I know that the end of 2018 has revolved around Red Dead Redemption 2, but let’s focus on the other juggernaut from Rockstar. The first exposure I had to the GTA series was GTA III and it changed the way I looked at games. Being able to go anywhere around an open city like that and basically do whatever you wanted was probably the most overwhelming moment I’ve had in gaming. I’ve played every GTA game since and enjoyed them all. Now, that doesn’t mean that�ꦺ� they don’t have some glaring problems.
This list is going to cover some of the problems the games have had over the years despite literally everyone enjoying these games. A good bit of this stuff will focus on games prior to GTA V because they fixed a good bit of problem🔥s there. Some of the mechanics I have issues with can be chalked up to the games being oꦿlder and that the technology wasn’t there but some were clearly creative decisions.
I’m going to focus on the main series of GTA games because I know that most people have played those and can relate. I want to state that I don’t think any of these games are bad but they all have some bad parts to them. Thanks to the PS2 on PS4 games I have been able to play most of these games lately and the rough patches stick out even more now. With all that being said, let’s dig into the GTA series!
25 The Driv🦩ing ꦉ
I’ll say this: the driving in GTA IV and GTA V is pretty solid, but the PS2 era games have some really rough driving mechanics. At the time the controls weren’t odd, bu🐼t goi🎶ng back to them now just feels wrong.
You use the face buttons for gas and brake.
The cars just had this wild nature to them and made them tough to control, especially the fast ones. There were so many missions I failed b🔥ecause I wrecked my car and ran out of time…so frustrating!
24 Stealth
It seems that every GTA game has a few missions that require stealth and they’re all pretty poor at it! In the age of Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell games we have to have better stealth missions in games. You normally have to sneak for a good reason story-wise but man, I always hate doing them. Sticking to cover is tough and knowing if they can see you or not has always beℱen a problem. Most missions end up failing if you get caught as well and ugh, they just aren’t fun!
23 🐻 Fall Damage 𝔉
I know these games have always shot for real over normal video game physics, but it would cool if you could fall a bit longer and not take damage. It seems the older games weren’t as strict on this as GTA V is but it’s still there. I’m not saying they have to go all Saints Row, but maybe let me jump off a 10 feet tall thing and be good. It’s not a big deal on the surface but the more you play the moꦬre annoying it is.
22 Confusing Side Cont𓃲ent
What I mean by ๊this is that they don’t make it easy to see all the side stuff you can do, not so much the actual content. Seeing s෴tranger missions is pretty clear but you pretty much have to stumble into everything else.
I’ve played GTA V about 4 times and still haven’t seen all there is.
I know that not seeing all the content can come across as a “Wow” thing but not to me. I want t🌄o play all the stuff and I’m actually a fan of how Ubisoft games do it showing the icons.
21 ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ Older Games Have Rough Gܫraphics
I remember looking in magazines around when Vice City was coming out and was drooling over how good the game looked, well…those games haven’t aged welꦺl. The PS2 on PS4 games are cleaned up a bit but they still look pretty rough.
The close-up textures look like they have Vaseline rubbed on them.
The main 🍒thing is the faces of the characters in cutscenes! The things going on can get decently serious and faces can look smeared and there’s no lip-sy🔯nc.
20 Aiming💎🐼 Weapons
The aiming in GTA IV was the first time the games actually felt like competent shooters, but until then it was pretty ro🐽ugh. Free aiming was so difficult so depending on the auto-aim was what most people did and it was spotty. Up close it worked pretty well but rolling up to a group of dudes, you better be ready to do the mission over. There was no getting behind cover and picking people off back then. It was mainly poking out from behind a bui🅠lding or something. It’s hard to believe the combat was so rough back then!
19 Vice City Syndrome 🌺
To some people, Vice City is and will forever be their favorite game in the series and nothing outside of a sequel/remake will top it. There’s nothing wrong with that but it can make approaching a new GTA game a tad rough.
GTA IV got a lot of undeserved hate in my opinion.
Vice City is an amazing game and seeing more of it would be awesome, but not everything has to be around that game in the series. Scarface is one of my favorite movies so I get it, but GTA V is a better game!
18 ♏ Saving System
Playing GTA V you will notice t꧅hat after a mission is complete that the game will autosave and you will be all good to turn the game off. Going back to the PS2 games, that was not the case at all! You had to go🅘 back to a few specific save point or the progress you made would be for nothing. It became a big pain when there wasn’t a safe spot close to the mission finishing. It was a system that we all just kind of ignored but thankfully we don’t have to worry about that anymore!
17 ꩲ 🎉 GTA Online
GTA Online launched a little while after GTA V came out and it was very broken! I remember trying to get in on the PS3 and it was a nightmare and wasn’t stable till it came out on the Xbox O༒ne/PS4.
Once it worked it was kind of a grind to play.
This is totally a personal thing, but I always looked at GTA Online as the reason we never got single-player DLC. They had🍃 story based dlc with this but not with the characters from the single-player.
16 💝 San♔ Andreas Is Too Long
Some people peg San Andreas as the best GTA game and I can respect that but it’s an extremely long game! GTA III and Vice City are both solid 20 hour games to complete the story but it legit takes around 50 hours to beat San Andreas. I have no problems with long games when t🗹hey need to be, but this game felt like it was a bit bloated. There are a ton of crazy missions though so that makes 🍸up for all that for the most part.