How GTA Became The Dragonforce Of Gaming

Is this the wildest GTA 5 video yet? What amazing feats of destruction will Grand Theft Auto Online players accomplish? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to check out Game Rant's rundown of all of the latest GTA 5 news, right h

You'll get a call on your phone, demanding you to explain your actions. While Franklin and Trevor react pretty normally (especially when you consider the fact that you just bombarded their houses with explosives), Michael probably has the most furious and amusing reaction to your acti

Grand Theft Auto IV was an even bigger offender. The re-designed Liberty City was able to be bigger and more expansive than ever, thanks to new consoles’ horsepower, but once again, Rockstar domain leaks’s vision of vastness ended up making the game more tedious than it should be. Traversal was slow and cumbersome, thanks to messy, "realistic" physics for vehicles, leaving the entire game feeling restrictive. Sure, there was a lot to do, but the downtime between missions was more noticeable and intrusive than ever. What especially makes this such a problem is that open-world games’ major flaw, that downtime where you’re traversing from activity to activity, was solved. Open-world gaming had moved into other franchises like Assassin’s Creed (which offered a parkour traversal system that was smooth and acrobatic) and InFamous (which had a ton of fast, action-based missions that required mobility). Even licensed properties like The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction solved the problem of boring traversal with a fluid and momentum-driven way to get around the city (and that appeared in the generation before GTA IV). In that light, Grand Theft Auto IV was slow and fragmented, and with the world growing larger and larger with each new installment in the series, this problem was sure to escalate into downright tedium.

Rockstar remains one of the classic innovators of gaming, letting loose an expansive, free-form-mission mentality that would pioneer the success of the "open-world" genre. Grand Theft Auto is the crown jewel of that kingdom. It’s an international phenomenon and one of the most important game series of all time. With Grand Theft Auto V , Rockstar made the biggest open world of its kind, but despite its commercial success, the developer is simply giving into its own very hazardous addiction. Grand Theft Auto V simply exacerbated the recurring issue that has been plaguing the series since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas , an issue that is continuing to drain the studio’s credibility in making top-shelf open world games.


Well, it's no surprise that this particular instance would be included in this list. There are four strip clubs in the game, but only one is accessible by the player — the infamous Vanilla Unicorn. Lap dances are their own little mini-game in this title, where one must touch a stripper and flirt with her in order to increase her 'like' bar, all while avoiding the gaze of the guard standing in the door


There's absolutely no way one can make a list like this and not include this mission — if you can even call it that. In a game that's known for shooting, sniping, blasting, exploding, racing, crashing, speeding, stealing, and killing (among many other things). Frankly, the last thing you'd expect to do is freaking y

But there are games that are stupidly huge with slow traversal that are great. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the perfect example of a slow trudge through a huge world, one that works fantastically. Skyrim dodges GTA ’s pitfall because of how the open-world is set up. If you leave a town and find that you’re approaching a landmark, you’ll more than likely want to go there and mark it on your map. The landmarks and activities are spaced just far enough apart that they aren’t overwhelmingly close (ultimately feeling like busy work), but far away enough to be enticing and worth going after. And those brief periods between the activities are filled with enemies to fight, ingredients to gather, or even NPC’s to help. These things are good because they have inherent and meaningful value. Enemies to fight mean potential for experience. Ingredients to gather mean new items to craft. NPC’s to help means more missions or secrets. This is a pitch-perfect way to make a world big, but not empty. Bethesda intelligently placed each valuable thing in Skyrim to offer tantalizing reward, but a good enough distance to make the world big and full of expansive promise.


The game is set during the American Revolution and puts your protagonist Connor right in the middle of all the key moments during the war. It's loaded with great set pieces and makes you feel like Daniel Day Lewis in The Last Of The Mohic

Open-world games have become the realized vision of gaming’s steady growth. The original top-down Grand Theft Auto on Playstation was one of the first games to implement the open-ended, free-form-mission structure that would later become the series’ trademark feature. While Grand Theft Auto II made steady improvements, Grand Theft Auto III on Playstation 2 was lauded for its 3D exploration and expansive nature. GTA III became the grandiose innovator of the series and the benchmark by which open-world games would later be judged. Vice City followed that idea, adding unique style and more cosmetic creativity thanks to its Miami Beach-inspired setting.