Opinion: every Grand Theft Auto ranked, by a man with two days off booked for the next one

This is Vox, with an opinion. The dates and facts are real and checked. The ranking is mine, it is correct, and I will not be taking questions. Fair warning: I swear in this one.

Twenty-one days before the ninth mainline Grand Theft Auto, somebody should put the first eight in order, and the rest of this site is too busy being accurate to do it. So here they are, worst to best, with the handhelds thrown in because I played them on a bus and I have feelings.

11. Grand Theft Auto (1997)

Top-down, a city seen from a helicopter, a telephone that gave you jobs. It invented the idea, which is the only reason it is on this list and not in a museum. I respect it the way you respect a grandfather: from a distance, and without asking it to drive.

10. Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999)

The same thing with gangs you could please and a sepia filter it called the future. The first GTA where who you worked for mattered, which GTA 6's Criminal Profile is still chewing on 27 years later. Still top-down. Still a museum.

9. Chinatown Wars (2009)

The DS one. Top-down again, drug dealing by stylus, and a wanted system where you lost the police by smashing their cars rather than hiding. Genuinely clever, and nobody played it because it was on a console your little brother owned. The best game on this list that I will never recommend.

8. Liberty City Stories (2005)

A PSP prequel to GTA III that was mostly GTA III again, but in your hands on a train, which in 2005 was witchcraft. Fine. It was fine. Toni Cipriani deserved a bigger game.

7. Vice City Stories (2006)

Better than its sibling because it had Vice City in it, and Vice City on a bus is still Vice City. An empire-building system that nobody remembers and a soundtrack that everybody does. The last time Rockstar went back to 1980s Florida until this.

6. GTA III (2001)

The one that changed everything, which is exactly why it is sixth. Liberty City in three dimensions, a silent man called Claude, a radio dial, a city that opened island by island. Every game above it is this game with more. Play it today and it is grey, stiff and brilliant for about four hours. Our GTA III page is kinder than I am.

5. GTA IV (2008)

The serious one. Niko Bellic, a cousin who wanted to go bowling, a Liberty City so heavy it made the cars feel like boats, and a story about a man who could not leave his war behind. Sound familiar? Eve thinks Jason is the same story with better weather. IV is the game I admire most and replay least, which is damn near the definition of fifth place. The GTA IV page has the detail.

4. GTA 6 (2026), provisionally

Not out. Not ranked. Fourth is where I am holding the space, because Rockstar has now told Edge the world is nearly as big as IV, V and Red Dead 2 combined, that time runs slower and that the police need a witness, and if even half of that lands it goes above IV on day one. If it goes above San Andreas I will write a correction with my own hands. Check back on November 22, when I have surfaced.

3. Vice City (2002)

The sun, the Pointer Sisters, a pastel coat, Tommy Vercetti buying a mansion with a pool. Rockstar took GTA III's bones and gave them a tan and a soundtrack, and for one year it was the coolest thing on the planet. It is third because the shooting was still GTA III's shooting and because the mansion was the whole plot. It is third and not lower because I can still hear the opening of the radio when I close my eyes. The Vice City page has every district.

2. GTA V (2013)

More than 200 million copies, four console generations, an online mode that paid for GTA 6 twice over, and a heist structure every other game has stolen since. Three leads, a desert, a mountain, a stock market you could crash. It is second because it is the best-made game on the list and the least surprising, and because thirteen years of GTA Online have worn its edges smooth. It is also the game I have played most, so my own opinion is lying to me a little. The GTA V hub has the sixty-hour version.

1. San Andreas (2004)

Three cities, a state between them, a bicycle, a gym, a jetpack, a girlfriend who liked you fatter, and CJ, the only GTA lead who ever felt like he lived somewhere before the game started. It let you get fat. It let you fly a plane into a rural airstrip and pick a fight in a bar. Every system GTA 6 is bringing back, from the gym to the weight to the clothes the world notices, was in San Andreas twenty-two years ago, and Ruby has the receipts. It was too big, it was a bit broken, and it was the best. Our San Andreas page has every town.

GTA Online (2013 to now), unranked

Not a game. A weather system. It arrived two weeks after V with a launch so bad Rockstar paid everyone GTA$500,000 to apologise, and it has been running ever since. It is why there was no GTA 6 in 2019, why Take-Two can call GTA 6 single-player with a straight face, and why I am playing it this week with four people I have never met. Unranked, out of respect and fear.

The verdict

San Andreas, V, Vice City, then a hole where GTA 6 goes, then IV, III, the handhelds and the museum. Disagree by all means. I will be busy from the 19th.