Grand Theft Auto III
Wanna know why it's taken us so long to post any reviews? Blame THIS game.
Published: January 2, 2002
As far as games have come with each successive generation, there are always games that surprise you with how well they've managed to fully flesh out a concept. Mario 64 did it for the free-roaming platformer, the soon to be released Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on the PC will probably do for military FPSes, and Grand Theft Auto 3 has done it for... well, the genre that the previous two GTA games created. To be perfectly honest, I didn't think we would see a game like GTA3 on this current generation of systems, or at least not until the end of the lifecycle. Instead, we're treated to one of the most immersive, addictive and just plain FUN games ever made. Without really cutting any corners, the team at DMA Design managed to take a simple, top-down fun-for-a-few-minutes/hours concept and flesh it out into full 3D game that will leave you wondering what happened to the last month and a half since you first picked up the controller.
Along the way your goldfish will die of malnourishment, any facial hair you have will multiply exponentially, personal hygiene will take a backseat to general comfort, girlfriends and loved ones will slowly start to make less and less of an appearance, and worst of all, you won't give half a crap. GTA3 is that good. The way subtle nuances and entire gameplay elements alike have been ripped from any number of different genres, then pureed into a concoction not unlike some kind of digital superdrug. Much of GTA3's story revolves around a new designer drug called SPANK. Perhaps SPANK is really just this game in an odd self-referential twist. Or perhaps not. The point is GTA3 MUST be experienced. Then again, there's always a catch, isn't there?
GTA3 is about as mature as you can get for a game. I don't mean cheap shock value spine evisceration or squirrels peeing on fire, I mean REAL maturity. The world of Grand Theft Auto 3 is gritty, it's seedy and it's absolutely alive. The most perfect example isn't in all the stuff you can do (which I'll get to in a second), it's just walking onto some sidewalk and people watching. Gang wars break out at random, fistfights over people not moving happen occasionally, and there are an eerily large number of purse snatchings happing at any given time in Liberty City. What I'm getting at is the fact that this world is more -- and I cringe as I type this evil, vile, putrid overused combo of words -- fully-realized than any game before it. The closest effort would have to be Reflections' admittedly fun Driver games (definitely the first over the second, however), yet GTA3 is quite literally everything Driver is, but it's only about 5-10% of the entire game.
Probably the biggest reason why GTA3 is so addictive is because it works on so many different levels. If you only have a few minutes to kill, you can hop in a taxi and pick up fares, snag a cop car and turn vigilante, or save lives by jacking a ambulance or fire truck. Any of the options will snag you a few extra bucks, and will certainly kill time. On the other hand, if you'd like to watch hours melt away, step into the story for a while and run a mission or two (or six... or twelve... or ninety...) to move the story along. The core of GTA3, above all else, though is the story. You're always free to run around exploring the city, but the only way you'll actually see more of it is to complete missions as a hired gun. Along the way, you'll be treated to double-crosses, surprise twists and turned tables throughout the course of your stay around Liberty City. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
See, your whole adventure begins with a double-cross, as one of your would be bank robbery partners introduces your chest to a point blank shotgun blast shortly after you complete the job, leaving you to take the fall for the heist, which you do. A lucky and spur-of-the-moment partnership with a fellow convict on the way to prison allows for your escape into the seedy underbelly of the city. Your new friend has connections with the mob, and if you don't blow it, you'll quickly move up as you move from simple mafia goon to the promise of becoming a made man. There are of course quite a few provisos between yourself and wiseguyhood, such as jacking cars, completing mob hits, tailing snitches, and so on, but so long as you can aim straight and keep your cool, you'll move up fast. As more and more layers of the bigger picture are peeled away, you slowly see how your work can bring you closer to your ultimate goal: revenge on the woman that made your ribcage and a handful of buckshot best friends.
It's hard to talk about the story without giving too much away, since there are some major plot twists that even a walkthrough will truly spoil, but suffice it to say that there is a good 40+ hours of straightforward and side missions that will keep you snared helplessly until the end. Because of an amazingly slick presentation style and absolutely top-notch voice acting from everyone in the game, you're sucked into a honest-to-God interactive crime novel. Factions vie for power, and just because you started out on one side, it doesn't mean you'll stay there for any extended period of time. And the beauty of it all is that you have complete control over how fast the story unfolds. If you want to spend a day picking up hookers and beating up cops, you can. The freedom and "go wherever the hell you want" style of gameplay keeps things open-ended, but since you're forced to spend a good deal of time in each of Liberty City's three major sections progressively, you learn every little alleyway like you've lived in the city all your life. I can recall telling a friend exactly where to find a fast car parked in a random alleyway on the complete opposite side of the city, and I steered him there with directions as if I were riding shotgun.
