Was it the setting? Saints Row and Saints Row 2 made a valiant effort, but still, Rockstar remained undefeated. Each game had tried its own twist on the genre, with the most successful being Assassin's Creed in 2007, but nobody was pulling in the GTA numbers. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Mercenaries, Spider-Man 2, Just Cause, and others crowded into the open world market, but Grand Theft Auto surpassed them all with its follow-ups: San Andreas and Vice City.ĭevelopers continued chasing after GTA in the HD generation, but none of them seemed capable of catching Rockstar's magic. In the years that followed, it seemed like everyone wanted a piece of that Grand Theft Auto pie. 'Because you can do anything,' came the answer. One day, I asked my friends just why they thought it was so great.

I wasn't allowed to play it, much less play video games, but it was all my friends could talk about. Rockstar almost single-handedly established the PlayStation 2's dominance as a games console. You couldn't go anywhere without seeing ads for it.

It's hard to overstate just how big Grand Theft Auto 3 was.

Gta 4 2 player