Grand Theft Auto III is influential, there's no disagreement there. The game is one of the best selling games of all time and is absolutely what made 3D open-world games explode in popularity in the West.

At this point, I've only played Grand Theft Auto 1, 2, and now 3 as well, so the biggest change is obviously the change from 2D to 3D. The best way I can describe Grand Theft Auto III is that it really feels like the first Grand Theft Auto, just in 3D, which in of itself is pretty exciting to finally experience! It's really cool to drive around and actually feel surrounded by the city, the buildings now properly towering over you. The game feels great with controls (minus any aiming with a weapon you have to do... good luck getting the right target), and the AI is really impressive for the time, too. It weirdly impressed both me and my friend watching the cars and how they knew when to stop from something being put in front of them, but also still slamming into it if placed in front of them too quickly (like a truck suddenly stopping in front of a moving car). My friend, who's only played GTA V, said that in the newest game, the cars just always know to stop and don't react naturally to disruptions in traffic. I don't know how 100% accurate that statement is though, as again, I've only played GTA1-3, and he was extremely baked while talking about it lmao.

While Grand Theft Auto III is a very fun and impressive change from 2D to 3D, once you get over that excitement, I couldn't help but notice how empty the entire area felt, it was a bit eerie. The fun of the game finally being in 3D and allowing you to mess around becomes a lot less fun when you realize there's not much to mess around with except for the missions shown as available to you. I think it's why the game reminded me more of the original GTA than GTA2. Everywhere you walk in Grand Theft Auto 2 there's something happening, or about to happen, but I can understand that being difficult for a game switching to 3D graphics for the first time. The things they did focus on were very fun to have though, such as the added jobs of being a taxi or ambulance driver. On the other hand, missions feel really repetitive compared to GTA2, and often involved doing the same tasks just for different people, very similar to the mission mechanic in the first game. It's a bummer, as I was excited to see what new missions they could think up in the new 3D environment, but found it being almost the exact same missions from 5 years earlier. I didn't do every mission though, so I could be missing some very cool, unique gems later on in the game.

A lot of the complaints I see are about car controls and how quickly they get destroyed, which in my experience wasn't bad at all. The cars controlled and lasted longer than the cars do in Simpsons Hit & Run, at least, and that came out 2 years later (and somehow has a higher score on here??) LOL - which is the closest thing to a 3D Grand Theft Auto game I can personally compare it to. Sure, there was challenge with making sure your car doesn't get completely totaled, but that's what makes the game fun, and what fun is a game that doesn't challenge you a little?

The absolute most insane thing over all about GTAIII is the radio. The music is the best it's ever been, and so detailed in every aspect it absolutely blew my mind, it's crazy how much like actually flipping through different radio stations it felt like. I legit started actually listening to the talk show hosts while driving around the map in circles, because I got so caught up in what they were talking about. Unfortunately, because I have the original PS2 version of the game, I could not connect my own personal music to the radio, but the fact that eventually became an option is so, so cool.

Well, after all this, I can't help but also wonder myself, what is my overall opinion on Grand Theft Auto III? I do like it! Even outside of it's crazy influence, and new awesome art style. I especially loved playing it as a silly thing between me and my friend at 1 in the morning, trading off the controller to take turns completing different missions, and jokingly blaming the other when failing. I enjoyed it significantly less playing it alone, not because the game is unplayable or bad, but because I was finding myself getting more easily bored, even though I was enjoying it. I just kept finding myself always off doing something else within an hour of booting up the game. With friends, I feel I would rate the game a 3.5/5, and by myself a 3/5, so that's the rating I will go with!

If my coworker who saw me writing this and disagreed with my take reads this, I hope with both our powers we eventually can complete that GOD DAMN ambulance mission.

Peace & Love

3/5

the reviews that quickly throw out "it's dated" without saying much else are pretty disappointing, because all the guff that plagues the proceeding games in the series shows just how perfect this one is.

not a moment is wasted in GTA 3. you have a city that's actually fun to explore and drive around in, the missions are truly open ended and challenging, and there's none of that Rockstar Games-brand mediocre prestige TV wannabe writing to bog down the experience. the story is only a vehicle for you to take on more bonkers vehicle challenges peppered with occasional gunfights, while current GTAs seemingly focus on the opposite. the atmosphere is top notch; there really is nothing else that compares with blazing through Liberty at night while listening to a classic Moving Shadow drum 'n bass set.

it's a classic game with a perfect formula that only got more and more muddled as the series went on. I don't understand why this gets overlooked so frequently these days, especially when its more popular follow up Vice City is far less exciting (unless grinding asset missions while circling around two flat islands really gets your rocks off).

