What I miss about GTA

I recently read an article in the June 2006 issue of Game Informer magazine entitled the "Sacred Cow Barbecue". The article was kind of a "roast" of popular game franchises, much like the classic celebrity roasts that occurred in years past. The article took a dozen or so of the most critically acclaimed video games in history and proceeded to explain why these games are actually "crap" instead of the masterpieces that they are thought to be. Some of the games mentioned are Halo, Ico, Resident Evil 2, and Super Mario Bros. But one in particular stuck out to me: Grand Theft Auto III.

The writer argued that GTA III doesn't really do any SINGLE thing particularly well, but rather throws together a LOT of mediocre things into the game to make it seem so BIG. In other words, the game favors quantity over quality. At first, I thought the writer was smoking crack just before writing such a blasphemous article. But the more I thought about it, I actually AGREE with a lot of the writer's points. However, I beleive that, in actuality, GTA III is actually the masterpiece and that the latest GTA: San Andreas is more of the "mish-mosh" of half-baked ideas that the writer is proposing.

Think about it: GTA: SA has almost all of the gameplay features of GTA III and GTA: Vice City and adds a BOATLOAD of other stuff. However, I think the game has actually take a few steps back, in some respects, from GTA III. I don't know about anyone else, but I feel that GTA III had a much grittier "urban" feel than the 2 sequels (not including the latest GTA: Liberty City Stories). It became apparent in the sequels that the novelty of the open world GTA-style took front-and-center over the hard-core ghetto (in a good way) feel that I loved about GTA III. In my opinion, if Rockstar Games was to re-release GTA III and include the HUGE selection of vehicles that the newer GTA games offer, we'd have the perfect game!