The thing is, GTA3 would be nothing if it didn't absolutely drip with personality. This is largely in part to the mind-blowingly flexible RenderWare platform that Criterion has shopped out to everyone from Ubisoft to Neversoft to, obviously, DMA. What DMA did with the engine, however, says a lot about how much these guys really had pictured the world of Grand Theft Auto. While the top-down 2D look from the first two games did its job, it's laughable compared to the incredibly fleshed out 3D world in GTA3. Little touches like stretched, blown out lighting effects on street and brake lights, scraps of newspaper and leaves blowing all over the pavement all throughout town, rain that falls in sheets, fog that rolls in subtly and a constantly changing time of day where the sun rises and sets and dusk slowly creeps across the sky, turning light blue to navy and finally inky black.
For the most part, this is all carried off with bullish aplomb, showing not just sections of the city you're in as far as the eye can see, but even separate parts of the area miles away. Again, the graphics are one of the key reasons why the city feels so alive; there's no obvious draw-in or fogging that otherwise pulls you out of the experience. Everything is coated in a diverse, if somewhat low-res set of textures, and the only load times you'll experience are when the game first starts up, and when you transfer across one of the bridges linking the three distinct sections of the city. In fact, there's a very distinct feel to each of the sections, where Portland feels a little more ghetto-ish and run down, Staunton Island gleams with commercialized steel and glass towers, and Shoreside Vale has a homey, warm, residential feel.
If there's any gripe about the graphics, it's that when a ton of activity gets heaped on all at once, the engine sputters a bit, dropping at times into the teens of frames per second. There's also a bit of repetition in the cars on the road and the pedestrians that stroll the sidewalks, but they're such minor gripes that I can hardly hold it against the rest of the game experience.
In most games, the sound takes a back seat to what the eyes take in. In GTA3, your ears will get one of the best workouts they've had in a long time. There's ALWAYS something going on aurally, whether it's just the simple horn honks and engine noise of general traffic or the entire conversations of passers-by, or when you're finally behind the wheel and you have your pick of almost every big style of music you can think of (even the best talk radio you'll EVER hear). The game's radio content is quite possibly the best sounding; best produced music I've heard in a video game. I can't say I loved every radio station, but I'm not denying they're dead-on for what they're trying to sound like, either.
Here's the bottom line: this game isn't for kids. At all. It is an adult game for adults, and should be handled in the same way as a rated R movie. If you can handle a movie the MPAA has said is suitable for children 17 and older, you should be fine with Grand Theft Auto 3 -- well, provided you don't already have a screw loose, in which case playing a Mary Kate & Ashley game will probably push you over the edge just as fast. That said, if you ARE able to handle mature content, you CANNOT miss this game. I can't stress this enough. People should be buying a couple of copies just to ensure that DMA makes a sequel. If these is what we can expect from early-generation PS2 games, I'm almost scared to think what fourth- and fifth-generation PS2 -- and even more frightening, Xbox -- games will be like. This game is the absolute personification of what free-roaming means. You can do damn near anything you want, and more often than not you'll be rewarded for it. Sounds fun, doesn't it? Good, now go buy a dozen copies.
Along the way your goldfish will die of malnourishment, any facial hair you have will multiply exponentially, personal hygiene will take a backseat to general comfort, girlfriends and loved ones will slowly start to make less and less of an appearance, and worst of all, you won't give half a crap. GTA3 is that good. The way subtle nuances and entire gameplay elements alike have been ripped from any number of different genres, then pureed into a concoction not unlike some kind of digital superdrug. Much of GTA3's story revolves around a new designer drug called SPANK. Perhaps SPANK is really just this game in an odd self-referential twist. Or perhaps not. The point is GTA3 MUST be experienced. Then again, there's always a catch, isn't there?
GTA3 is about as mature as you can get for a game. I don't mean cheap shock value spine evisceration or squirrels peeing on fire, I mean REAL maturity. The world of Grand Theft Auto 3 is gritty, it's seedy and it's absolutely alive. The most perfect example isn't in all the stuff you can do (which I'll get to in a second), it's just walking onto some sidewalk and people watching. Gang wars break out at random, fistfights over people not moving happen occasionally, and there are an eerily large number of purse snatchings happing at any given time in Liberty City. What I'm getting at is the fact that this world is more -- and I cringe as I type this evil, vile, putrid overused combo of words -- fully-realized than any game before it. The closest effort would have to be Reflections' admittedly fun Driver games (definitely the first over the second, however), yet GTA3 is quite literally everything Driver is, but it's only about 5-10% of the entire game.