This is the first in a series of reviews of the 3d era of Grand Theft Auto.

When playing hugely influential games from a previous era I like to try and place myself in the shoes of someone from the time. Grand Theft Auto was already a household name but the third numbered entry was a hugely influential title in the history of games. Playing it back today it can seem quaint and dated but you have to understand how this game was received from the perspective of a 2001 audience whose only exposure to open world 3D environments would be driving games like Driver or Midtown Madness. The ability to even leave your car and start blasting innocent people would have seemed like a crazy novelty and indeed it generated shock and horror from the mainstream media and advocacy groups for its portrayal of mayhem and senseless violence. Going forward the GTA series became a powerhouse and it’s DNA can be found in most open world games to this day, I think it’s crucial to understand just how hard GTA nailed it’s 3d open world gameplay with this entry and what the secret sauce of these games are.

I planned to play the game unmodified to understand it’s core gameplay and history, however this is simply not possible with the Steam version on modern platforms, I tried to get it to run without mods but I couldn’t get it to boot. With little option I turned to a mod called ‘Definitive Edition’ (Not to be confused with the officially released GTA Definitive Edition Trilogy, which is a bad product that you should not buy). This mod allows the game to run well but does add some ‘quality of life’ features that weren’t in the original as well as various graphical enhancements and effects which do alter the look of the game. I think this is a compromise that is necessary to make however the mod did tone down the blue tint and motion blur that was in the original ps2 version which I think is iconic. I did opt to disable some mods like ‘classic axis’ which adds modern camera controls, quite frankly it’s more frustrating to use than the original stupid fixed camera position and created a glitch with aimed weapons like the sniper. I also downloaded a simple map mod, GTA 3 does not come with an in-game map by default. Physical copies of the game came with a paper map with all the locations on it, the map mod I downloaded was an early pause screen map with no legend or icons present. It had a waypoint feature but no GPS. (which is a good thing, I’ll explain later) I think its fair that I should have a convenient map to reference and use as I please.

Gameplay in GTA 3 is really divided into 2 distinct but related scenarios, driving is the means of navigating the world and the on-foot gameplay serves the bulk of the combat, however these systems overlap significantly. Your car is also a weapon and you can run to hijack cars to get away from the scenes of chaos you create, you can also perform drive-by shootings for mobile firepower. Hijacking cars in Grand Theft Auto is so iconic that it’s the name of the game and in GTA 3 it’s just as satisfying as ever to pull an old lady out of her shitty SUV and drive it headfirst into a ditch. It’s really amazing just how much time you will spend in a car in this game, there are options to use a boat or even a plane however jumping in water is an instant death because Claude’s massive balls prevent him from swimming and anyway there’s not much in the bays of the city to explore. Plane controls are absolutely dreadful, I still don’t know how to get it to fly for longer than 4 seconds even after consulting the internet so I avoided the dodo. Cars are king in GTA 3 and thankfully the driving is good, the variety of vehicles means that different cars feel unique to drive, heavy set cars sway and swing on their suspension as real cars would, they’re slow but they’re so much fun to swing and handbrake turn, conversely sports cars are nimble, fast and brake quickly but they’re also very flimsy. Police chases are exhilarating thanks to very aggressive police car AI who will attempt to pit and crash your car, leaving you vulnerable when you have to abandon your vehicle and face the cops gunfire head-on.

