Joshimuz Presents: Rockstar Games' Games Marathon
To prepare and celebrate the launch of Grand Theft Auto VI, between the 26th of May and the 19th of November Joshimuz will be playing through every single Rockstar Games' game, back to back!
The marathon will be live on Twitch and Youtube Tuesday to Friday (with some Mondays and Saturdays) starting 9:30 UK time, with full and edited playthroughs posted to Youtube shortly after. Dates for when each game will roughly be played can be found on the schedule page.
Below is the list of every game that will be played, along with a Youtube link to the playthrough, how long it took Joshimuz to beat it, and what tier list raiting he gave it.
The full list of games is from the "official" list found on Rockstar's website. This list was chosen as it's as close to an "official" list as possible which cannot be edited freely by anyone, so debates over what is and isn't included are fruitless. If you take any issues with what is or isn't included then take it up with Rockstar Games and not with me!
After the marathon Joshimuz will go straight into playing GTA VI!
| Game | YouTube link(s) | Time taken | Notes | Tier list rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wild Metal Country | UNCUT | 12:56:57 | Could've beaten in ~9 hours if I had complete gameplay knowledge from the start. Game was OK but waaaay too long with very barren empty maps. Classic 90s "just add more content!" logic. | Definitive Edition |
| Thrasher Presents Skate and Destroy | UNCUT | 5:11:47* | I have never played a skating game. I do not care about skating. The game is a skating simulator, more so than THPS, and expects you to know what a DS 180 Tricky Backshot Grindslave is and when to do the 5 button combo for it. After struggling through 6 out of 12 levels it became apparent that I was not going to be able to progress. Chat agreed with me to skip this game when I finally learnt to do manuals and we figured out that they do not continue combos. The speedrun WR which everyone was using as backseat fuel does a glitch to make manuals continue combos. This game is apparently way jankier and harder than THPS, but I have no frame of refrence. I do not feel good skipping a game, but for the sake of the marathon we need to continue, no one was having fun. I may return later. | Advance |
| Grand Theft Auto | UNCUT | 11:56:11 | Terrible mission design, stupid score requirements to progress requiring cheesing, awful map layouts, and really hard instakill combat... but despite all that it's still really the first game of it's kind so honestly gets a pass for a lot of it. | Definitive Edition |
| Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 | UNCUT | 4:11:15 | This was way better than GTA. Much better missions, much nicer map, and sort of a coherent story! | III |
| Grand Theft Auto 2 | UNCUT | 19:32:55 | This was waaaaaaaaay better than GTA and London! Much nicer map layouts, camera is much improved, movement, missions, everything! Still personally not a fan of 2D GTAs so did not enjoy it towards the end, and it took a long time as I was only playing missions and not grinding score. I can see why people like this one though, but not for me personally. | III |
| Oni | UNCUT | 18:06:55 | Alright AA early rushed PS2 game. Story is mega skin deep with 6 total characters and one plot point/twist. Gameplay is fine but repeative and classic non-reging health is a pain in the arse coz the only strat is damage avoidance and nothing else. Played on Hard, was indeed hard. Controls are shit pre-industry standard ones and the main issue with the game. No air control with jumping, but jumping puzzles and instakill falls. Jump is L1. Oddly lacking music 90% of the time. Only 8 way movement so Analog stick was useless. Almost all guns were useless minus a few OP ones (if the green thing wanted to coperate that is). | III |
| Smuggler's Run | UNCUT | 7:01:10 | Very cool game for launch PS2 title! Wish I had played back in the day. Awesome graphics, solid frame rate, great physics. Cool levels, decentish mission variety. Overall a welcome surprise! Difficulty got a bit stupid towards the end though, otherwise 10/10 would play again. | San Andreas |
| Midnight Club: Street Racing | UNCUT | 3:38:40 | Weird prototype open world racing game. Controls have a weird drift issue (where the car's steering won't return to centre sometimes). Progression in the game is very convelutied and weird, you don't just press the "Next race" button, but instead have to either chase people repeated around the map, or ring them to directly race them if you want to unlock their cars, once you've done that enough a new racer spawns who you can race to move on. Very short, TooLongToBeat says 7:30 but I took less than 4 and could easily have taken less than 3 had I understood the games archaic progression structure from the start. | Definitive Edition |
