So What's the Best 'GTA' Game? Here's Our Series Ranking

Grand Theft Auto Advance deserves a little bit of credit for mashing up the initial gameplay concept of the series as a whole with the "Liberty City" section first established in Grand Theft Auto III. When you judge it by the standards of your average Game Boy Advance game, GTA Advance is a solid portable rendition. But when you see what fans had become accustomed to at that point post-GTA III, this game isn't all that great. Top-down criminal escapades that deal in car theft and shootouts are at play here, obviously. But it just doesn't hit as hard as the same forms of that goated open-world gameplay brought on by the 3D home console series installments.

There are two periods in gaming - pre-GTA III and post-GTA III. Before the world's most groundbreaking open-world game hit the gaming landscape, the first-ever Grand Theft Auto hit the scene and delivered its crime capers from a top-down viewpoint. From a gameplay standpoint, causing massive levels of destruction with your stolen car in tow and even selling them for a nice chunk of change to hit a specified cash goal is pretty dammed fun. There's a huge sense of satisfaction that comes from causing all sorts of mayhem on the streets of Liberty City, "San Andreas", and "Vice City" and completing assorted jobs all the while. This is the series originator, which has to be respected. But the unimpressive visuals and cumbersome controls are two of the main issues that hamper this game's overall quality when all things are considered.

Now let's move on to the follow-up to the original GTA. Grand Theft Auto 2 offered the top-down formula some welcome improvements in the form of increased interactivity on the streets, such as gang members throwing hands with the feds, new forms of criminals to keep track of (and keep away from or take out on your own), and new side jobs that bring new vehicles into the fold. The main locale of "Anywhere, USA" looks great with some upgraded graphics that bring all the illegal madness to life. The gang loyalty system is cool and all that, too. But since this game doesn't really innovate on the formula introduced by its predecessor, GTA 2 falls a bit flat when you consider the best of the GTA franchise as a whole.

GTA III's monumental success obviously resulted in Rockstar Games looking for another way to expand upon its plot and gameplay. Enter Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, which is set up as a better-than-expected prequel experience that follows mobster Toni Cipriani and his rise to infamy as a member of the infamous Leone crime family. The same gameplay goodness produced by the original GTA III came into play here, plus the six-player multiplayer mode allowed for some wild illegal behavior at the time when the servers were still live. GTA: Liberty City Stories got ported to the PS2 and mobile devices later on and still managed to retain its high quality of open world gameplay (removing the multiplayer from those ports was pretty heartbreaking, though).

Just like Liberty City Stories, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories offered a prequel foray into the '80s era of Rockstar Game's Scarface-inspired classic. Victor "Vic" Vance gets the main protagonist role here, which is a pretty cool upgrade from his side character role from the main Grand Theft Auto: Vice City game. Building Vic's empire right alongside his equally violent brother Lance is a blast here - the improved weapon aiming system, new hand-to-hand combat maneuvers, and empire-building elements that introduce some more strategic mechanics into the game's formula make all that criminal ascension action feel and look so damn good. GTA: Vice City Stories had a pretty decent multiplayer mode, too (and as you already know, we were none too keen on it being removed from the PS2 version).

Like the first two games in the GTA series, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars embraces the signature crime-riddled action of the franchise from a top-down perspective. And thanks to the inclusion of clever touch controls, this portable return to the mean streets of Liberty City ended up being even more engrossing and highly intuitive. It's still so dope to see how the touchscreen became such a central feature for this GTA spinoff - you could refer to it as your GPS, use it to cook & fling grenades, and even use it to play around with the game in-game radio. It still blows our minds that a GTA game made its way onto your usual family-friendly Nintendo console, but we're eternally grateful for it. The PlayStation Portable version is just as good as the Nintendo DS version, so you have two ways to enjoy this classic handheld GTA.