There are parts of GTA 3 that I think surpass even more recent Rockstar releases like GTA V and Red Read Redemption 2; the game is very hands-off and unstructured in it’s open world design which leads to engaging and organic gameplay moments that the player creates for themselves. Aside from the system of having to unlock parts of the city through story and mission progression, all trust is put in you as a player to memorise, navigate and build your arsenal. There are no GPS lines on mini-maps that lead you by the nose, there is no slow-walking lengthy character exposition or heavy scripting, GTA 3 missions are open ended and on you to use your wits and knowledge to complete using the tools that the game provides. Some people say the game is unforgiving and sometimes you might find yourself dying to something which isn't fair like a dodgy camera or bad lock-on but for the most part it's on you to gear up and prep for dangers ahead and in that sense it's very fair, likewise if you flip a car or make a mistake its on you to fix in that moment, you can't reload an easy mid-mission checkpoint so thinking on your feet and playing flexibly during a mission is important. There are powerful weapons, armour and vehicles at your disposal if you know where to look, if you collect secret packages you can even get them to spawn in your safehouse. This is one reason I think the GTA 3d trilogy is so highly regarded, because not only is the player given an open sandbox to fuck around in but because they had to commit their city to memory in order to equip themselves. Navigating Liberty City becomes second nature, you start to memorise spawns for fast cars and assault rifles. You learn the map inside out and you can navigate the streets like the back of your hand and just when you think you’re comfortable a new area of the map is opened and you can start exploring all over again. You really begin to immerse yourself in the world and it’s an excellent sense of freedom that you can’t replicate in modern games that demand gigantic maps with lines and arrows that tell you the shortest route to an icon. If you want to get somewhere in GTA 3 you better commit that route and area to your memory. All of this this freedom is complimented by a great amount of detail and interaction in the world which makes you feel at home in Liberty City.

There are details in this game which seem second nature to us now but that’s because GTA 3 pioneered these small touches and raised our expectations so greatly like the way your car becomes impacted and dented; doors and hoods fly open, fenders get ripped off, hiitting a fire hydrant spurts jets of water into the air, streetlamps get uprooted and roll around with a metallic thud. Rain splashes on your car windscreen and running over a pedestrian creates a sickening crunch as your wheels leave behind a trail of bloody tire marks. All of this shows that the developers really went all out on trying to create a world that was not just a hollow sandbox arena to play in but a vision for a world and city that you could tear through with impactful and satisfying interactions. It’s a symphony of violence and a celebration of unchained mayhem. I think it must have taken a really talented group of developers to be able to integrate all these small and intricate gameplay details into an open-world with a such a broad scope.

Missions in GTA 3 are also really varied and open to interpretation, unlike in say, red dead 2 where the player is expected to follow a very linear chain of scripted events. GTA 3 puts a couple dots on your radar and tells you to go commit some hate crimes in whatever order you please. I’m not even being facetious about the ‘hate crime’ comment, one of the rampage missions I picked up handed me a flamethrower and said ‘Roast 20 Colombians’ whereupon a group of men in flower shirts saying ‘ay gringo’ spawned on the street. Juvenile racism aside the missions are a superb and refreshing experience after having sat through so many linear sight-seeing tours in modern games. GTA 3 presents a feeling of being totally unchained and let loose on a world that was begging for it.

I haven’t mentioned the story yet and quite frankly that’s because it’s rubbish and I can’t be bothered, it’s clear that story isn’t a priority here. The game starts with your girlfriend betraying you in a bank robbery and leaving you for dead so you do missions for various gangs until the plot decides to move on, most missions are isolated from the main plot with only a handful directly tied to the overarching story. There’s a cast of characters who have their own quirks and personalities but the ones that survive are very shallow and one dimensional, the only one I like is the Donald Trump stand-in mayor of the city and Rockstar clearly agrees because he went on to appear in subsequent games. The player character, Claude, is completely and utterly mute and comes across as a total psycho who just un-fazingly commits horrific crimes and extreme violence. The whole game feels very chaotic evil and drab compared to other games in the series but in that sense I kinda like Claude as an unsettling figure. Really he’s just a goofy looking dude in some cargo pants but that makes him more scary, he’ll slaughter an entire group of people just because someone asks him to. Real quick I would like to touch on the licenced music in the game. Radio stations are an iconic part of the series thanks in no small part of the variety of stations in GTA 3 and this game has one of my personal favourite stations. MSX FM which is like a drum and bass pirate radio station the likes of which you can still tune into to this very day in parts of the UK. It’s an institution in itself and MC Codebreakers utterly incomprehensible rhymes still bring me great joy. Aside from that there’s also a techno/trance station, pop, rock, hip-hop, Reggae and talk show with series staple and apparently real human guy Lazlo.

