12 Best Rockstar Games That You Should Know Update 04/2024

best rockstar games

Here are some of the best Rockstar games ever made. They range from movie tie-ins to the best table tennis game ever made. The GTAs are there, too.

But Grand Theft Auto isn’t the only thing that makes Rockstar who they are. They also make other games. With the car-jacking series making a lot of money over the years, Rockstar has been able to be very risky with some of its decisions.

GTA is the best-selling video game of all time, and for good reason. If you’re looking for the best open world game, look no further than Grand Theft Auto. It’s always ahead of the game, is sharply satirical, and has some of the best car handling in sandbox games.

1. State of Emergency 

State of Emergency 

One of a few games on this list that doesn’t feel like a Rockstar game at all. Because it isn’t really that bad. It was made by VIS Entertainment, but it was published by Rockstar. Even in 2002, it was rough around the edges. Even so, there’s something about the sheer chaos that State of Emergency’s on-screen riots cause that has a brash charm to it. In that sense, it’s like “Black Friday: The Game,” which was made 15 years before the chaos of the most frantic shopping day of the year became a thing.

2. Smuggler’s Run

When Trevor Phillips goes on his crazy drug-dealing missions in GTA 5, Smuggler’s Run may have been the reason. For years before everyone’s favourite Canadian sociopath was riding around on an ATV through Sandy Shores, this scrappy PS2 launch title made smuggling illegal goods through virtual deserts seem like a good idea! People don’t remember this down and dirty racer because it was so good. Blame it on the fact that the game came out a year after the medium-changing GTA 3. When you’re smuggling, getting lost in the important people’s minds is likely to be good for you.

3. The Warriors

The Warriors

There are going to be a lot of games for the warriors. If no one told the street gang from Walter Hill’s 1979 cult classic that they were going to be on a home console in 26 years, we don’t know why. We’re just glad that Rockstar’s incredibly loyal, very long tie-in is a little faster at getting the group from the Bronx to their home turf in Coney Island than it was before. The Warriors is a stylish love letter to Streets of Rage that dances around the clunky melee fights in every Grand Theft Auto game. It was made by a studio that was clearly in love with movies. Perhaps “Rockstar Games: Serpico” will come out in 2034, if things keep going like they are now.

4. Red Dead Revolver

Rockstar didn’t write this letter of love to spaghetti westerns. In a different world, Capcom did. Probably, the game will never be made, but thanks to Clint Eastwood’s last few dollars, Rockstar was able to save Red Dead Redemption from the brink of disaster. Would John Marston and Arthur Morgan’s great Frontier novels shoot this outlaw dead in a second? Sure. That’s because Rockstar loves westerns so much that Revolver’s legacy is that of a game that led to two of the best open world games of all time.

5. Manhunt 2

Manhunt 2

In terms of Wii games, Manhunt 2 might be the least likely one. There was a time when Nintendo’s sensors were known for being hard to get rid of, so it was weird when the Big N’s family-friendly box got this grizzly sequel. It’s a shame that this follow-up doesn’t have the sharpened satire of the first one. It doesn’t feel like this game is meant to look into voyeuristic fetishes the way the previous game did. It’s more like a mindless snuff film want tobe. But at least Little Jimmy was able to shake his Wiimote back and forth like he was trying to garrote someone with it. You can see that on the back of the box.

6. GTA: Liberty City Stories

It may be nothing more than a simple copy of GTA 3. But come on. You can play 3D Grand Theft Auto on your PSP! This time, Tony Cipriani, the GTA 3 game’s main quest-giver, lets you drive through the same seedy Liberty City corners that you used to drive around in cars. You can also ride a bike this time, which is new. The fact that Rockstar Leeds was able to fit Liberty City on a PS2 is an amazing technical feat.

7. Red Dead Online

Red Dead Online

Red Dead Online is a great multiplayer game, but it also has a lot of unfulfilled potential. New updates have stopped coming, even though the game broke free of Arthur Morgan’s lasso and became its own game in 2020, During the evenings, being a bounty hunter in the Wild West used to eat up all of our free time. The prairies have since become a little quieter. People who play GTA Online get new things all the time. This outlaw didn’t do as well as his Blaine County counterpart.

8. GTA: Vice City Stories

Rockstar Leeds was able to get another little wonder out of the PSP with this sun-dappled sequel. With a better targeting system and a new lead character named Vic Vance, this is yet another great GTA game that can be played on the go. He’s the brother of Lance. The game’s biggest legacy is that it introduced a feature that the series would return to with huge success in GTA 5. That would be its “empire-building” property system: a way to make Lance’s money grow as you bought and fought to keep local businesses running.

9. GTA: Chinatown Wars

Isn’t top-down GTA a new thing? It would have made them dizzy to tell a child who was playing Pokémon Yellow on their GBA that a few years later, they’d be shooting down criminals in a GTA that had been made just for their Nintendo handheld. This is what happened. There were a lot of smart ideas in Chinatown Wars, but it also made good use of the Nintendo DS’s special features, like using the second screen as a map or blowing into the handheld’s microphone to call an Uber or taxi. Huang Lee’s “pocket-fitting hit” is a GTA gem that has been overlooked.

10. Wild Metal

Wild Metal

When Wild Metal came out, Rockstar wasn’t yet a company called Rockstar. Wild Metal was released by DMA Design in 1999. It hasn’t aged well. The game pits tanks against each other on different planets, which isn’t very fun to play at all. However, you can see the developer’s interest in vehicular carnage start to grow here. This would become a big part of the developer’s game catalogue.

11. Midnight Club: Street Racing

As a racing game, Midnight Club is probably best known as the other Rockstar game with cars. That’s a shame, because these racing games are so well made and fun. If there were more versions and better graphics, Midnight Club would become a critical hit. The original Midnight Club is the weakest in the series.

12. Rockstar Presents Table Tennis

Rockstar Presents Table Tennis

“Why the hell are the Grand Theft Auto people making a table tennis game?” was one of the first questions asked when Table Tennis was announced. It turned out to be a fun sports game that was praised for its smart AI and simple but addictive gameplay. It’s also the first Rockstar game to be made with the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE), which would be used in Grand Theft Auto IV and other games.