GTA IV is considered as one of the most divisive entries in the series due to a number of positive and negative reasoning. First, the positives - as the only GTA released during the PS3/Xbox 360 generation, it's certainly a looker in the visuals department. The game's open world return to Liberty City is a great time, the online multiplayer excelled at the time of release, and the release of the two DLC expansions (The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony) added onto an already great single-player package. But then comes the negatives - there's the huge annoyance from your friend bugging you to hang out by blowing up your phone and the driving physics are way more cumbersome than they should be. Even with those two issues, GTA IV is notable for pushing the open world genre ever further and further convincing the world at large that Rockstar Games are the masters at single player greatness.

You just had to be there when GTA III hit the scene. At that time, there weren't a whole lot of open world games (especially on home consoles) that truly felt alive and gave you the freedom to act however you see fit. When it first dropped, GTA III took over the world and made headlines for being such a revolutionary take on your usual action-adventure game. Liberty City truly came to life as it became the crime-ridden playground for Claude, who ends up on a revenge-fueled mission that's still remarkable to this day. The 3D open world format for the series started here and built a foundation for the better that is still being iterated on. Performing drive-bys, beating up randoms, speeding past red lights, and other sorts of illegal activities ended up being the basis of all the fun disorderly conduct this game entails. Sure, GTA III's visuals haven't aged all that well. And some of the missions are a bit of a headache (we're looking at you, "Espresso-2-Go!"). But those blemishes aren't enough to completely disregard this groundbreaking GTA series entry.

A lot of 90s babies grew into teenage gamers that ended up adoring the musical genres of new wave and synthpop and had the desire to watch Scarface because of this game. Rockstar Games saw what worked with GTA III, threw in the locale of Vice City to inject some "Miami in the 80s" vibes, and delivered a banger of a game in the process. Following the rise of mobster Tommy Vercetti resulted in a game full of more complex missions, a deeper plotline, and a more memorable soundtrack in comparison to those same features' representation in GTA III. Even the draw distance got a noticeable improvement here, which made it easier what was further down in front of you as you drove across this game's light-bright epicenter. Just like its predecessor, Vice City does have a few things working against it. Its visuals are a bit shoddy when you look back at them. And good lord do we and most GTA fans despise that dammed "Demolition Man" mission! We can deal with those problems though because Vice City is still amazing overall.

Shout out to whoever was watching Menace to Society and Boyz n the Hood. Because he or she was clearly inspired to bring the themes of those films to the development team behind the second-greatest GTA game of all time (in our humble opinion), GTA: San Andreas. After his mother's untimely death, the main character known as Carl "CJ" Johnson finds himself re-embracing gang life and ending up with a whole lot more problems in the form of corrupt cops and rival gang members. Like its last two predecessors, San Andreas touches on a real-life time period and even tackles some social issues that still linger to this very day.

When it comes to the GTA trilogy that got its birth on the PS2, San Andreas deserves the highest of honors. The light RPG elements that played into CJ's body structure, finally earning the ability to finally swim, the new minigames put into play, and so much more define the high level of replayability and strong fun factor San Andreas houses. So what's there to not really like about it? Welp, the graphics haven't aged particularly well. And that "Wrong Side Of The Tracks" still frustrates us to no end. With all that being said though, San Andreas is still legendary.

Bruh...GTA V came out in 2013. And since then, Rockstar Games has been EATING off of this cash cow thanks to constant GTA Online updates and repeated purchases from fans that have bought it across three different console generations. It will forever be a trip how this game ends up on the sales charts years and years after its initial launch. But we totally understand why gamers are so infatuated with GTA V - it's clearly the best GTA game, without question. It ups the ante by featuring three playable protagonists, whose lives become intertwined as they get involved in some illegal endeavors that deal in big money heists.

The storytelling is top-notch as expected, the voice acting is strong enough to make players feel like they're watching a Quentin Tarantino-directed classic, and the scope of San Andreas is expanded for the better. From a gameplay standpoint, the gunplay (which can be done via a third- or first-person viewpoint) and vehicle handling are better than ever. What really pushes GTA V up to the Mount Rushmore of gaming is its online multiplayer component, which is regularly updated and massive to the point where a monumental mod ("GTA RP") was birthed from it. GTA V is the king of open world games, Rockstar Games' greatest accomplishment, and clearly the best GTA game ever made.