Grand Theft Auto: The Director's Cut

"Respect Is Everything"

Grand Theft Auto: Director's Cut is a compilation of the original Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto: London 1969. Here is my review on the two games.

Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto (GTA) was the first game in the GTA series and was released for PC and PSX. It is a 2D crime simulator and a damn good one at that. The GTA series has created a cult following all around the world because of the open-ended gameplay. You can do basically anything you want, but there is a price to pay for doing some things. The price is jail and mission failure. Not too bad. Now, with that being said, on to my review of Grand Theft Auto.

Grand Theft Auto has open-ended gameplay. You can do anything you want; go on shooting sprees, drive your car around, or just walk around the cities. Of course you will pick go on shooting sprees though since it is the funnest. The controls are a medium level difficulty and take some time to get used to. There are 4 different characters to choose from when starting the game. GTA is divided into 3 HUGE islands. They are San Andreas (based on the San Francisco and Los Angeles area), Liberty City (main city in GTA3 for PS2 and PC; based on New York City), and Vice City (main city in GTA Vice City for PS2; based on Miami). In GTA, you mainly just go around and do missions for gangs but there is no certain order you have to do them in meaning no story line which could be a good or bad thing for you. When you do a mission for a gang, rival gangs will hate you and shoot at you when you enter their territory. If you are going on shooting sprees and kill a gang member, the gang will hate you more and tend to shoot at you more. The missions are pretty hard. There are loads of them too. The majority of them are assassinations, steal a car and bring it somewhere, or pick up someone and bring them somewhere. You do jobs for the reigning mob boss in the city you are in and after you earn so much money, you meet the boss of that city. When you meet him, the both of you will talk and a new city will be unlocked. There aren't really that many weapons but it is really quality over quantity with them. Some of the weapons are a pistol, uzi, rocket launcher, flamethrower, and a few others. Watch yourself when using the weapons though because the coppers are fairly hard to get off your tail and will tend to use deadly force against you while driving like ramming your car off of the road and things like that. The gameplay is awesome and it makes the game extremely addictive.

The graphics are good. They are 2D as I stated earlier in this review. You view the game from a birds-eye-view (view from above). The camera can sometimes make people not want to get the game because it is sometimes aggravating to some people because you can't see too far ahead of you and that isn't a good thing when going 120 miles per hour in a car while being chased by the cops. The camera also plays a role in the control difficulty. It is confusing when turning or walking in a direction a lot of the times so it takes a little while to get used to. Explosions look really cool. Cars are average looking. You can't really tell features of people or anything like that. The sound is really awesome. There are radios in the cars and each car has its own station to fit its personality like some trucks are country music and etc. Gun and explosions sound good also. The best sound overall would have to be the sound of the pedestrians screaming in fear for their lives as you create chaos and reign over Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas.

There isn't that much replayability except for one thing, going on rampages around San Andreas, Liberty City, and Vice City. There are kill frenzies which are pretty fun and will keep you busy doing all of them throughout the game. A fun thing to do over and over is mow down a line of certain pedestrians in a car and here ''GOURANGA!'' pop up. It is fairly funny.

Grand Theft Auto: London 1969

Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 is an expansion pack for the original Grand Theft Auto. As you can tell, Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 is based in the city of London in the year 1969.

GTA London is the expansion pack to GTA and cannot be played without the GTA disc. I really didn’t enjoy the expansion as much as I did the real GTA. The gameplay is still very addicting and very fun, but it just isn’t as fun. GTA London still has the same freedom factor that has made the GTA series famous over the years. You can do anything you want it seems. You want to steal a car? Steal it. The only things you have to worry about in GTA London are the cops and the camera angle. In GTA London, you get away with so many things that you wouldn’t in real life it is ridiculous. You could go on killing sprees, blow up cars, steal cars, or just park your car in the middle of traffic to cause traffic jams and laugh at everyone. Coupled with full environmental control, players can drive anywhere on the map. The map is huge. There are 4 characters to choose from in GTA London, Said Vacant, Maurice Caine, Rodney Morash, or Charles Jones. The camera can get kind of annoying in GTA London because the only view is a birds-eye-view (you are looking down on the mayhem you cause). It gets annoying because you can’t see that far ahead of you and you are barreling down the street just bound to crash into something while you got the cops breathing down your neck in their overly fast cop cars. There are still missions in the game. They are very, very repetitive. They are mostly go from Point A to Point B or kill so-and-so. Yeah, doesn’t sound fun does it? Some of the missions are ridiculously hard and seem almost impossible to beat. They make fun of England and London a lot in this game. It is sort of a spoof toward the country. Most of the city is accurate to the look of London. They have some historical landmarks such as Big Ben (for all of you non-history buffs, it is the big clock tower in London. Where is London you ask? It is in England!!!) Nothing offensive though, it is just all in good fun. The controls are the same as they are in GTA.

There really is no story. You just go around doing missions for your bosses around the city.

The graphics are good. They are 2D and are the same as in GTA. The music fits the game perfectly. It is all retro 60’s music. The explosions and guns sound and look awesome, too.

The replayability is good. You can go on kill frenzies, go on killing sprees, steal lots of cars, or just go around exploring the city if you would like.

Overall

I would say it is a good buy if you like the GTA series. If you get tired of playing the original, you can just play London. It is really fun and refreshing if you are tired of playing the original GTA. It is only like $20 for both GTA and the London expansion pack if you buy GTA: Director's Cut so it really is a good deal. The two games will last more than 100 hours. This is a definite buy. Buy it. Now.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/19/03, Updated 03/19/03