort of open world, and playing it nowadays feels prehistoric as it feels outdated in every regard, but mostly in the way that it is played being a top-down game with a nauseating camera panning everywhere, with missions being often times pretty hard to pull off first try, and the fact that you have to rack up points to move on with no mission retries, limited lives and practically no forgiveness as you lose yourself in the urban jungle that is Liberty City and later on San Andreas and Vice City, too. Don't get me wrong, it sucks, but it really feels like an experience to be had since every single landmark of the franchise is there somehow. The parody nature of the characters being super edgy and cursing you out for everything, the US states and cities that have been changed ever so slightly making up the Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City we know now, and just the frantic nature of running over pedestrians and blowing up stuff is proper of the franchise, so even if the story is pretty much nonexistent and it was planned out to be like an arcade game over everything, it's crazy to see how much it would grow from this.

Also, pretty uncontested point but the soundtrack is so damn good for no reason at all, they really had an entire radio goin' on before actual good controls lmao