| Smuggler's Run 2: Hostile Territory | UNCUT | 7:16:00 | Huge improvement over the first game. Graphics massively improved with better world and MUCH better vehicle graphics. Gameplay remains largely the same except the police have been made much more fair, you can actually destroy and lose them, and the countermeasures feature helps too! I bet the multiplayer is a lot of fun but I haven't tested that. | San Andreas |
| The Italian Job | UNCUT | 3:32:22 | Why did they release a PS1 game in 2002, a year before the movie was remade (and this is based on the OG version). The grahics are pretty good for a PS1 game, but that's the only upside. The gameplay is generic/simple driving game, the physics are absolute trash, the audio is terribly balanced, with 2 music tracks total and hideous constant siren/honking sound effects. Maybe more fun if you like the film, or if you're a kid and this is your first exposure to funny British accents I guess? | Advance |
| State of Emergency | Soon™️ | 6:21:48 | An Video Game. Extactly the kind of game they show people playing in the background of television shows/movies. Terrible controls were the worst part, another pre video game control standisation game issue. Extremely Chaotic, the amount of peds/enemies at any given time was pretty cool though! I could've beaten it faster had I not read the MMO quest style flavour text for the first level before I realised it's all fluff. Did the last 2 levels in record time! Had to take breaks due to lack of downtime and crazy chaotic-ness. Would've made a fun game to play for an hour every now and then rather than this beat it in one go format. | Definitive Edition |
| Max Payne | Soon™️ | 8:34:58 | Very cool Matrix inspired game. A little taste of Remedy's early world building. Very gritty, game takes itself a bit too seriously sometimes but then also has goofs. Gameplay was great, despite the broken difficulty system. Story was a thriller, eagerly awaited each and every cutscene/comic strip. Just like the Matrix it's enjoyable for either the epic slowmo action, or the intense complex story. | San Andreas |
| Grand Theft Auto III | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | |||
| Midnight Club 2 | Soon™️ | 10:11:09 | "Listen up, here's the deal. Either your breaks bleed, or you do. Lock your differential and LOCK IN. If you don't FOCUS on your weight transfer you're gonna be driving a FOCUS real soon! So pay attention! Wouldn't want to end up under these wheels now." - The Dialog. Doesn't fix the problem in Midnight Club 1 where there's loads of hidden shortcuts that you MUST take because the AIs do and they save crap loads of time but they often have no signposting/checkpoints within them. Still better than MD1, cars handle much better, better graphics etc etc, but oh my god the dialog is sooooo bad. Also "Adaptive AI" is a good meme. | III |
| Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | |||
| Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne | Soon™️ | 06:22:58 | Gameplay is massively improved over the first (I can shoot AND jump at the same time!), more weapons, more variety etc, world building is much better with more silly TV shows and more passive NPCs, however I feel the story is a lot weaker where it just goes through and kills every single character from the first game, while not explaining that much more. Still very good and slightly better than the orignal, however I'd say these two games are a package deal, I wouldn't play one without the other. | San Andreas |
| Manhunt | Soon™️ | 07:59:40 | I dislike Gore as much as I dislike Anime. These genres of media are similar in how the story/gameplay/movie or whatever is irrelvant and it's just a vessal for getting the thing people actually want to get off to, gore and anime girls. This game was never going to appeal to me, but the gameplay in some parts I did enjoy. The stealth when not being bullshit was pretty fun (and silly how blind people are). The gunplay is a bit weird in how short range everything is, but the enimies are as strong as you are (you can just die as quick as they can) which made it fairly tactical and not just 10v1ing dudes. I did play on the hardest difficulty which probably impacted that however. The graphics for a pre-SA Rockstar game are pretty good, obviously down to it being linear and not open world. A lot of shared assets with SA/VC/3 which is fun to see. Music was whatever. The rest of the game I disliked immesely, and the final boss sequnce is really stupid. Still I beat the game in under 8 hours when 11 was the goal. | Definitive Edition |
