{"id":12433,"date":"2026-07-31T16:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/?p=12433"},"modified":"2026-08-01T00:37:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T21:07:13","slug":"grand-theft-auto-the-legacy-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/2026\/07\/31\/grand-theft-auto-the-legacy-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Theft Auto \u2013 The Legacy Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the next few months, I\u2019m going to be taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we\u2019ll be putting together won\u2019t be traditional re-reviews, and they won\u2019t carry IGN\u2019s typical score out of 10, because it really wouldn\u2019t be at all fair to simply pick apart old games published multiple hardware generations ago and make them sweat under the harsher standards of 2026. What we will be doing, however, is re-examining what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release, digging into what they achieved and the legacies they established, and rediscovering how much fun each of them remain today. We\u2019ll also be identifying both the parts of the GTA experience that have seen the most evolution and growth, as well as the parts that remain fascinating, commendable, and timelessly impressive. At the end of the project, using GTA\u2019s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly sit in my long-term love for this series. First cab off the rank? The original Grand Theft Auto.<\/em><\/p>\n

When the original Grand Theft Auto arrived towards the end of the 1990s, it was like nothing I\u2019d ever played before, but it somehow also felt like I\u2019d been in training for it most of my life. On the one hand, it was essentially the digitisation of an entire childhood looming over a 2D toy car mat \u2013 my diecast collection scattered around me as I simulated countless car chases from above. On the other, it felt instantly familiar to play \u2013 like an intuitive yet anti-social distortion of the top-down delights of Codemasters\u2019 Micro Machines. Grand Theft Auto was bold and brash. It was also brutally unforgiving, regularly frustrating, and cumbersome to control. But despite that, I was consistently drawn to it \u2013 like a moth to a flamethrower. Nearly 30 years later, I was more than a little curious about how I\u2019d fare playing it all over again, but I\u2019ve found myself with a largely unchanged opinion \u2013 continuously stumped by its absolutely unsympathetic difficulty, yet consistently charmed by its wanton silliness, varied vehicles, hilarious sound effects, and trendsetting original soundtrack. <\/p>\n

“An AK-47 got the power in its barrel to mooooove any mother that gets in the way…”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s very easy to look back at the original GTA as a product of a different era, and that goes beyond its old school, top-down aesthetic. Its arcade-style approach to progression, which is baked around trying to maximise your overall score for each level while juggling a very limited set of lives, is nothing like the GTA series we\u2019ve known since its complete reinvention at the dawn of the century. There\u2019s no meaningful story here to speak of; just 90-odd seconds of cutscenes where a gallery of criminal stereotypes either pass on their thanks, or issue you direct threats related to putting unwanted things in your butt.<\/p>\n

However, GTA was already a product of a different era upon its initial release in European territories in 1997 \u2013 and even more so by its North American launch in 1998. The flat sprites of its vehicles and pedestrians give it that 2D-adjacent look, even if people often gloss over that the cities themselves are actually rendered in 3D. But GTA found itself sandwiched between stuff like the debut of Gran Turismo and the arrival of Half-Life, Unreal, and Metal Gear Solid. We\u2019re talking Tekken 3, Thief, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. What I\u2019m saying is that we knew where the cutting edge was in the late \u201990s, and GTA didn\u2019t really feel like it was on it.<\/p>\n

The three maps may not be enormous by modern standards, and the selection of weapons is admittedly slim, but GTA was unprecedented in terms of the open-world freedom it allowed.\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

And yet it still works, and that\u2019s really thanks to the high level of player agency it offers. The three maps may not be enormous by modern standards, and the selection of weapons is admittedly slim, but GTA was unprecedented in terms of the open-world freedom it allowed. It feels unlikely that anyone at developer DMA Design could\u2019ve fully understood just how stealthily innovative GTA would ultimately be, but it nonetheless laid down the bedrock for sandbox action gaming as a whole. Complete tasks as clinically or as chaotically as you choose. Navigate Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas however you see fit. Take whatever vehicle you want, and take on objectives in whatever order works for you. Not interested in completing actual missions? GTA is engineered to allow you to ignore them entirely. You can simply steal cars, wreak havoc with pedestrians, and battle law enforcement. <\/p>\n

5-George-K<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Make no mistake: GTA is a somewhat clunky game to play. This was true in 1997, and even more so now. To be clear, I don\u2019t personally have major problems with the driving. Yes, it suffers a bit from the jerkiness of the camera zooming in and out. Yes, you\u2019ll bump into other cars regularly as they appear on screen too late to avoid. Yes, some cars are too fast for their own good, with the camera unable to zoom out fast enough (or far enough) to avert spearing into high-speed crashes. Yes, motorbikes are pretty pointless, and I spend more time getting back on them after wiping out than I do riding them in the first place.<\/p>\n

