It’s been over 20 years since the first GTA (Grand Theft Auto) game came out and the franchise is still an absolute favourite among gamers.

Behaving badly has always been an attractive prospect in a virtual world, the license to do as you please without consequence speaks to the devil in all of us. And none have been so successful as Rockstar’s GTA games at giving us that excuse to blow people’s brains out in an amusing and light-hearted manner.

But these aren’t the only games to afford the player such chaotic freedom in an urban setting, so what made this series of games from Rockstar Studios so popular? Before we jump into the discussion, you can check out Coral Promo Code if you’re into online gambling!

Freedom and Realism

Several factors make the GTA games popular. If you wanted to describe all of them with one word, that word would be freedom.

Whether it’s following the path of a self-serving criminal via the game’s various story arcs or just torch an unsuspecting crowd with a flamethrower, GTA lets you indulge in any downright dark fantasy you can come up with.

But it’s not like you are free to do anything, you still have to abide by the rules of physics, for the most part. You are still bound by gravity. The objects around you behave like they would in the real world. It’s this freedom combined with realism that makes for a highly potent and satisfying experience, assuming you like murdering virtual people that is.

GTA III (pictured above) was a ground-breaking 3rd person open-world game and one of the first to feature a totally open sandbox of a world to explore, a characteristic fondly remembered and admired by gamers to this day.

Violence and Humour

There has always been a controversy about video games making you violent, but Rockstar studios have never worried about that, as we all know such a notion is utter bullshit. Given the popularity of GTA games and given that nerds are not committing murder en masse after playing them is all the proof you need.

It’s incredibly violent but it isn’t purely a sandbox for racking up kills, that would be boring. Every character in GTA is a grotesque caricature of people real-life, an exaggeration (of the worst kind) that is reflected in the various grumblings that come from even the most minor of NPCs that you interact with.

This adds a layer of humour to the mix, which makes it all the more satisfying to mutilate the world’s inhabitants as, quite frankly, they come across as somewhat ghastly human beings to begin with.

Crash your car into a bunch of people, ram vehicles with huge monster trucks, shoot civilians, rob banks etc. – no matter the violent activity it never feels cruel or unnecessary, just a reflection of the less than ideal world your character is inhabiting.

Gameplay and Writing

The gameplay is the core element of GTA popularity. You have complete freedom to wander around stealing cars, beating people, and picking fights with the police. But the depth of the game world, albeit a deliberately dystopian one, gives the senseless violence a grounding and the quality of the various simulations make your activities satisfying.

In shootouts, the physics of gunplay and tactical elements are well realised, driving cars is made enjoyable by realistic physics and a wide variety of vehicle types – drifting, burnouts and jumps are all well integrated.

Then there are other activities you can indulge in like swimming, biking, fishing, hunting, paragliding and more. GTA has more minigames hidden in its cities. Some include basketball, tennis, golf, etc.

And that’s not even mentioning the script writing which remains to this day, in our opinion, the sharpest in all video games, with strong characters and highly memorable scenarios giving each game a distinct character of its own.

Bottom Line

There’s a bunch more stuff we could mention, such as the games massive maps that capture the feel of whatever city they’re ripping off, the tons of Easter eggs to find and of course the brilliant and ever-evolving GTA Online, a mode that is still so popular that it sits near permanently in the top 5 games being played on Steam at any given time in terms of active player count.

What’s most remarkable is that despite the franchise being as old as it is, each instalment continues to reinvent and evolve itself to stay relevant to the times, feeding the devil inside all of us with ever more badly-behaved delights of video game distraction.

Case in point? GTA V, a game that first appeared on the Xbox 360 and PS3 back in 2013 has had not just one remaster for the PS4 and Xbox One, but will be getting a 2nd remaster on PS5 and Xbox Series systems the best part of 10 years after its initial release! No wonder Rockstar are in no rush to release GTA VI.

It’s the hilariously violent gift that keeps on giving…