Hi everyone.  This is my first post here.  I've been reading this forum for a while and have enjoyed the discussions and personalities here. 

I've been a PC gamer for years and prior to last year I had never owned any console or even knew much about them.  Last year, I bought a PS3 as a Blu Ray player and now I'm very into the console and spend many hours playing many games on it. 

I've never played a GTA game, but as I look at forums like this and learn more about consoles (and console wars) I realize that GTA is a very big deal and the GTA IV launch appears to be one of the most anticipated events of the year.  Everyone is so excited.  I want to be excited too.  I'm just not sure what there is to be excited about.

From what I've seen, the GTA games look like crime-based games where you have great freedom to roam around and kill random people and destroy random property.  Why is this so fun?  Please understand that I am not knocking the game.  I've never played them and am only going by what I've read about them and the videos that I've seen.   There must be something to these games to justify the hype and incredible sales.

I want to want GTA IV.  So, what is it about these games that makes them so great to so many people?  (BTW I like playing all or almost all genres).   

I've just started replaying my GTAIII PC copy to try and get me hyped. I enjoy the game, but it's not something I yearn for.

Welcome to the forum by the way.

Ditto.  GTA games are pretty mediocre IMO.  In some ways, I think a lot of people are getting excited because they don't have much else to get excited about.

I was about to post the same thing.

They're pretty mediocre, ut there's nothing else to get excited about. 

People could be excited about MGS4, but I guess that's too far away.

I think the reason people are so excited is the freedom that GTA III gave people. It was the first to give you a huge area and say have fun. Also it will always get attention due to its politically incorrectness. Any game that you get to have hookers in your car is going to get alot of hype. People like to do things in video games that they can not do in real life and GTA has been the best at letting people do just that.

I myself don't see a big deal with the game i say if you owned one you owned them all, yes you get new guns and new cars but i myself don't care for sandbox game.

I've actually had more fun with Crackdown than any of the GTA games due to the extreme nature of the abilities involved (climb tall buildings, jump ridiculous distances, pick up semi trucks to throw at criminals). The exploration and collection elements work exceptionally well in that game.

Wow, the replies thus far are pretty consistent with my own impressions.  I excpected folks to chime in with more praise.  But hey, if you get to have hookers in your car I suppose that's one point in the games favor. 

Why should we have to convince you of anything? The previous games in the series are the best selling console games of last gen so that alone should tell you that there must be something to them. The fact that the only thing you mention about the game in your second post is about hookers in cars leads me to believe you're just wasting everyone's time.

I suggest you just try one out for yourself, if you have a PS3 with BC then just rent one of the old ones and see what people are raving about. Personally I really like the series, but it's difficult to put into words why. Mainly I just like driving around and reaking havoc until I get killed, makes a great multiplayer game when you just take turns seeing who can get the most stars (wanted level) before dying.

When released, GTA3 was the best known implementation of a huge sandbox game, and it was a pretty good one. The subsequent releases were always incremental improvements, but there have been many games that are better in most areas than GTA. I'd put Godfather above GTA, for example, because I simply enjoyed it more.

GTA is basically a jack of all trades, but not particularly good at any of them. The point is that you can choose to do whatever, or that the whole system can interact at once. For me, it was that novelty that I enjoyed -- I could do anything, try anything, steal any car, get chased by the police, listen to any radio station, etc. That novelty wore off, so I don't really dig GTA anymore.

I did like Godfather a lot though. It was more well structured, and I seem to prefer that sort of game a bit better.

The GTA3 games have all been released for the PC, which is absolutely their best platform. Go give one a try.

This is perfect reasoning and, when applied generally, explains why everyone should play and love The Sims.