When it was released, SA was also my favorite by far. But with time I noticed I replay VC more than SA, likely because of the vibes. But yes, SA is a correct answer, too.
The gang wars mechanic put me off SA, same as the friends in GTA IV that keep demanding you go bowling with them while you are in a car chase with the police. It felt forced and screwed with the flow of the game by forcing you to stop whatever you were enjoying at that moment or deal with the consequences.
Vice City is also my favourite, great selection of music tracks, great 80’s vibes and it wouldn’t forcefully try to pull you out of your flow at random intervals.
Started with the first GTA on the PlayStation; I used to rank Vice City as my absolute favourite entry in the series - but as I’ve matured over time, I’ve come to find GTA IV (or more specifically, The Ballad of Gay Tony expansion) has taken over the top spot - though VC is still a close second.
If you haven’t played TBOGT in a while, I highly recommend revisiting it - there are a lot of parallels to VC in terms of overall feel and the general “fun” tone.
I kind of hated GTA IV when it came out because it was such a downgrade from SA, and I didn’t really care for the story. But I started replaying it recently and appreciate it more. I’ll eventually get to the DLCs. I liked Tony from GTAO, so that’s a good sign that I’ll enjoy them.
Vice City is a my second, if only for the aesthetics. I miss the top down fun, it simplified the game in a way that I really enjoyed, it’s just not the same running over hare krishnas in 3D/irl.
As a high school student I installed a pirated copy on the school network so my friend and I could play it in class. This was at a small town school where the IT specialist was usually too busy being a teacher and track coach to pay attention to what students were able to do on school computers. They removed the ability for student accounts to install software eventually, but I never got punished for what I did.
Oh I loved the days of circumventing early school IT systems. I remember we discovered that we could right click on something in the start menu and get into a shared network folder, we put Halo in it and basically the whole class played matches together but alt-tabbed when a teacher came by.
It’s a joke how easy some of those were to bypass. I still remember when the lab installed some nanny cam app so they could make sure kids weren’t playing games or looking at shit they shouldn’t. The app was so bad that I could just open task manager and kill the nanny cam software.
The librarians loved me, so I don’t think they cared enough to say anything, even when they went after kids near me doing similar shit.
I remember figuring out how to make my account an admin account in like Windows 2k through some obscure setting that was still available. We stared with weird flash games in the library, and eventually played unreal tournament.
Yeah, so back in the day, you could replace the accessibility executable that launches when you hit shift 5 times to enable sticky keys, and is launched as a privileged process. Rename it and copy cmd to the old exe name, hit shift 5 times and you now have an admin console.
Still works today, you just have to do it offline if you’re not an admin.
Yeah… Even back then I was amazed at how little effort it took to bypass. But that was in the early 00s, and basic troubleshooting like opening task manager was considered black magic (just like opening a terminal is today to most people)
GTA2 was the best GTA.
I started with GTA2, but Vice City is the best GTA.
I started with GTA, but the best one is San Andreas
Damn right! San Andreas is just the best, hands down. I’ve never understood the love that Vice City gets. It just always felt so limited compared SA.
Or maybe my memories are just tainted by those damn RC helicopter missions.
When it was released, SA was also my favorite by far. But with time I noticed I replay VC more than SA, likely because of the vibes. But yes, SA is a correct answer, too.
Nah, VC was much more fun long term than SA. SA had sooooo many more annoying features and set pieces imo
The gang wars mechanic put me off SA, same as the friends in GTA IV that keep demanding you go bowling with them while you are in a car chase with the police. It felt forced and screwed with the flow of the game by forcing you to stop whatever you were enjoying at that moment or deal with the consequences.
Vice City is also my favourite, great selection of music tracks, great 80’s vibes and it wouldn’t forcefully try to pull you out of your flow at random intervals.
Chinatown Wars
I played the original Chinatown Wars on the NDS, still one of my favorite games.
Wish we’d get another top-down GTA like this. I love it being more fast-paced and arcady than the GTAs we current get.
Started with the first GTA on the PlayStation; I used to rank Vice City as my absolute favourite entry in the series - but as I’ve matured over time, I’ve come to find GTA IV (or more specifically, The Ballad of Gay Tony expansion) has taken over the top spot - though VC is still a close second.
If you haven’t played TBOGT in a while, I highly recommend revisiting it - there are a lot of parallels to VC in terms of overall feel and the general “fun” tone.
I kind of hated GTA IV when it came out because it was such a downgrade from SA, and I didn’t really care for the story. But I started replaying it recently and appreciate it more. I’ll eventually get to the DLCs. I liked Tony from GTAO, so that’s a good sign that I’ll enjoy them.
Vice City is a my second, if only for the aesthetics. I miss the top down fun, it simplified the game in a way that I really enjoyed, it’s just not the same running over hare krishnas in 3D/irl.
Top-down isn’t a good perspective for a driving game, IMO. I just don’t like not seeing where I’m driving.
This is why I like Vice City Stories. It implements some things from SA but keeps the vice city aesthetics intact.
My top 5 would probably be:
San Andreas
IV
Vice City Stories
Vice City
3
As a high school student I installed a pirated copy on the school network so my friend and I could play it in class. This was at a small town school where the IT specialist was usually too busy being a teacher and track coach to pay attention to what students were able to do on school computers. They removed the ability for student accounts to install software eventually, but I never got punished for what I did.
Oh I loved the days of circumventing early school IT systems. I remember we discovered that we could right click on something in the start menu and get into a shared network folder, we put Halo in it and basically the whole class played matches together but alt-tabbed when a teacher came by.
It’s a joke how easy some of those were to bypass. I still remember when the lab installed some nanny cam app so they could make sure kids weren’t playing games or looking at shit they shouldn’t. The app was so bad that I could just open task manager and kill the nanny cam software.
The librarians loved me, so I don’t think they cared enough to say anything, even when they went after kids near me doing similar shit.
I remember figuring out how to make my account an admin account in like Windows 2k through some obscure setting that was still available. We stared with weird flash games in the library, and eventually played unreal tournament.
Was that the sticky keys trick? That was a fun one to use to elevate
No. What the heck? You can/could have used sticky keys to elevate account access??? What?
Yeah, so back in the day, you could replace the accessibility executable that launches when you hit shift 5 times to enable sticky keys, and is launched as a privileged process. Rename it and copy cmd to the old exe name, hit shift 5 times and you now have an admin console.
Still works today, you just have to do it offline if you’re not an admin.
Haha, that’s pretty shit level software. Usually it took a little bit more effort than that to just kill it in task manager.
Yeah… Even back then I was amazed at how little effort it took to bypass. But that was in the early 00s, and basic troubleshooting like opening task manager was considered black magic (just like opening a terminal is today to most people)