Probably the biggest reason why GTA3 is so addictive is because it works on so many different levels. If you only have a few minutes to kill, you can hop in a taxi and pick up fares, snag a cop car and turn vigilante, or save lives by jacking a ambulance or fire truck. Any of the options will snag you a few extra bucks, and will certainly kill time. On the other hand, if you'd like to watch hours melt away, step into the story for a while and run a mission or two (or six... or twelve... or ninety...) to move the story along. The core of GTA3, above all else, though is the story. You're always free to run around exploring the city, but the only way you'll actually see more of it is to complete missions as a hired gun. Along the way, you'll be treated to double-crosses, surprise twists and turned tables throughout the course of your stay around Liberty City. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
See, your whole adventure begins with a double-cross, as one of your would be bank robbery partners introduces your chest to a point blank shotgun blast shortly after you complete the job, leaving you to take the fall for the heist, which you do. A lucky and spur-of-the-moment partnership with a fellow convict on the way to prison allows for your escape into the seedy underbelly of the city. Your new friend has connections with the mob, and if you don't blow it, you'll quickly move up as you move from simple mafia goon to the promise of becoming a made man. There are of course quite a few provisos between yourself and wiseguyhood, such as jacking cars, completing mob hits, tailing snitches, and so on, but so long as you can aim straight and keep your cool, you'll move up fast. As more and more layers of the bigger picture are peeled away, you slowly see how your work can bring you closer to your ultimate goal: revenge on the woman that made your ribcage and a handful of buckshot best friends.
It's hard to talk about the story without giving too much away, since there are some major plot twists that even a walkthrough will truly spoil, but suffice it to say that there is a good 40+ hours of straightforward and side missions that will keep you snared helplessly until the end. Because of an amazingly slick presentation style and absolutely top-notch voice acting from everyone in the game, you're sucked into a honest-to-God interactive crime novel. Factions vie for power, and just because you started out on one side, it doesn't mean you'll stay there for any extended period of time. And the beauty of it all is that you have complete control over how fast the story unfolds. If you want to spend a day picking up hookers and beating up cops, you can. The freedom and "go wherever the hell you want" style of gameplay keeps things open-ended, but since you're forced to spend a good deal of time in each of Liberty City's three major sections progressively, you learn every little alleyway like you've lived in the city all your life. I can recall telling a friend exactly where to find a fast car parked in a random alleyway on the complete opposite side of the city, and I steered him there with directions as if I were riding shotgun.
The thing is, GTA3 would be nothing if it didn't absolutely drip with personality. This is largely in part to the mind-blowingly flexible RenderWare platform that Criterion has shopped out to everyone from Ubisoft to Neversoft to, obviously, DMA. What DMA did with the engine, however, says a lot about how much these guys really had pictured the world of Grand Theft Auto. While the top-down 2D look from the first two games did its job, it's laughable compared to the incredibly fleshed out 3D world in GTA3. Little touches like stretched, blown out lighting effects on street and brake lights, scraps of newspaper and leaves blowing all over the pavement all throughout town, rain that falls in sheets, fog that rolls in subtly and a constantly changing time of day where the sun rises and sets and dusk slowly creeps across the sky, turning light blue to navy and finally inky black.
For the most part, this is all carried off with bullish aplomb, showing not just sections of the city you're in as far as the eye can see, but even separate parts of the area miles away. Again, the graphics are one of the key reasons why the city feels so alive; there's no obvious draw-in or fogging that otherwise pulls you out of the experience. Everything is coated in a diverse, if somewhat low-res set of textures, and the only load times you'll experience are when the game first starts up, and when you transfer across one of the bridges linking the three distinct sections of the city. In fact, there's a very distinct feel to each of the sections, where Portland feels a little more ghetto-ish and run down, Staunton Island gleams with commercialized steel and glass towers, and Shoreside Vale has a homey, warm, residential feel.
If there's any gripe about the graphics, it's that when a ton of activity gets heaped on all at once, the engine sputters a bit, dropping at times into the teens of frames per second. There's also a bit of repetition in the cars on the road and the pedestrians that stroll the sidewalks, but they're such minor gripes that I can hardly hold it against the rest of the game experience.
In most games, the sound takes a back seat to what the eyes take in. In GTA3, your ears will get one of the best workouts they've had in a long time. There's ALWAYS something going on aurally, whether it's just the simple horn honks and engine noise of general traffic or the entire conversations of passers-by, or when you're finally behind the wheel and you have your pick of almost every big style of music you can think of (even the best talk radio you'll EVER hear). The game's radio content is quite possibly the best sounding; best produced music I've heard in a video game. I can't say I loved every radio station, but I'm not denying they're dead-on for what they're trying to sound like, either.
Here's the bottom line: this game isn't for kids. At all. It is an adult game for adults, and should be handled in the same way as a rated R movie. If you can handle a movie the MPAA has said is suitable for children 17 and older, you should be fine with Grand Theft Auto 3 -- well, provided you don't already have a screw loose, in which case playing a Mary Kate & Ashley game will probably push you over the edge just as fast. That said, if you ARE able to handle mature content, you CANNOT miss this game. I can't stress this enough. People should be buying a couple of copies just to ensure that DMA makes a sequel. If these is what we can expect from early-generation PS2 games, I'm almost scared to think what fourth- and fifth-generation PS2 -- and even more frightening, Xbox -- games will be like. This game is the absolute personification of what free-roaming means. You can do damn near anything you want, and more often than not you'll be rewarded for it. Sounds fun, doesn't it? Good, now go buy a dozen copies.
