The Grand Theft Auto series is no stranger to controversy. Actually, some could say that it looks for it. Rockstar seem to be well aware that you can bring in more heads with controversy than praise, though the company seems to thrive on both, and knows just how to use that to its advantage.
From the get-go, even before the series took off and took to three dimensions, they were getting shit for some of the freedom they granted their players. This was an open world unlike any anyone had ever seen. Was it a driving game? Yes. Was it a shooting game? Yes. Was it a crime game? Yes. It was all those things, and seemed to somehow do all of them well. But that is also the element that scared some people.
Would this game and the world it created breed psychos? I still believe the most rational of people will tell you the opposite. We will tell you that Grand Theft Auto granted us a world where we could finally RELEASE our inner psychopath with no drawbacks, and that helped feed and quiet the little psycho that lives inside us all. But what is it that everyone talks about when it comes to a GTA game? They tend to focus on the stuff that scares people. Hookers, drugs, and so on. Small, minuscule aspects of the game that the press make giant for the sake of a story.
The irony here is that people really didn’t start talking about this game until Grand Theft Auto III, and what were they talking about? Well, as much as all the gamers were talking about just how amazing and fully-realized this world felt, the press seemed really hung up on one thing, and it is that one thing that begins this list…