Reviewed: December 3, 2001
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Rockstar Games

Developer
DMA Design

Released: October 23, 2001
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Mature

10
10
10
10
10.0

Supported Features:

Back then the game was a top-down 2D exploration into the life of organized crime, carjacking, mass murder, and a general disregard for all authority and everything we know to be moral and just. Even with the simple premise and the Matchbox car-like graphics, this game was highly addictive – almost as much as the drugs I was dealing on the streets (in the game...in the game).

DMA Design has harnessed the power of the PS2 to bring the amazing world of Grand Theft Auto into a state of virtual reality. Grand Theft Auto III is the result of years of painstaking labor, a labor of love to be sure, even if the game is twisted and demented to the point where the ESRB will probably have to redefine the M rating.

Perhaps what makes GTA3 so unique is the sheer scale of the game. Not only are there literally hundreds of hours of original and engrossing entertainment, there is a living breathing world that you actually “exist in" while playing the game. This world is populated with an incredible assortment of virtual citizens that go about their business, walking down streets, driving their cars and trucks, strolling through the park, riding the transit system – basically, living.

Outside of persistent world RPG games such as EverQuest and Ultimate Online, I have never experienced such a dynamic world, especially in a single player experience. Ultimately, this makes GTA3 one of the first, if not the only game (outside of sports titles) that conceivably has no end. Even when the game is over you can keep playing and still have just as much fun as they day you ripped the plastic off the case.

GTA3 is a violent game chocked full of adult content. It is definitely not for impressionable children and I probably know a few adults that shouldn’t be playing it. After logging over 100 hours on this game myself I know every time I drive by the hospital and see an ambulance in the parking lot I get an irresistible urge to “jack” it and start looking for injured people around my town. So just a word of caution – the remainder of this review will be dealing with adult subject matter, so if you are under 17 go get your parent’s permission to keep reading…yeah right.

Crime is crime is crime, but in GTA3 you can get downright cruel about it. You can bash grannies over the head and steal their money. You can nail a hooker in the alley then crush her skull with a baseball bat and take back your money. You can kill cops, firemen, women, children – you could probably even mistreat animals if they had included any. You will pimp hookers, collect stacks of porno mags, torch rival gangs with flamethrowers, participate in illegal street racing, plant car bombs, terrorize an airport, and that’s only the beginning.

GTA3 has a story that basically has you getting double-crossed by a female accomplice, thrown in jail, then making a daring escape, all during the opening movie. Your co-escapee has connections in the seedy underbelly of Liberty City so you decide to tag along. This begins a series of over 70 missions that take place in three huge sections of the city. Along the way you will make new “business contacts”, get new and more exciting (or rather dangerous) jobs and generally become the most wanted man in Liberty City by both the cops and the crooks.

From the start of the game the world of GTA3 is evolving. There is a night/day cycle and even a clock (not real-time). Things happen over the course of time. Some businesses are only open during certain hours, so missions may not be available at all times. Other events are triggered by certain flags such as the completion of a particular mission or earning a fixed amount of money.

In the beginning of the game you are restricted to the main part of down – the slums if you will. Once you reach a certain point you are granted access to the fancier part of Liberty City full of skyscrapers and sports cars and upper-class bosses. By the end of the game you will have access to the third part of town, which is like the Beverly Hills of Liberty City.

The beauty of GTA3 is that you are under no pressure to do anything at anytime. I literally played the game for over two hours before even taking my first assignment. You can spend hours simply driving around town learning the lay of the land, finding alleys, shortcuts, secrets, etc. And even when you start getting involved in the story and the missions you can break away at anytime to take part in a whole mess of side missions – none of which are mandatory, but they are all a helluva lot of fun.

You can do all kinds of crazy things like steal an ambulance and start delivering injured people to the hospital. Steal a cop car and go on vigilante missions actually hunting down criminals. Did you dream of being a fireman when you were a kid? Steal the hook-n-ladder and go fight fires. Put out enough and you will earn a flamethrower pick-up at your hideout.

Speaking of hideouts, you will have several throughout the game. These basically consist of a garage that gets larger as you expand to new parts of town and need to stable more stolen vehicles, as well as spawning points for all of your earned pick-ups and weapons. This is also where you save your game, assuming you can ever stop playing long enough to need to save.

GTA3 is packed with secrets too. How does 100 hidden packages sound. You get $1000 per package and for every 10 you collect you earn a bonus weapon at your hideout. This is very useful near the end when the good weapons become harder to find and expensive to buy. There are also secret vehicles to unlock, bonus missions, and one of my favorites; the unique stunt bonus. Scattered about the city are strategically placed ramps that you can use to get crazy air and stunt bonuses. Some ramps require special cars that you only find later in the game.

All of these objectives are listed in the game status screen, which scrolls for several pages showing all sorts of date on your current progress, including my personal favorite stat – how much the city is spending on law enforcement to combat your illegal activities.

There is some strategy required when figuring out how to play the entire game. The city is divided into gang-controlled territories and once you piss off a gang or start working for a rival gang you will have a hard time driving through some parts of town. Once you leave the first island there is a contract put out on you, so if you ever show up on the other side of the river without a bullet-proof car you will be dead within minutes – if you last that long.