| Red Dead Revolver | Soon™️ | 05:13:50 | This to me post-Redemption/Redepmtion 2 felt like a "RDR Demake" for PS2. A linear cowboy western 3rd person shooter, with a way smaller scope in every aspect, but for the time, very cool! Wish I had played this on PS2 back in 2004, I probably would've loved this game a lot, but even now in 2026 I thought it was pretty good! Decent modern-ish controls (minus using Square as accept in menus for some reason?). Story was *fine*, nothing too crazy but enough to keep you motivated throughout the campaign. | San Andreas |
| Grand Theft Auto Advance | Soon™️ | 7:00:00* | Litterally the worst ("AAA" properly released) game I've ever played. | Definitive Edition |
| Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | |||
| Midnight Club: Dub Edition | Soon™️ | 11:47:57 | (I played Remix coz it only added little bits of side content) Cool game! You can tell this is the start of the "mordern" racing game design, as this feels fairly "generic" compared to other racing games, however you must keep in mind that this pre-dates almost all of them by several years lol. To me this seems like a mix of Midnight Club 1/2 and Need For Speed Underground 1/2, where they took the best parts of both. No more extreme cringe, or hideous "just route it yourself" 13 open checkpoint races from Midnight Club 2. All licensed music AND cars in this one, since Rockstar is coming up in the world now. The 3 maps seem small, and indesitushable from each other (maybe coz all American cities are the same lol) which was a shame, but it could be because they all have "modern" racing game design where everything just flows neatly into racing lines. The hidden-yet-required-shortcut situation is also improved, with some of them now appearing on the map, and others less required! Overall I enjoyed this game fairly significantly! McLaren F1 OP. | San Andreas |
| Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories | Soon™️ | 08:41:33 | Perfectly good 3D GTA game. Cool for being the first handheld one, but otherwise fairly run of the mill. So forgetfull that I actually forgot I already streamed a playthrough of it 2 years ago. | III |
| The Warriors | Soon™️ | 07:56:32 | Went in expecting to not enjoy the game at all, but became more and more pleasntly surprised as the game went on, until I got past the "before movie" part into where the movie actually begins, then got very interested and was enjoying the game a lot. Then as the movie played out it all kinda fell apart towards the end and become non-sensical and somewhat yikes. All of the characters are shit terrible people who I hate, and do evil things for no reason and have no redeming qualities. The gameplay is pretty good, game is a late PS2 title so is very polished/high production value for the console. The AI is pretty impressive with listening to your orders and such, and the graphics are really good for the era. | III |
| Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | Vice City Stories | ||
| Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis | Soon™️ | 05:44:18 | Super cool hidden gem of a game! The RAGE engine tech on show is awesome, espcially for a 2006 game. The extremely limited scope (you litterally just play table tennis) allowed them to focus on making a very polished experience, as well as getting their new game engine working on the next gen of consoles, which as a time peice 20 years later is interesting to see as there's some stuff in here that never made it to later RAGE titles, like the realistic clothes simulation. The game itself is a love letter to the sport of Table Tennis, and while I wasn't a fan of the sport ahead of time, it emulates it so well and intensely that the game is extremely enjoyable to play. Chat also enjoyed watching it as just sport spectators. The polish and details in everything are super good. All real brands, exciting slow-mo moments and camera angels, unexpectedly deep gameplay with an insanely high skill ceiling. I felt that I was improving at the game constantly throughout my playthrough, but even then I couldn't match the "Hard" Tournament AI. Would love to come back and beat "Hart" and "Expert" someday, but can't invest the time right now during the marathon! | San Andreas |
