It’s almost time. After more than a decade since Grand Theft Auto 5 was released, GTA 6 is mere days away from launching on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. To mark the auspicious occasion, we’re looking back on the critical legacy of the Grand Theft Auto series.
With plenty of installments boasting Metacritic scores in the high 90s, GTA 6 has an exceptionally high bar to meet. That said, the series has had occasional growing pains over the years, even if true stinkers are a rarity among Rockstar Games’ back catalog. These are the top 10 GTA games of all time, ranked according to their Metacritic scores.
A note on methodology: This list doesn’t include expansions like GTA 4’s Ballad of Gay Tony, and it doesn’t include GTA Online. (There aren’t many actual reviews for the latter, because it’s an evolving, always-on experience.) It also doesn’t include the first three games in the series — GTA, GTA London 1969, and GTA London 1961 — again because there aren’t enough reviews for them to have a Metacritic score. Finally, we’re not counting ports, either. This ranking is determined by the scores on their original release platforms. Where there’s a tie, and there are a couple in this list, we’ll give the edge to the game with more reviews.
10
GTA Advance (2004)
Metacritic score: 68
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Alternately called Grand Theft Auto Advance or simply Grand Theft Auto, this GBA game is actually a top-down prequel to GTA 3 that’s set in Liberty City, rather than a remake or remaster of the first game. In a review for Eurogamer, Kristan Reed noted it felt out of step with the new direction of the series. “It’s just not the Grand Theft Auto experience most people will be gunning for, and certainly not for this price, not a chance in hell.”
In a recent retrospective, Polygon’s Josh Broadwell said that this rare bum note for the series is more fun to talk about than it is to play, but GTA Advance was also a vital stepping stone for the future of the series: “You’ve got your street races, firefighting missions, vigilante missions, all the stuff Rockstar loaded in modern GTA. Just in a much smaller, choppier package with worse radio stations. Those details may seem trivial, but Rockstar soon learned they were hugely important to its audience.”
9
Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999)
Metacritic score: 70
Platform: PC, PS2
This top-down sequel was characterized as a mixed bag by critics, who largely considered it to be more of the same as the original Grand Theft Auto. Reviews praised the soundtrack and early loyalty system, but the controls and overall gameplay left many players cold.
IGN’s Jeremy Dunham dismissed GTA 2 as “a rental at best” given its “shoddy play mechanics.” Writing for Gamespot, Jeff Gerstmann observed, “The graphics have been redone, the music is different, there is a slew of new weapons, the mission structure is a bit more complex, and the city feels a bit more alive. But at its core, GTA 2 is the same old game.” At this point, the prospect of GTA being a multi-billion-dollar franchise and a global pop-culture phenomenon was nowhere in sight.
8
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (2006)
Metacritic score: 86
Platform: PSP
Welcome to Miami! This prequel to 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City centers around the former soldier Vic Vance and his attempts to build up a criminal empire with his brother Lance in early ‘80s Vice City. Critics generally enjoyed the empire-building mechanics, but by this point felt the core GTA gameplay was getting long in the tooth. In an otherwise glowing 90-point review for 1UP.com, Kames Ransom-Wiley saidsaid, “It’s a shame Rockstar chose not to fix obvious flaws that have been called out repeatedly, but the weight of the total experience more than counterbalances this disappointment.”
7
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005)
Metacritic score: 88
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