Y'know, GTA 1 isn't well liked by a lot of Grand Theft Auto fans, an' that makes sense. GTA 1's a brutal as Hell game, it can will and wants t' fuck with ya in ways other GTA games never would.
Some take that t' mean that GTA 1 is a bad game, I wouldn't say that. GTA 1 knows what its doin' and it revels in it. It's a game where even having 1 Wanted Rating (or 'Cop Head' in this case) will put you in massive danger. It's a game where your normal health is 1 hit and your max is 4. An enemy with a machine gun can and will delete you.
Combat is such that the best weapon your likely to have access to is cars, either to run over enemies or to blow up with gunfire to catch enemies in the explosion (the other best weapon is the Flamethrower... good luck finding one).
And, of course, every mission is 1 shot, fail and the mission is done. No retries, you want a retry? Restart the level.
No in-game map, use a real one. Don't have a real one because it's the 2020s? Not our problem (there's plenty of very good maps online, even maps that'll tell ya where crates with good stuff in them am).
Yet, I like GTA 1. Don't get me wrong, I have a long, long list of complaints, I'm very critical of a lot of the writing and they really should've just cut the concept of 'following a car' missions, but I always go back to it. Why? Because it is doing exactly what it wants to do.
GTA 1 wants to brutalise ya, later GTAs am power fantasy, GTA 1 y'am running scared, doing whatever you can to get by. Even in-story your at the low-end of the organisations you work for. High expectations, little respect, following the ever unpredictable whims of your employers. By GTA 2 this feeling of overwhelming odds was gone. GTA 2 will still happily be very harsh on you, but less so than 1.
Maybe I'm odd, almost certainly I'm odd, but I appreciate GTA 1 for what it is.