There can’t be crime without cops and GTA3 is full of them. You start off with your standard black and white patrol cars, then you move up to armored police vans, police choppers, black FBI sedans, and if you piss them off enough, they call in the National Guard complete with a tank. You might think this would be something to avoid, but stealing a tank is actually one of those bonus missions, well at least part of one. You also have to steal about 20 other rare vehicles including the Dodo – basically a Cessna with the wings cut off forcing you to driving it across three city maps, unless you manage to learn how to fly.

There are dozens of cars to steal including trucks, hummers, taxis (oh yeah, you can jack a cab then haul people around for money if you get bored or broke), and even speedboats. One of my favorite missions had me stealing a boat then driving it out into the bay in the approach path of the airport where I had to blow a plane out of the sky as it landed. Of course this was followed by collecting the smuggled goods from the plane then escaping the airport, as the FBI and National Guard descended in full force.

The cars all look great and there is a good variety of them to choose from. Sure, you will see the same style repeated on almost every block, but at least they vary in color. There also seems to be some triggering system where some cars do not appear until you have discovered them. You can play for ten hours and never see a garbage truck, then all of the sudden you will see them all over the place for the next several hours but another vehicle will temporarily vanish from the line-up. It’s like there is a limitation for the number of different vehicles allowed on the road.

The people are as unique as the cars and you will see typical gangsters with bandanas, leather jackets, knives, clubs, or even machine guns. The high-class goons all wear dark suits and you have your Chinese thugs in Chinatown that wear traditional garb. You can often tell what part of town you are in by looking at the clothes or the type of cars being driven.

There were only a few times I noticed any strain on the graphics engine. These mainly occurred on the second island where the buildings were bigger and more detailed. If you start flying down the street at 90mph you will see the occasional pop-up. Aside from that, the game was nearly flawless. Even when rotating the camera around my character quickly, the frame rate managed to keep up. There were only a few clipping or texture tearing problems but none are really worth mentioning.

The camera was excellent, and while you are given several camera angles to play from, you will seldom need anything other than the default. I did find it amusing that they included the top-down camera from GTA2, so you could conceivably play this game in its retro form. My favorite feature was the ability to use the R3 to get a reverse angle – very helpful when running away from the cops, or a gang of angry Chinese thugs.

There are nine different radio stations that you can change while driving. The cool thing is listening to what’s playing when you first steal a car. Steal a black sedan from the mafia and you will be hearing some opera music, jack a hotrod from some punk and he will probably have been listening to rap or rock. There are all kinds of themes to these stations including 80’s, techno, rap, talk radio (my favorite), classical, hip-hop, and more. Radio commercials even advertise websites that Rockstar has taken the time to create in real-life.

The only thing I think they missed out on was having an underground or pirate radio station that gives underworld updates on the status of your game. There are a few cases where the radio is used to progress the story, but it is done through a cutscene and is not dynamic. In GTA2 the DJ often made comments that were important to the gameplay. In GTA3, the radio is used only for ambience, but it does it amazingly well.

Other sound effects like the cars, guns, and ambient street noises are perfect. The cars and trucks all have their own unique sound effects. When you get behind the wheel of the “Viper clone” you get a throaty muscle car roar; jack a “”Ferrari clone” and you get that high-performance whine. Wet pavement creates the familiar sound of tires kicking up a spray, people will yell at you if drive too close or hit them. Jack a cabbie and watch him cuss you out and possibly even kick your ass and take his car back if you aren’t quick enough. Listen to hookers doing business, and rival gangs shouting at each other before a fight breaks out. Even the subway and elevated transit systems all sound totally authentic. My favorite sound is the smash and tinkle of glass as I drive my new stolen car through the showroom floor window.

All of the sounds are perfect and perfectly mixed in a 3D surround configuration so they are placed and scaled based on your location to the source. The audio presentation of GTA3 compliments the visuals to create a totally immersive and living city.

The cutscenes features some excellent dialog voiced by an un-credited cast of some pretty big names: Michael Rapaport (Boston Public, Friends); Joe Pantoliano (Memento, The Matrix [Cypher]); Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs, Donnie Brasco, Wyatt Earp), Kyle Maclachan (The Hidden, Showgirls, Dune); Robert Loggia (Return to Me, American Virgin); and Debbi Mazar, Frank Vincent, and Guru.

It is so easy to get lost in the crazy side missions. I spent two hours driving a cab one night and when I learned you could actually fly the Dodo I spent another 4-5 hours messing around with that until I could fly the plane to the next island.

To fully explore and conquer this game you can plan on triple digits on the clock. I have logged 112 hours and have 98% completion. I am missing one stunt jump and one package – my only problem is I have no idea which ones I missed, and it could take me another 20-30 hours to fully explore the city (which is now quite hostile) to find them.

There is something undeniably appealing, maybe even glamorous, about living the life of a criminal, and while no sane person would actually attempt anything portrayed in GTA3, it’s certainly a vicarious thrill to do it in the comfort and safety of your living room. If you have a PS2 then go get this game right now, and if you don’t have a PS2, go get one then get this game right now.