Grand Theft Auto III

"Do you have what it takes to take on a whole city?"

When you think controversy, what game comes to mind? Grand Theft Auto III comes into most people’s minds. This much-debated game came into North American living rooms on October 26th 2001. It brought to the market something, which had been attempted before, but never done quite right. Create a fully three-dimensional city with criminal capabilities whilst keeping it all completely non-linear. There was such a big hop between the previous games in the series, that people who had been fans of the earlier games were literally shocked when they saw the jaw dropping graphics, and totally different gameplay. Not only did serious gamers get in on this game, but so did the media. For nearly half a year after this game was released, it was debated on all sorts of levels of media. Radio talk shows had callers voicing their opinions for and against the game, news shows found it a personal responsibility to bring this horrific game to the public eye, and even some stores refused to stock it on their shelves due to the graphic nature of the game. This however proved the theory that any publicity is good publicity. Rockstar literally shoveled in the profits from teenagers around the world who wanted to make this game part of their collection. Being put on the market at the same time as titles from legendary series’ like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy did nothing to hinder this games momentum either. In the three-month time span heading towards Christmas, GTA III managed to outsell all of these games to become one of the most popular games of 2001.

Grand Theft Auto III had to one of the most anticipated games in my mind during 2001. Seeing the article related to it in March 2001 caught my eyes instantly and informed me that one of my favorite series was about to release another game, this time in 3D. Of course, not owning a Playstation 2, this was all the more incentive to get one. As the time passed, and this game slowly moved closer and closer to its deadline, my anticipation and excitement over this game grew. Finally it reached a point where I was practically begging my friends for money to buy a Playstation 2 so I could play this game. I never got any money, but I did get this game for Christmas, along with Playstation 2. I kid you not when I say I played that game for 20 hours straight. From 7AM at the time I opened the box until 3AM the next day when I went to bed, I did literally nothing other than play Grand Theft Auto III.

The story starts with the back door of a bank flying open. A man and a woman emerge from inside and run around the side of the bank. Our main character emerges from the bank and turns the corner to find himself staring down the barrels of two loaded guns. His girlfriend says something sassy before shooting him in the head. How he survives, I have no idea, but the next scene depicts a police van being escorted by two vehicles driving quickly towards the Callaghan Bridge. As they near the middle of the bridge, two strange vehicles approach the motorcade and block it off. This causes the police van to loose control and flip onto its side. As it comes to a halt, gunmen hop out and easily take out the police officers and security personnel. They go into the back of the van and out comes a small man. They drive away with him as our main character and his newly acquainted friend ‘8-ball’ bust free from the wreckage as well. They notice a bomb not far from the van and run, just in time to be clear of the explosion. Somehow, they’re both okay and 8-ball instructs you to drive to his hideout to pick up some normal clothes. From there, they go to Luigi’s club “Sex Club 7” and that my friends, is the start to this story.

As you can see, Rockstar in no way made a shallow story for this game. Although the first bit is a little unbelievable (How does someone survive a shot to the head from point blank range?) but it’s nonetheless action packed. Although I do have a gripe with the story while you do the missions. It just doesn’t move anywhere. You kind of start with this dramatic action, mill your way around with your head down throughout the whole middle part of the game and suddenly pop your head back up when nearing the end of the game. Not the best balance, there are still a few little plot twists that will surprise you, or just verify what you thought was going to happen.

Speaking of missions, there are quite a few of them. If you add up the main missions as well as the side missions and other such oddball contests in this game, you total 73 missions. Sure that may not seem like a lot, but these missions are quite long, and somewhat varied. Sometimes your objective will to drive someone somewhere or pick something up. Other times you will have to assassinate someone or terrorize a certain gang neighborhood. Although not as fun or unique as the missions in GTA Vice City, I would like to say that these missions are pretty good. If you compare it to any of the earlier GTA games, you’ll definitely notice there are one hell of a lot more missions to for a lot more people now. Our main character doesn’t just work for one boss anymore, he works for many, MANY bosses throughout the game. There around fifteen bosses to be exact and there are also a few extra missions that you can trigger by hopping into a certain vehicle. For example, one of these missions asks you to drive a large 4x4 around an area to pick up checkpoints in a limited amount of time. Extra missions like that just add a sense of non-linearity. As you can choose to do them whenever you want, and as many times as you want.

If missions are not your thing, or you are just sick of advancing through the game, you can always fulfill some of the other requirements for reaching 100 percent. One of the most important (and rewarding) objectives is to locate one hundred hidden packages buried throughout the city. For every package found, you receive a thousand dollars and after each ten packages you find, a new, re-spawning gun is delivered to your hide out. Very handy for those sticky situations where you need firepower quick. There are also 20 rampages for you to complete. A rampage is basically where you get a certain weapon with unlimited ammunition and you have to kill… say 20 people in two minutes with said weapon. This proves extremely fun for the sadistic gamers out there (you know who you are). Driving around can earn you money too. It’s as easy as locating the ‘unique stunt’ ramps and driving your car off of them as fast as you can. There are 20 of those to be found in this game too, and you don’t even need to be on one of those ramps. You can jump off anything that will get your car airborne and still earn money as an ‘Insane stunt ’ (although you do not get nearly as much money as you would with ‘unique stunts’).

So what happens when your sick of doing missions and completing tasks? Whatever you want! One of the best parts of this game is its non-linearity. You can literally cause mayhem for hours on end and not accomplish a damn thing. One of the best things (and first that comes to mind in the GTA series) is just running around stealing cars and killing people. Another one of my favorite past-times is picking up prostitutes in this game and driving them to a remote location where they do you some favors that replenish your health, even higher than you would get in a hospital. I guess they just make our guy feel better about his self. Another fun thing to do is just shoot at gang members after a gang hates you. Sure it’s not good at all for your health, but its just so satisfying.