| Manhunt 2 | Soon™️ | 05:46:40 | Game has nothing to do with the previous Manhunt, which unlike Manhunt 2, commited to the gorey "saw/typical horror/gore movie" storyline and saw it through to it's logical conclusion. This however outside of some terrible carried over mechanics was just a shit 3rd person shotter half the time. Story arc was totally predictable and cliche as fuck. Timeline jumps around loads and has tons of classic shit writing conicendeces ("Oh no we killed the only scientist that can help us, let's go through his research videos at a TV studio. Oh hey we just learnt about a new scientist who could help! And omg look at that they're right outside! How convenient!"). Controls were awful, with having the right stick bound to leaning left/right instead of camera control, and the camera itself is waaaaaay too close to your character. Graphically quite good for the PS2, as I would hope for a extremely late PS2 title. Level design was probably the worst part, I spent so much time just wandering around empty rooms/hallways/alleyways looking for where the hell I'm supposed to go. The second to last level was the worst offender with just some random fences I had to climb over to trigger a sequence in order to be able to walk down a road, with aboslutely no indication that's what I was supposed to do and the road being totally open and the obvious path before that point, leading to me getting killed arbitrarly when I ran down the road before climbing the fence. They even made the enmies drop weapons with 0 ammo before I climbed the fence. Unbeleivably stupid and sheer luck I happened to find the exact back garden fence it wanted me to climb. There were many other examples of this kind of shit. Terrible game, bad for 3rd person shotter enjorers, bad for Manhunt fans, I don't understand who this game was for. | Advance |
| Beaterator | Soon™️ | 00:50:00 | Seems like a cool music editor, and some people have made cool stuff with it! I however am not one of those people :P | III |
| Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars | Soon™️ | 10:54:15 | Really cool GTA game actually, glad I finally played through it properly! Enjoyed the story, despite it's overreliance on the "Rats" plot point. Gameplay is massively improved from the old 2D games, this one used a lot of modern sensiblities (auto aim, retryable missions which chain together etc etc). TRIP SKIP AND MISSION RESTART BUTTON ARE AWESOME. So is the replay mission menu from the safehouse WHICH HAS INCLUDED IL TIMER!!! I loved Huang's Sass. Camera angle was pretty decent, felt like I could see what I needed at all times reasonably. This is what a 2D GTA game with decent 2000's era Rockstar resources can be like! There is soooooo much side content that I barely touched, like Stranger Missions, random vehicle heisting, some swirly thing pickup I never figured out? Overall, very cool game, I expected to be *OK* with it, however instead I very much enjoyed it! | San Andreas |
| Grand Theft Auto IV | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | |||
| Midnight Club: Los Angeles | Soon™️ | 21:31:33 | Awesome, much more modern Midnight Club! Vastly improved over the predecesors, with much better waypoints, no multiple path shit races, and way more visible shortcuts! Game is visually impressive for a 360 title, and it's recreation of LA, while smaller in scope than GTA V, much better. Voice acting and writing is no longer cringe at all, just kinda meh. The story was still pretty non-existant, but at least there were proper cutscenes and stuff this time. Shame no PC version. Loved the cockpit view! The movement of the camera and all the animations and interiors were very impessive, I played the whole game only in cockpit view (minus the bikes which gave viewers motion sickness). Why were there so many disgusting convertables though!?! Also why is the story progression so impossible to figure out. I was told at the start of the game that the puslating races on the map were the storyline ones, however this later became apparent it wasn't true and after 20 hours had to allow chat backseat to guide me (shout outs to CerberusRaptor for the CORRECT and very helpful backseat). The game had absolutely no business being 22 hours long at all, but I get that's only a me problem because of the format of RGGM being I wanted to complete every game in one go. | San Andreas |
| Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | |||
| Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | |||
| Max Payne 3 | ||||
| Bully | ||||
| LA Noire | ||||
| Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | |||
| Grand Theft Auto III The Definitive Edition | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | |||
| Grand Theft Auto: Vice City The Definitive Edition | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | |||
| Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas The Definitive Edition | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | |||
| Red Dead Redemption Online | ||||
| Red Dead Redemption | (Josh will showcase a speedrun of this game at the next Josh Done Quick, which will happen during the marathon.) | |||
| Red Dead Redemption II | ||||
| Grand Theft Auto Online | ||||
| Grand Theft Auto V |