Broadly, however, I believe the driving is quite fun \u2013 and I suspect a lot of that probably stems from my background with Codemasters\u2019 Micro Machines series. For context, the Micro Machines series was one of the most-loved racers of its era \u2013 and certainly one of my own favourites as I grew out of rolling around on the floor making engine noises. Its top-down perspective was really the perfect training zone for a game like GTA, and I would suggest that \u2013 in the late \u201990s \u2013 there\u2019s an incredibly strong chance that a player of GTA would\u2019ve had some kind of previous muscle memory from Micro Machines nestled somewhere in their fingertips.<\/p>\n

[Micro Machines\u2019] top-down perspective was really the perfect training zone for a game like GTA.\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

I can appreciate that without that prior experience there are elements of GTA\u2019s driving controls that may be a little hard to hurdle. For instance, when cars are headed down the screen, from top to bottom, the controls remain consistent. That is, stab left, and your car will turn to its left \u2013 and immediately head to the right <\/em>of the screen. It\u2019s ultimately a car, so it\u2019s entirely logical that left is always left; it\u2019d be untenable to have the controls flip mid-corner. But this kind of thing is printed into my brain. It\u2019s second nature \u2013 if not from Micro Machines, then from an entirely analogue childhood of racing R\/C cars and quickly learning everything is mirrored when they\u2019re racing back towards you. However, I can anecdotally report this was initially a bit of a braintwister for some of my kids, so I can see how the controls might seem a little obtuse at first. I feel like they were initially treating the car\u2019s direction like a cursor, rather than the car as a discrete object.<\/p>\n

AAARRRGGGHHHHH<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The lack of an in-game map spun them out a little, too. Luckily, I still have actual fold-out paper maps of these cityscapes, which are genuinely essential to complete certain missions (like quickly finding the nearest bomb shop before a strict timer runs out). They proved to be a neat novelty for kids from a generation who\u2019ll never know what it\u2019s like to navigate your way to an unknown location by leafing through a dog-eared street directory that smells like petrol and wet socks. My GTA maps are a little flimsy these days but, considering GTA 6 and future PlayStation games in general won\u2019t even be getting a disc, they\u2019re also a fun if now bittersweet footnote in the story of physical gaming media. <\/p>\n

My GTA maps are a little flimsy these days but, considering GTA 6 and future PlayStation games in general won\u2019t even be getting a disc, they\u2019re also a fun if now bittersweet footnote in the story of physical gaming media.\u00a0\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

Busted<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s on foot where GTA falls down and, unsurprisingly, the same things that frustrated me about it in the late \u201990s continue to do so today. For context, the tank-like on-foot controls are a side effect of the fact that this was a time before dual analogue controllers became the default. Whether you\u2019re on PC with a keyboard or PlayStation with a controller, all you can do is turn left and right, and move forward or backwards. Don\u2019t think of it like a primitive version of a modern, twin-stick shooter like Hotline Miami \u2013 you\u2019re really just a tiny, slow car with legs. The Micro Machines-style controls make less sense on foot, and they\u2019ve definitely dated.<\/p>\n

You’re fired.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The upshot is combat is harder than a $2 steak. It’s tougher to deal with clunky controls when just one hit will kill your character. Body armour pickups are available, but they\u2019ll only protect you from three hits. It\u2019s also incredibly difficult to line up shots from long distances, and not much easier at close quarters. It\u2019s particularly tricky to turn and shoot at pursuing police since, by the time you do manage to pivot 180 degrees, there\u2019s typically only time to get one or two shots off. <\/p>\n

The pistol is a mostly useless weapon overall, in this case. The machine gun is far more effective, since you can spray a burst in an arc and get at least one round to hit. The flamethrower is the most trusty option, but you won\u2019t see a great deal of it without resorting to cheats. <\/p>\n

I cheated like hell when I played GTA as a teenager, and I\u2019d honestly be surprised if that wasn\u2019t the case for most people of my vintage. The action is a lot more fun with 99 RPGs in your back pocket. Cheats are very much an integral part of GTA\u2019s legacy. While cheats have become depressingly rare over the last several generations, the GTA series \u2013 up until GTA 5, at least \u2013 remains one of the last bastions of fun, silly, and useful cheats.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Gouranga!<\/strong> <\/h2>\n

