As we teeter on the brink of gaming’s biggest launch of 2026 – perhaps even decade – so many questions swirl: which GTA 6 cars will make the best vrrrrm? Is it possible for me to be any more obsessed with that Justice theme song? On a scale of one to ten, how many dongs? Answers will inevitably come, but for now – as we crank up the Phil Collins and roar deeper into Eurogamer’s GTA Week – there’s only one question we’re concerned with. Yes, it’s the return of our irregular series The Big Question, in which we ponder another topical talking point before wafting it lovingly over to you. And this time around we’re asking, what’s the best GTA?
Because I’m old, my journey with the series began all the way back in 1997, with the advent of GTA 1. I still vividly remember sitting with the included paper map sprawled across my lap, wide-eyed at the top-down sandbox as my hands reckoned with the weird controls. I remember feeling dizzy at the thrill of high-speed freedom (and possibly the antiquated frame rate) as I tore across Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City – particularly whenever this catchy little number came on. I was never massively into those early GTAs, though, not even when the series shifted to full 3D with GTA 3. And it wasn’t until Vice City’s arrival in 2002, that I began to properly appreciate the series’ rhythms – even though I’ll readily admit I was at my happiest tearing through the streets with the radio blaring. Vice City’s soundtrack, from A Flock of Seagulls to Loverboy and everything in between, is still unmatched today.
But is it the best GTA? Vice City is certainly the GTA I’ve fondest memories of, even if I did mostly play it as a glorified jukebox. And as much as I’ve a soft spot for Chinatown Wars on Nintendo DS (a game whose propulsive style and classic top-down aesthetic did a fine job of melding GTAs old and new), Vice City is the GTA I’ve returned to most. But what about others on the Eurogamer team? I asked, they’ve answered with their own personal bests, and when they’re done yammering, it’s over to you – there’s even a poll! And don’t forget we’ll be exploring the series more thoroughly as GTA Week continues.
Dom’s pick – Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
I think, even to this day, GTA: Vice City represents what I think the best Grand Theft Auto is. The vibes, even 24 years later, are immaculate: its vision of Miami in the ’80’s, with all its cocaine-fueled, sun-washed Yuppie excess makes for the perfect backdrop in a game that’s all about freedom and fantasy. The first half of Vice City orientates you wonderfully – casting you as Ray Liotta’s arrogant, low-key psychopathic Tommy Vercetti – and letting you quietly get to know the rules of this frontier of narcotic hedonism.
Then you’re let loose, wide-eyed with nostrils flared, into the second half of the game: a completely open-ended experience that’s all about money, moxie, and madness. Take over businesses, build the Vercetti empire, strongarm your way into Vice City’s seedy underbelly in any way you see fit. Even in a more nascent form, Rockstar managed to combine open world ‘side activities’ with its main narrative, building on everything GTA 3 put down without losing sight of the core theme (something I think San Andreas is guilty of; that game goes off the rails by the third island, whereas I think Vice City always keeps its focus quite neat).
With Vice City, it feels like Rockstar was at the peak of its power, the excesses of its neon-soaked in-game world reflected in the developer’s ambitions in the real one: Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds, Tom Sizemore, Luis Guzmán, Gary Busey, Danny Trejo, Debbie Harry, Danny Dyer, Philip Michael Thomas, William Fichtner… that is an absolutely ridiculous cast, and – in researching the game for something else I’m writing – I have learned there was so much on-set tension between this uncontrollable star power and Rockstar’s development team that Reynolds nearly had a fistfight with studio co-founder Dan Houser.
That tension, and that slightly arrogant ambition on behalf of Rockstar, manifest in the bones of Vice City. It’s a game struggling against its confines, made by a developer feeling like there is nothing in the world that can stop them. I imagine GTA 6 may feel the same, so how fitting, then, that we’re going back to Vice City for the pleasure of it.
-Dom
Bertie’s pick – Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Barring the original, Vice City was the GTA I played longest, so those are the cornerstones of my GTA experiences. But San Andreas left the biggest impression on me. And I think it’s because it was the first game I played that really attempted to portray Black culture, albeit through a stereotyped and potentially problematic West Coast rap lens’ – I don’t know how well it holds up today.
I was very into West Coast rap and hip-hop at the time, and the idea I could partially experience the lives which were referenced in that music so frequently – that I could live a kind of NWA origin story through the character CJ – really appealed to me, as it obviously did to many other people. It felt like I was coming straight outta Compton, as it were. It was rap tourism, which was probably totally fake and insincere to the actual experience of a life like that, but I drank it up all the same.
Fast-forward to GTA 5, which I think of as San Andreas mark two (in a similar way that I think of GTA 6 as Vice City mark two), and it’s still startlingly apparent upon playing it – even now, many years after it was first released – that no other company attempts Black culture in the same way. No one even dares. And while I’m totally not the right person to evaluate how well Rockstar carries it off, it does make the GTA experience unique.
Back to San Andreas and I also enjoyed its ridiculous bloat: the gym sessions, the mini-games, eating burgers. It was like living a life in that sunny city, a life I couldn’t live otherwise. I’m excited that some of those features are making their way back into GTA 6.
-Bertie
Sherif’s pick – Grand Theft Auto 4
I’ve never visited America, but I’ve never been more fond of any city in the world than New York. It may not have been called that in GTA 4, but it is the closest any game has got to making me realise my dream of living in and exploring the city.
GTA 4’s Liberty City has one of my favourite aesthetics in games: the dreary, autumnal look where the most sunshine you get is an overcast day. Perhaps New York’s relatively compact layout (compared to sprawling Los Angeles) is what made it possible to replicate most of its boroughs in-game, and what helped it achieve a sense of place no other GTA comes close to. I knew my way around so much of that map just by landmarks. I was surprised how much of the area around Niko’s house I remember when I revisited the game five-ish years ago.
I also consider GTA 4 to be the last entry in the series’ classic era. Despite being the first to use Rockstar’s now-standard RAGE engine, its controls were just about as loose and arcadey as its 3D predecessors. RAGE’s weighty animations gave its characters and cars the look and motion of their real-life counterparts without interfering too much with how they felt to control. GTA 4 stood on the boundary of old and new while delivering the series’ next evolution – a tough act for any sequel to follow.
-Sherif
So that’s The Big Question, and the best – or at least our favourite – GTAs… now it’s over to you!