What I’m hoping to get across with this review is to offer more than just a cursory glance at a game which is considered to just be obsolete and ageing. I went easy on criticising the game because I think it really deserves better than to be known as the lesser game in the classic 3d trilogy. Yes it is true that it can be a clunky and frustrating experience where you die to unfair nonsense, because your camera got stuck or your lock-on didn’t work properly. Claude is very fragile and one wrong step or jump can turn you into Swiss cheese, you do have to get into a routine of arming yourself to the teeth and using body armour ALL THE TIME, however this only feeds into the exploration aspect of the game as you reroute and pick up all those weapon spawns again. I think GTA 3 is not just a stepping stone for the series (although to be clear it definitely is) but is also a case study in open world design and a great game on it’s own merit. I had a blast playing it and I think it more than accomplished the goal at creating one of the most intricate and most fun open world games of it’s time. If your only experience with this game is using weapon cheats to mess around as a kid I do highly recommend revisiting this entry, it’s a blast.

While a humungous leap from its predecessors, this one is still not worth playing.

This game has tremendous atmosphere, great radios albeit with more songs needed, and an actually comprehensible city. It is actually pretty fun to drive around in this game, with the good tunes and wacky car physics, though I could do without my car blowing up from 2 bumps. The problems lie within the actual missions, and the gameplay outside of driving.

The missions are structured similarly to the first two games, where you just go and do random jobs, though of course they become increasingly higher-profile and dangerous, but most notably they become annoyingly difficult. I am 95% certain a lot of these missions were never play-tested, with some being nearly impossible unless you already have guns or something going into the mission.

The flat-out bad mission design isn't helped by the lackluster story either, you get cut-scenes now but they tell hardly any story, and as a silent protagonist, it really feels like you're just doing missions for the fun of it, not because of a developing plot.

The shooting sucks, driving boats isn't fun, there's no mission checkpoints which can be quite frustrating, there's no overall map so if you don't remember where something is, tough shit. There's just too many things getting in the way of actually having fun, which is unfortunate, cause I was really loving this world, and really getting attuned to the driving. Hopefully Vice City improves.

After beating Grand Theft Auto IV, I was wondering if I'd be able to play the first two games in the original 3D trilogy without having to buy a PS2 or something like that, because I really didn't want to end up buying the disaster of a "definitive" collection that was released back in 2021. Because of this, you could imagine my surprise when I found a double pack of Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for the original Xbox at a CeX four weeks ago, as I realized that I could play both games on my Xbox 360 as soon as I took the pack off the shelf. Grand Theft Auto III is one of those games where people talk more about how innovative it was at the time of its release than they do about the game itself, because despite my fun with it, Grand Theft Auto III doesn't hold a candle to the rest of the games in the series.

If you look up any sort of retrospective review of Grand Theft Auto III, you're guaranteed to see the writer mention how "revolutionary" this game was for letting you explore Liberty City at your own pace and do whatever you wanted, but even that aspect of Grand Theft Auto III isn't perfect. Yes, going on rampages and messing around will always be fun, but there's almost nothing to do in the open world outside of that, because while the open world is very impressive for the time with how lively it feels, you're never given any real reason to explore each of the game's three islands as you unlock them, aside from ticking the game's 100% completion checklist by completing identical taxi and vigilante missions or finding some asinine collectibles. You don't even have any real reason to spend the money you earn throughout the game, as all you can really buy is more ammunition, which is already cancelled out by the game's cheat codes. Exploring the grungy, foggy streets of Liberty City while listening to the game's great soundtrack can be fun, but Grand Theft Auto III might be the only game in the series where people will just randomly gun you down for no reason, so it's almost like the game discourages you from trying to take the scenery in. This game pretty much entirely consists of either driving or shooting, and both of these elements are annoying to deal with in their own ways. While the actual driving feels fast and responsive, the fragility of all the game's cars make it so that bumping into even one thing makes your vehicle spin out of control and get very close to exploding, and it doesn't help that playing this specific version of the game makes it so that the frame rate slows down dramatically every time I drive. The shooting in Grand Theft Auto III is downright atrocious, as the targeting system is a far cry from the one used in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and the guns themselves are barely even that effective. Not only that, but the only guns that let you aim freely are either incredibly situational (such as the sniper rifle and the rocket launcher) or they make you stop moving entirely, so I ended up trying to avoid using my guns as much as I could during the game's missions.

