I played GTA from GTA 1 to GTA 4. I have always been more interested by the story and the atmosphere rather than the free roaming.
What I can say about them:
1 and 2 : a shock. Being so mean and bad was cathartic for me, it was really mind blowing as I am a “too nice” guy
GTA 3 : a revolution. Discovering the game on the PS2 of a friend, I was drooling over the beautiful 3D models, the music, everything. I had to wait a bunch of time to get it on PC though.
Vice City : wonderful atmosphere, the colours, the music. The story over the top. My favourite.
San Andreas: not bad. The missions were interesting, but I felt no connection with the “boys in the hood” atmosphere. At the time, I listened very few hip hop so the whole gangsta rap hype was not interesting to me.
GTA 4: I liked the settings, “russian immigrants”. The campaign was cool. However all the rest felt a chore… The mandatory mini games with the gangster calling you every 10 minutes and being angry if I don’t go bowling with him was ridiculous.
Then I gave up GTA all together. To be frank, I was a bit fed up with the American settings. Always the same street, atmosphere, culture… On the other hand, other games like Sleeping Dogs were a breath of fresh air. You really feel in another environment, and something as simple as driving left on the road is a great change.
I am playing sleeping dogs right now and really enjoying it! Runs very well on Steam Deck too.
The driving left on the road is proving to be a tougher hurdle than expected though, I find myself crashing into opposing drivers more frequently than desired :).
I feel like it's rare to encounter another person that doesn't love San Andreas. It was fine, I guess, but I really didn't find the setting compelling. The kitchen sink approach to game mechanics didn't help either.
Adding swimming into san andreas was a bit deal to me.
I’ve played them all on release since GTA3 and of course I loved 3/vice city, but the addition of stats and being able to get jacked meant I was able to basically live in the game.
I’ve only played the first installment of the series and I admit it always felt too fast and hectic for me. Somehow, I always viewed it as a heist game and not as car jacking game.
most of my hours are in 2. there was something very compelling about having a toy city with clearly demarcated areas to move around in. complete with shittons of easter eggs for pulling off weird stunts like ramping off of a subway station stairway and onto a roof.
the physics of the top-down GTAs just can’t be replicated in 3D, like how the tank just rolls over every vehicle in its path.
I miss the kill frenzies. GTA4 was an absolute nadir of the series feeling like a job rather than fun - I get that they wanted you to to get drunk with Roman to experience the drunk controls and have to stop at the toll-booth like a commuter, but both things quickly become tedious.
As a kid I liked GTA2, modded the game to make the taxi super fast and strong lol
I messed around a lot in GTA3 with cheats, causing chaos in the tank
Vice City I actually played for real and beat it, my favorite in the series, but I stopped after that. I probably would’ve enjoyed San Andreas because it’s similar. GTA4 and 5 just seemed like a different tone and style that I was never very interested in. Also they took too long to bring to PC lol.
I only ever played GTA2 during the 2D era. I remember loving it then though. Maybe I ought to emulate the classics on my Steam Deck.
Of course I was obsessed with 3 when it came out. And Vice City and San Andreas were master pieces. I never played the PSP/DS games (those might also be good Steam Deck games for the future.)
I did beat 4 and its stand alone expansions. They were all pretty great, I even kind of liked the driving when everyone else was hating on it.
I have had GTA5 sitting in my Steam Library for a very long time with effectively 0 hours played. I’ll get around to eventually. It looks like I’ll enjoy it, though I hear its single player isn’t as good as 4’s.
I distinctly remember Donkey Kong Country as my first gaming experience. When my parents needed a babysit, they would often let me sleep at my aunts place. My older niece and nephew also lived their, but the age gap was quite big making it not ideal for us to play with toys together. One day however, my nephew had a SNES from his friend there and he was playing Donkey Kong Country on their TV. I remember being completely entranced by it and being unable to put it down (even though it was very difficult for me at the time). From then on I was always hoping that the “Gaming Machine” would be present if I stayed over, which was often the case as they figured out that this was a very easy way to keep me occupied. I later got a green Game Boy Color, and of course this was my first game for the system. I played it countless of hours, and even though I later got a Game Boy Advance SP, this game would remain in my rotation until I got a DS many years later.
I’ve barely played any of the later installments. I got Donkey Kong Country 2 for the Game Boy Advance when I was young, but found it to difficult and didn’t really like the new protagonist as much. After my DS I became a playstation fanboy for the rest of my childhood and teens.
Now that I have bought a 3DS I’ve started playing Donkey Kong Country Returns. It’s really nice, but I found it a bit overwhelming and haven’t really touched it since.
Also a shout out to the Game Boy game called Donkey Kong, in which you actually play Mario with some incredibly varied platforming for the time. An all time classic!
I played games on the PC before, but DKC was the first SNES game I played, maybe the first game with a controller. I still remember, after the console was set up, my sister played for a bit, then I wanted a turn, and just ran straight into the first enemy. Then I just watched my sister play for a bit, lol.
We didn’t have a lot of SNES games, but the game became probably my favorite on the console, along with the sequel. I played through both of them a bunch of times, and found every secret, without looking up guides.
A year or two ago, I casually played through it again, in like an hour, which was fun, I’ll have to do it again, along with the second game.
Hearing the music nowadays is also nostalgic, but it’s also just so good.
Donkey Kong Country was my favourite childhood game series.
The first game was a blast: fun gameplay, full of secrets and things to collect, good music, gorgeous graphics even for 2025 standards, the difficulty was just right. (A bit too hard for me back then, too easy nowadays.)
I remember when DKC3 was released in '98, I’d go to the cartridge rental shop once a week to ask the guy if they had it already. (He was extremely patient with me. That guy was a bro.) Once I finally got to play it, it didn’t disappoint me at all, I loved those puzzles and it was amazing to explore the map freely. Kiddy was a bit odd, but really fun to play with, and I loved how Dixie throwing Kiddy had different mechanics than Kiddy throwing Dixie.
But by far my favourite was DKC2. Everything was perfect - they picked the formula from DKC1 and expanded it: more collectibles! Better music! Better looks! The bonuses now aren’t just “find all bonuses in the level for +1%”, now you got something to find in them! I can literally play the first level of that game with a blindfold, it’s itched in my brain. (Fuck Bramble Blast, though. I had a hard time finding one bonus and the DK coin there. And by then my English was a bit too awful to get what Cranky said.)
Then… well, DK64. It killed the series for me. I didn’t get why it wasn’t fun, but nowadays I see what happened - early 3D games had clunky controls and camera, plus the whole “gotta remake the whole thing five times to get to 100%” was meh.
Wow, the analysis is great - thanks for sharing it! For me Stickerbush Symphony always evoked some sort of loneliness or melancholy…
And yes, the whole series has great music. I agree DKC2 is the best in this regard; not just because the tracks are great on their own, but because they fit really well the mood of each level. Disco Train is on its own a rollercoaster, Mining Melancholy’s “mmhmm mmhmm” evoking winds and machinery, Bayou Boogie making the level sound m… mois… swampy. From other games of the series DKC1 Forest Frenzy and DKC3 Nuts and Bolts are also great. (Now thinking, the DKC3 soundtrack as a whole is a bit more industrial.)
DK64 has a certain charm to it. I think there’s a really good game in there, but it also tries to do WAYYY too much, and having to memorise all those Street Fighter button combos to pull off basic moves is hard work.
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