Volition's Saints Row is the newest contender on GTA grounds, following all three GTAs, Activision's True Crime, Sony's The Getaway, EA's The Godfather, etc., and it's both a ballsy, brave, fun game while simultaneously being guilty of the heaviest degree of copy cat-ism, me-too derivation, and just-plain over-doing it. That is, until another developer does it better than Rockstar. Thus, at least right now, every game that competes in this genre competes directly with any one of the GTA games, all of which have raised the bar in videogame production, theme maturity and language, open-world design, and lastly, production cost (they're expensive games to make).
Some might call the genre 'urban mayhem,' but whatever you call it, Grand Theft Auto III created a genre, the same way Castle Wolfenstein 3-D and Doom did with first-person shooters.
Over the past five years, Rockstar North (once known as DMA) has created - and set - the standard for games in a genre that, for lack of a better term, are 'Grand Theft Auto' or 'GTA' games.