One of the weirdest elements of Grand Theft Auto III would be the complete lack of an in-game map. All you're given is a tiny, inaccurate mini-map on the screen's bottom left corner, so you end up having to just remember where everything is, and that also applies to the Pay 'n' Sprays and 8-Ball's bomb garages. Most of my time with Grand Theft Auto III was spent going through the main story, and my thoughts on it are complicated, to say the least. Despite the entirely forgettable writing, the lack of linearity in many of the game's missions allowed for me to complete them in ways that I came up with rather than what the game told me to do, and it was especially fun to do this with the inclusion of cheat codes. This player freedom doesn't apply to all of the missions, though, as a lot of them are arguably some of the hardest and most frustrating levels in the entire series. The most difficult missions often involve timers, which means that you need to have a fast car in order to even stand a chance, but the low draw distance often led to me crashing into cars that I couldn't even see, which led to me having to load previous saves and do the missions from the very beginning. Despite how innovative it was back in 2001 and the merits that I managed to find with it, Grand Theft Auto III is chock full of shortcomings and is easily my least favorite game in the series so far, and I really have no desire to go back to it.

A Product of its time; 20+ years later you can't help but admire it.

GTA 3 was the pioneer of 3D sandbox and what was present in this game was actually a lot. We have certainly been spoiled with most sandbox games of today but going back to its roots you can find some appreciation albeit some frustrating experiences at their first take into the 3D Tech. Going from Vice to San Andreas to then GTA 3 you can see how much they have grown and improved and it's amazing how fast the adapted in one console generation. Story wise there isn't much here besides the usual GTA Whack someone and boom mission over. There were a lot more timed missions that I have remembered but it was a 50/50 for my enjoyment. No Map in menu which would make things easier but it was not too bad. There is a charm to play it but I would personally say it has not aged well in terms of Mechanics. Its certainly not a perfect game but it is a example of what was yet to come. I played this with the Definitive Project Mod installed (HD Textures, 60 FPS etc.) and I did not have any issues or errors for the game. It was smooth as butter but the only thing is that this game was probably designed at 30FPS prob so some unfortunate accidents may happen like your character going from 100 to 0 from a sidewalk edge lol. Should you visit this game? That depends if you are playing it for enjoyment or the history. I would say its a great time capsule to enjoy in bits but don't feel a burden if you were unable to beat it because it's a product of its time. This game concludes my GTA 3D Trilogy Journey. My other reviews will be on my profile.

Probably one of the most atypical entries out of the PS2 era GTA Trilogy, despite the fact that this provided the major jump from 2D to 3D and is also much richer in terms of the environment, storytelling, and cutscenes which are actually compelling with actors like Joe Pantoliano and Kyle MacLachlan providing voice work - on top of some pretty impressive body language work. The main character Claude doesn't say a single word in this game, but there's also so much which is just delivered through his facial expressions and body language, although where most of his character comes from his interactions with other people.

I mentioned this game was atypical, because it's much closer to the first two GTA games in terms of how you're mainly either doing story missions or rampaging through the city (the latter is just so much fun with ramming into vehicles and pedestrians like out of Carmageddon), but there is a pretty decent amount of variety with the story missions. It has a pretty straight forward simplicity, where you aren't exactly going around and getting haircuts or watching movies and so forth, where the latter games emphasised interactivity and messing about way more. That, and there's also something about the art style and the environment which feels really cold and sleazy, feeling like some sort of after-hours like deserted ghost town that can often feel a bit creepy at points. Vice City and San Andreas felt way more warm and inviting, whilst this one has a tone that would later almost be matched in Grand Theft Auto IV - but that one also had way more of an emphasis on realism, and this feels more like an adults only comic book in tone.