While GTA invariably found familiar ways to frustrate me, there is still a pile of things about it that bring a grin to my face in 2026.<\/p>\n

I appreciate the variety of cars, and I greatly admire the way they look. Sure, these 2D sprites are typically quite tiny on screen, but each car has been crafted with enough care that they\u2019re not just blobs of pixels that look vaguely like cars. They have terrific depth, and the curves of an off-brand VW Beetle are noticeable and distinctly contrast the flat and angular lines of a boxy American sedan \u2013 despite the fact both are simple 2D images.<\/p>\n

2D, or not 2D? That is the question.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I also enjoy that the mix changes up between cities. Vice City has more exotic supercars that are unique to its beachside streets. San Andreas is the only place you\u2019ll find the floral-painted Love Wagon. Each city has bespoke cop cars with different liveries and siren layouts. There\u2019s effort to make each place distinct, and the cars are a big part of making that happen. The seeds the studio planted here in this regard would truly germinate in 2004\u2019s GTA: San Andreas, though it\u2019s crazy to think this happened just seven years later.<\/p>\n

Moreover, I love the resemblance that many of the cars have to Matchbox cars of the \u201980s, to the point where it\u2019s entirely obvious the team were simply turning photos of actual models into in-game sprites, wholesale. Sure, it\u2019s fair enough to argue that GTA\u2019s F40, Diablo, 911, or Viper lookalikes could have been just as easily gleaned from photographs of the real things than toys, but then you spot stuff like the orange-roofed ambulance, which still sports an identical E on top from its equivalent Matchbox model. Hell, GTA\u2019s Flamer has the whole livery from the Chevy they sourced it from \u2013 squint real hard and it still says 57 Chevy on the deck lid! <\/p>\n

The Chevy changed colour when you put it in water.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even more than the cars, I hugely appreciate the soundtrack. So much effort was made to build a series of radio stations filled with credible-sounding music. Credible is actually an understatement considering how many of these tracks are genuine earworms. You could actually put GTA\u2019s PlayStation disc into a standard CD player and simply play the music. This functionality wasn\u2019t actually unique to GTA at the time, but it\u2019s still nifty. Did I do that? Hell yes, I did. I even recorded it onto a cassette so I could play it in my car.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, GTA\u2019s completely silly brand of squelching hit-and-runs and over-the-top violence keenly reminded me of how successfully it weaponised controversy as a free marketing tool around the time of its launch. It certainly wasn\u2019t the first game to cause a ruckus for gratuitous vehicular violence. In actual fact, that distinction is owned by an arcade game called Death Race, released way back in 1976, which caused a huge fuss in the mainstream press for allowing players to run over and kill crude-looking pedestrians on screen. But the hullabaloo around GTA was hefty at the time, even in the immediate wake of Carmageddon \u2013 which caused a large fuss of its own a few months before GTA\u2019s launch. <\/p>\n

[GTA] certainly wasn\u2019t the first game to cause a ruckus for gratuitous vehicular violence.\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

Now, even back in the late \u201990s I did think the reaction was a little overblown. That is, 1996\u2019s Die Hard Trilogy predated GTA by a year, and that featured pedestrians getting absolutely splattered<\/em> left and right \u2013 complete with a wiper animation clearing the blood from the screen when driving in first-person. But, yes, there\u2019s no denying the original GTA pushed the envelope in ways not even the modern series would attempt today, whether that\u2019s mowing down a line of Hare Krishnas, blowing up a school bus, or indeed assassinating the \u2018High Priest of Babylon\u2019 \u2013 who turns out to be none other than the President of the United States himself. GTA\u2019s low-fi aesthetic makes a lot of this stuff feel pretty goofy and harmless here, but certainly at least some of it would be a little too grim to sync with the satirical sensibilities of the modern series.<\/p>\n

Too cruel for school.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Verdict<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Like a Stone Age axe, Grand Theft Auto is hard, primitive, and \u2013 honestly \u2013 more than a little cumbersome. However, like said axe, it\u2019s nonetheless a valuable artefact that maintains an effective edge to it. Fearless but flawed and endearing but unnecessarily difficult, the original Grand Theft Auto may be tricky to wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who didn\u2019t previously play it during its moment back in the late \u201990s, but I can\u2019t deny how fascinating it\u2019s been to re-experience its prehistoric brand of open-world freedom in the context of everything that\u2019s come since. It just demands patience, precision, and a paper map by your side.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.<\/em><\/p>\n

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