I voted for GTA3 as the story was tops with the mafia, yakuza, crooked cops and the rest. Surprised to see SA being a high getter so far as that game did some really annoying crap like getting fat and having to burn it off and other 'sims' like crap...also the fact it was ghetto really was a huge turnoff.
Also on GTA4 another reason people don't like it is not just the overly serious thing, but it seemed more to stand for Godawful Training Arena 4 as it kept spoon feeding stuff over and over limiting what you could do for hours on end. Never played a gta game before that went so long and not letting you get a weapon, then when you do(the bat) it takes it away until a bit later yet. Too much going on, too much nagging and attention stealing stupidity from the AI buddies. Chinatown Wars was semi-boring too but at least you could get a piece, but the drug trade was lame and unnecessary and it felt so tired and me-too other than the ability to smash a cop car to lower the stars(that was cool.)
I'm done with the series at this rate which saddens me but the PSP efforts weren't that good and those 2 I just knocked weren't either. I think it's fallen into the media trendy style of rate em high because it is what it is not looking from a bigger perspective just a week of hype to get better points. To me it was all downhill after Vice City.