Also can't go without mentioning just how unbalanced the missions are in this game, either where they are just way too easy or they're really punishing and unforgiving - and often times I've encountered both of these at once, which is kind of hilarious. Failing at a mission multiple times then finishing it quickly and almost accidentally by running someone over or something, has a weird sense of satisfaction to it. This game also doesn't really hold your hand, allowing you to approach missions in a pretty creative way - but then there's also annoying things such as the fact you don't have a full map to access. Doesn't quite reach the same highs as Vice City or San Andreas, but it also definitely doesn't feel overshadowed by those games either.

As much as its blemishes seem to show more and more with each passing year, so too do its assets. This nostalgically blocky open world still feels more alive, styled, and memorable than offerings from tons of massive-budget Triple A games of the current era. Words cannot express just how revolutionary this was at the time, and in large part it's impressive how much it really still holds up over twenty years later. Scrap the gunplay entirely, it's borderline unplayable - but most everything else here is enjoyable, save for the ruinous lack of a map system and a handful of not-so-fun missions which thankfully can be remedied with a YouTube guide or two. Still feels great to knock around these clayfaced NPCs with a baseball bat (accompanied by that iconic squish sound effect), blow up cars with RPGs, and see the origins of Rockstar's effortlessly satisfying mission structure - going from slimy character to slimy character carrying out a barrage of depraved tasks that range from vandalism to murder to all-out mayhem. Later installments improved on the formula but they'd be nothing without the template.

WHAT A REVOLUTIONARY GAME! IT CHANGED GAMING FOREVER!

And those are all the good things I can say about this game.
In 2024, this game is just mediocre.

The story is bland. Some characters are interesting but none are fleshed out enough to be memorable. Radio music was alright but very limited amount of songs available. Mission structure was repetitive and some were just irritating and difficult for no reason. Cars also broke with the slightest breeze. No planes, no bikes, no choppers.

It's the base of what's to come so at least that's something.

Now onto Liberty City Stories...

I may have spent a lifetime in Liberty City. I couldn't stop playing it and exploring every nook and cranny. Hell, even searching for hidden packages was addictive, after all you had freedom! I also remember how humours it was, taking into account this is a trademark in the series, nevertheless GTA 3 had a darker, more industrial and lethargic feel to it. This game was fantastic and still is considering how much of a game changer it was. What The Matrix was to the movies, GTA 3 was to the gaming industry. The soundtrack got me into drum & bass and dub as well, driving away from the cops while listening to MSX and chilling with K-Jah. Highly recommendable classic.

From Claude's scrunched up face to his black jacket and weird green pants and the water that churns the colour of concrete, there is a heaviness to Grand Theft Auto III that more serious entries (IV) never matched. But there's also a brutal clarity to the space, where we are always able to see objects in relation to one another, and where collisions seem active instead of incidental. It's just a genuinely explosive game, from the way it looks to the way it controls. I heard someone say it's the purest of the series, and it's also one of the purest games. Where it lacks in atmospheric effects its distinctive grime textures carry the weight of the whole city, and if that's not enough there's the radio permanently tuned to the haunted vibrations of Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires.

A recent review said they heard someone say something about the purity of this game, and for my money, it is an apt description, far more precise than the neglect with which contemporary perspectives treat this - like it or hate it - monument in the medium's history. Only nineties kids (and probably those older) remember how incredible this game felt upon launch: Liberty City, murder sprees, tanks, celebrity voice acting, a shockingly good radio that kept you seated and eager as the fires consumed the car you jacked in some grand theft auto that began your umpteenth downtown massacre. Unbelievable stuff. You stood at the edge of the beach and breathed in the possibility that surrounded you.

Things have aged of course, but to me for some reason they are nowhere near as interesting to talk about. One returns to that idea of purity, and with the fireworks faded, one recognizes in 2021 how dark the shadows are at night, how dour the clouds, how graceful the rain as their pitter-patter gracelessly scores this city. Back then, when the game was a revolution, the city felt so alive and open. Only now has the rust revealed reality. This is a small and dead city, a small and dead game, starring a small and dead psychopath more or less destined to kill pedestrians and do missions. But this is not diminishment, rather, one now sees clearly the charms of this game, some twenty years on. The ocean of a childhood was just a piss puddle at daybreak in New York City.

