Building comparison
head to head
Grand Theft Auto IIIvsGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Neither is meaningfully harder - they pose close to the same test. The widest gap is optimization, and it is a single point.
Grand Theft Auto III
Optimization · Practiced Mastery
The genre-defining 3D open-world crime game set in Liberty City.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Optimization · Practiced Mastery
A sprawling open-world crime epic with RPG-style character stats across a whole state.
Grand Theft Auto III leans Optimization (Practiced Mastery); Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas leans Optimization (Practiced Mastery).
Grand Theft Auto IIIGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Axis by axis
Execution4 vs 4
Same score on execution - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Grand Theft Auto III
Driving and clunky gunplay set a modest physical bar
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Flying school and drive-bys need decent hands
Reads0 vs 0
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Grand Theft Auto III
Enemies are scripted; nothing models the player
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Gang AI is scripted, never adaptive
Variance2 vs 2
Same score on variance - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Grand Theft Auto III
Pedestrian and traffic chaos lightly randomises encounters
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Territory wars and traffic add light randomness
Optimization5 vs 6
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
Grand Theft Auto III
Mission routing and city knowledge are learnable systems
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Stats, gym, weapon skill, and routes reward systematic play
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.