You hear all this talk of killing, and it makes you wonder, what kind of weaponry does GTA III have to offer? Well, not much compared to games like Vice City or Syphon Filter, but there are a good variety of different types of weapons. There are street weapons like the baseball bat, the 9mm and the Uzi, or assault weapons like an AK-47 and an M16. After those, you get into some pretty skeptical weapons like grenades, rocket launchers and flamethrowers. Not your standard street weapons. But this all provides a lot of sadistic entertainment!

Grand Theft Auto III looks absolutely gorgeous. Although the graphics aren’t up to par with competitors on X-box, or even some of the newer games coming out now, the atmosphere they create is absolutely breath taking. One of the best examples of this games atmosphere has to be in Portland. The architecture combined with the lighting just makes it look like a seedy and miserable part of town. Perfect for gangs and a general low standard of life in the surrounding area. Buildings are painted just the right color that they look like they’ve been neglected and the city districts seem to almost blend with each other. An example, the St. Marks borders on the red light district, when you drive from one to the other, its not like driving from night into day. The change is subtle and gradual, and is the architecture becomes much more unique the farther into the district you get.

The people on the other hand do not look nearly as good as the buildings. They look good from a distance, and are easily definable from the surrounding landscape, but once you get closer to them, you notice their faces look like someone grabbed the back of their head an pulled on the skin until their faces were stretched all to hell. Another gripe with the character modeling is the way that they look in cut-scenes. You’ll see these people in cut scenes, and they’ll have perfectly normal faces and motions, but their bodies look like a bunch of tires stuck together… sort of like the Michelin man. One thing that they did right though is motion. When you see people walking down the sidewalk, they walk like a normal person of their age and size would. Old ladies and people carrying things tend to walk slow, and maybe even sway, and gangsters tend to strut with their shoulders high. It just adds to the overall realism of the city.

Last but not least, cars look downright awesome. They do have a little less detail than the cars in Vice City, but these ones are just as pretty. Many of them are late 80’s to mid 90’s cars ranging anywhere from compact family sedans to surplus military vehicles. One of my favorites is the sleek Banshee sports car. This car looks absolutely stunning. It’s not jagged, nor sparsely detailed. It’s just right. If one has the appetite to drive a larger vehicle, there are plenty of those as well, and they are absolutely hilarious to bomb around the city in. The feeling is indescribable when your barreling down the main corridor in a garbage truck going well over 70 miles an hour, knocking around other cars on the road like they were play toys. And if you feel you need to satisfy your craving for destruction, look no further than the tank. It doesn’t quite resemble a real tank (since the doors are on the side and not the top) but its still a total blast to drive, and if you fire the missiles, whatever they hit will blow up in a bright and vivid ball of flames. It’s just a unique experience.

Sure it looks great, but how does it sound? Well, it’s not up to par with its successor Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, but it was certainly the best that one could find when GTA III came out. The radio consists of 9 stations ranging from talk shows to techno to rap, but one station that I feel is sorely missed by quite a few people is a rock station of some sort. Now I know rock hasn’t had the biggest effect in the last few years, but it really ticks rock lovers off when there is such a variety of music in this game, but yet no rock? Regardless, most of the music in the game fits your actions well. You wont believe how much fun it is to go on a terrorizing rampage with cops all around you and sirens blaring, while you listen to your 17th century opera music on “Double Cleff FM”. One of my all time favorite GTA songs makes somewhat of a cameo appearance on one of the radio stations too. The Grand Theft Auto song that was used in the original game is back folks, and it just shows that even though it’s gone from a birds-eye view to a fully three dimensional world, it hasn’t forgotten its roots.

Other sounds in GTA III are pretty mediocre though. Most of the cars in this game sound pretty uninspired and generic, but there are a handful of vehicles in this game that have a really distinct sound. Some of the older cars have that enlightening roar when you floor it, and the sports cars have that high pitched noise that you would hear from a Ferrari or some other exotic car, but once again the Banshee stands above them all. It has that low rumble that you hear from muscle cars when they’re idle, and as soon as you accelerate, it lets out a glorious roar. Voices are also one of the best parts of the game. It really makes one think about how many people did voice clips for the pedestrians in this game. I swear there are literally thousands of things to hear those little guys say, and some of them are gut-bustingly hilarious. Rockstar truly outdid themselves by adding this kind detail to GTA III.

Something that most gamers look for is solid replay value. I mean who’s going to go out there and spend quite a bit of cash on a game that’s only going to be entertaining for a couple of hours. Rest assured this game has plenty of replay value. Once through the game, most people will decide to start over again, and this cycle can be vicious for some(like me) where it’s pretty much impossible to stop playing over and over. The levels are so much fun, that sometimes you’ll want to play through half the game just to relive one mission or event in the game. If its pure hours you want, then a good estimate would be maybe 20 hours to get through the core game and maybe another 20 or 30 to complete the game entirely. Not bad considering this is an adventure game.

All in all, I would say this is a must have for any Playstation 2 owner. Although it isn’t perfect, it comes pretty damn close. Writing this review over a year and a half after its release has let me really get a feel for how long this game can last, and I am definitely not disappointed. It’s very rare these days that you find a game with what is offered like this, so regardless of your favorite genre, you should give this a try. If you’re still skeptical, I strongly recommend at least renting it to see for yourself what its like. If you still don’t like it after trying it, there is always “The Getaway” or “Wreckless: The Yakuza missions” out there for you to try.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 04/06/03, Updated 04/06/03