Claude the protagonist is betrayed in the beginning, betrays his later allies, hunts down his betrayer, and possibly kills the only person he loved for talking too much. That's it. That's purity. That's what somehow makes this game better than Vice City, Scarface drained of de Palma, Pacino, and pathos. By contrast, GTA III lost nothing: it was content to make nothing its tone, atmosphere, story, character, and theme. Of all the GTA games, then, this one is invulnerable to the ever-looming (thankfully nowadays much less bandied about) accusation of ludonarrative dissonance. There is no conflict between story and gameplay. You are a killer and nothing but. Have fun. I did and do.

Black-handed tomfoolery in three dimensional havok. You see, it's grandly outdated- You can't even shoot a pedestrian through it's invisible windshield and everything SCREAMS prototype hell. But this is an atmospheric witchcraft. Antiquated commonplaces of gaming, floating icons to affordably wreck mayhem and peaks of infuriating, faulty, hair-ripping difficulty rooted to laborious ballistics and open-roam incompetently forcing you to go hell-and-back just to replay a mission before dying stupidly. It's challenging roughness makes it an equally gratifying circus if you brace for it to be a time-consuming maelstrom of jumping through hoops of fire. I just know i grinded my TIME on my PS2 back in the day, some of it i cried out of furious anger, but a sheer lot of it i stood hypnotized by blowing up police cars and driving boats in a fit of a nervous breakdown until achieving meets end. It's gonna drive INSANE anyone accustomed to modern GTA V gameplay. But it's a challenging, gratifying hood classic that comes off as cathartic when you almost seemingly impossibly let it. Also, the simplicity of everything seems funnily fresh for taking place on such a big fictional universe, someone as cryptic as Claude deserves a glorious comeback somehow.

It’s as baseline as any sandbox open-world can be which is to be expected considering this is what popularized it in the modern age of gaming. Still, this doesn’t negate how playing this feels like a very barren concept that future games would try to actually do something with. Liberty City is gray and grimy looking but it sorely lacks in any impulsive need to fuck around than just trying to actively look for it which beyond just flattening pedestrians there isn’t anything to do. The actual driving is terrible. It’s too slippery and chaotic at even the slightest short turn which makes missions expecting you to be somewhat precise annoyingly difficult to do. And since that’s really the only thing you can do in the game it only worsens the experience laid here. There’s also the shooting which is finicky to aim and shoot but Rockstar has never been great about this even today so I wasn’t too surprised to see this is where it all originated from. I’d say I would give this another shot in the future to see if it pulls itself together in any way that redeems it enough but I wasn’t engaged by an awkwardly told story featuring a protagonist who feels like he shouldn’t be silent in these cutscenes but he is I guess and you can’t just magically improve controls like it’s some switch you have to flip yourself after the first three-four hours.

É provavelmente o jogo 3D de mundo aberto mais importante da história, ou um dos, foi revolucionário na época, as pessoas não esperam tantas possibilidades em um jogo de videogame naquela época. Dito isso, tem o modo história mais fraquinho dos jogos principais de longe (3/VC/SA/4/5), o personagem tem o carisma de uma porta com a maçaneta enterrada, a trilha sonora é boa, a música tema é ótima, mas a jogabilidade é podre demais, não dá pra nadar, e nem pular ou dar saltos básicos pra subir sobre construções com mais facilidade, e não existe nenhuma roupa e nem customização básica pro Claude, toda a graça de jogar um bom GTA ainda não estava presente aqui.

The most simple entry in the series. Also the most revolutionary at the time.

It didn't kickoff or totally invented the open-world genre. But it did perfected the crime open world genre in specific, which later would spawn an array of copycats.

Now, talking about the game itself. Nowdays I mean. It isn't very good but hear me out, it isn't as restrained as modern GTA games with it's scripted scenes all over the place.

The simple nature of this game opens for a wide range of possibilities in missions. The objectives are simple but varied. Everything is simple for the most part in this game, but that doesn't totally need to be something negative.

It's also for some reason one of the hardest to beat. The AI is overly aggresive, the layout of Liberty City is confusing and there isn't a world map to guide you, unless you had the physical paper map included with the console relesase. Probably you will have a hard time in your first playthough.

It was the first, it shows. Be patient and you'll eventually get to the end. The map design forces you to learn it's structure, where to take the best routes durng a mission, etc. It isn't as braindead as later games, you really need to think outside of the box at times. It can be unfair at times too.

As is often the case with very early games in a popular series, I respect GTA III for everything it did for the franchise. It's very clear how and why this game was revolutionary for Rockstar, Grand Theft Auto, and gaming in general. It's also astounding just how much freedom this game gives you to pass missions in any way you want, something that is sorely missing from the heavily scripted nature of Rockstar's later releases. The soundtrack, while understandably barebones in comparison to later GTA games, is still pretty good; I can forgive it entirely just because it includes Paul Engemann's 'Scarface', a fantastic song that fit so perfectly with the tone of this game. Also the voice cast for this game is surprisingly rock solid, the familiar voices of Michael Madsen, Michael Rapaport and Kyle Machlachlan in particular lend so much personality to this instalment.

Unfortunately that's about where it ends for this game, as this experience truly highlights just how spoiled players are these days, considering what GTA III had to work with. The camera is almost impossible to move whilst the player is moving which leads to many frustrating moments of very restricted movement and turning. Aiming and shooting is nigh impossible unless you're practically nose to nose with the subject you're trying to kill. The Wanted system is also bizarre, leaving very little freedom to escape the cops in organic ways, and an over reliance on pay'n'sprays - which by the way, don't even have a marker on the mini map during many missions. So unless you know the map of Liberty City by heart (and why wouldn't you, when playing GTA III for the very first bleeding time) they become impossible to find.

Oh yeah that's another thing, there is literally no pause menu map like in every other Rockstar game; sure there's a pullout map in the physical game box, but have you seen that thing? Not only is it not top down, (like literally every map in existence should be), for some unknown reason, but also it is covered in graphics that just make it all the more confusing for a first time player. I'm not going to study this mess of a physical map just to find a pay'n'spray that should be marked on the in-game mini map.

There is a lot to love and respect about Grand Theft Auto III - unfortunately, when you take all of it's far, far superior younger siblings into account, there are far too many frustrations that come with it. This makes it by default, easily the worst 3D era Grand Theft Auto.

Also fun fact: the cars on this game are made of papier-mâché.

Liberty City is incredible. It's low hanging clouds, cement-toned water, simple and clean building landscapes, it's a wonderful space to drive around in, vibe, and explore. It might be the size of a city block in a modern open world game, but very few worlds match the detail and living quality Rockstar achieved in the series' first 3D entry. It almost makes it worth it to trudge through the absolute clusterfuck of a shooting system, seriously some of the worst shooting and mission design I've ever experienced. It's miserable and grueling to deal with the game's capricious car physics as your truck lightly grazes a pothole and spins out of control, exploding like a pinto, gentle nudges throwing you totally off while any car attack missions are like tickling a tank with a feather, or babysit an AI who runs straight into gunfire with no concern for self preservation. And yet I pushed through this miserable experience to get a chance to just, drive around more. Drink in the sights, listen to the music. It's just a shame that even that's hampered by the cruel, cynical, juvenile, unfunny edge to the characters and dialogue. Idk, it's very weird, very compelling, and I'm glad I finally made time to start treating this series fairly

2nd GTA game I've ever beaten the story mode in - I normally tend to get far, but then abandon for some reason. However finally got through 3 on this latest playthrough.

These games are hard to rate in retrospect though man. Because yes there's obviously quite a bit of jank in this entry, (some of it even probably being considered bad/unenjoyable game design in a modern context)... but like its hard to be negative about considering this is one of the earliest 3D open world games & considered hugely influential. You aren't gonna get a perfect track record when you're in uncharted waters & what you make is gonna end up being "the standard" for others to build upon, duh!

That little rant out the way, I'd say most of this games jank from a 2023 perspective is 80-85% manageable & 15-20% cheap BS. Definitely seen worse skews, but it doesn't hurt my experience with the game too much. Overall I'd consider this a pretty neat, though very early "good example" of its genre that's been surpassed by now. However that does not mean this game isn't worth visiting. Would just advice going in with modest expectations, tackle its awkward qualities more with fascination than frustration.