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.

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.

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.

Inovador, porém totalmente definhado nos dias de hoje. Oras, nem mesmo a rádio do jogo é boa, o que você esperava do resto?

Carros feitos de papel com a pior física do mundo, péssimas partes de tiroteio, submissões sofridas (a de paramédico é literalmente injusta) e quanto mais o jogo avança mais as missões ficam insuportáveis e desprovidas de criatividade. Guias foram necessários pra descobrir o melhor jeito de completar alguma missão sem ter um AVC ou simplesmente pra saber onde fica tal coisa.

A história é um poço de simplicidade, mas até que consegue fazer algum sentido, nada representa melhor Liberty City do que um monte de gente rasa, descartável e movidas por motivos banais, junta isso com a atmosfera intimidadora e melancólica super bem construída e GTA 3 até parece mais complexo do que ele realmente é. Ainda da pra ver elementos de GTA 1 e 2 aqui e o mais notório deles sendo o protagonista "mudo", gosto que o Claude acabou se tornando um badass silencioso pelos fãs, apesar de que na prática ele é só um pau-mandado do krl.

Finalmente posso jogar GTA Vice Kino agora.

I love the rainy fall vibe of the visuals and people just bustling about in the busy setting of Liberty City and how much the vibe immediately changes the moment you move from Portland Harbor where it moves from sleazy clubs and rundown streets to the noticeably fancier high rises and parks of Staunton Island. Rockstar's humorous cynicism of the modern era already shines brightly through the radio's mixture of tunes (most of which are pretty well picked even before they started getting access to much more well known songs in later games) and the constant ridiculously absurd advertisements playing as you drive through the city.

I just really wish GTA 3 was more fun to actually go back to and play because if you've played any of the games after this one, you're going to be used to so many things that you thought were basic essentials that turn out to be quality of life additions and improvements off the groundwork that this game sets. Two handed weapons force you into tank control aiming in a game where enemies mad dash either away from or towards you before you can even get a proper shot on them, driver AI is utterly batshit insane and not in a fun "look how bad drivers are in New York" kinda way as they make truly insane sharp turns in an instant in lanes that make no sense for them to be doing so, and in missions where you're getting chased can rubberband towards you at speeds that would make older Need for Speed games blush. Cops can be straight up suicidal on two stars being so desperate to ram you off the road that they will run over other pedestrians and even their own forces as you get blamed for it only increasing the insane pressure.

Frankly the biggest killers for why I'm shelving this for now is the combo trio of no mission checkpoints/restarts, no accessible map, and the mission designs themselves. While GTA 3 starts out pretty simple at first and tries to ease you into how the rules of this world work, it all too quickly starts to throw you into the deep end with missions that purposefully do dickish shit to you that you have no way of expecting on a first run which only gets worse by the time you're on Staunton Island when the drives to mission starts and the drives on those missions get increasingly longer. Not having a full clear map also becomes incredibly frustrating in a game that has so many similar looking buildings and roads on first glance. While it's fun to eventually get down these layouts yourself by memory and know what turns you need to make without a GPS telling you (GTA IV and V really spoiled me on this regard and it's neat going back to the 3D trilogy games which didn't have it!), GTA 3 goes a bit too far on this by not giving you any accessible full map that you can just browse and look at to figure out a route to where you need to be. It's especially bad with stuff like Ammu-Nation stores or Pay 'n' Sprays not being marked on the map when you're either in a desperate hurry or just trying to prep before a mission.

While I love the old early PS2 visuals and vibe of the original release (or at least on PC, as close as you can get with a mod setup using SilentPatch, SkyGfx, and Project 2DFX bare minimum to fix massive technical issues and restore missing effects with the bad PC port), I think honestly I'll just wait at some point to grab the Definitive Editions when they're on sale again. While those remasters butcher the art style and color grading pretty severely and have major issues of their own, I think GTA 3 is the one that, gameplay-wise, would benefit more from the GTA V-styled controls and mechanics alongside having an easy mission restart and full map for me.

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

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6qUB13LTTc

also vividly remember the kid at my elementary school who told me about the word "shit" loving the Shit out of this game back around 2003 and i was fascinated by his descriptions of what could take place in it. probably better than most Sony Computer Entertainment Incorporated Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC works from the past 6-7 or so years, which are just barely-evolved versions of what DMA design was cooking up here and a little bit earlier with space station silicon valley on the n64. i usually get pretty bored about halfway in every time i've played, and just end up driving around liberty city listening to some mad tunes from the legendary moving shadow records or some dubs mixed by the scientist over at king tubby's (rip) studio. that's pretty much the case with every subsequent game in this series, but with different music, actually.

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.

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...

While I do respect the revolutionary legacy of this game, it doesn't save it from being a frustrating nightmare that ruined my experience.

Lack of checkpoints when dying.
Fragile and hard to control vehicles.
Insufferable brutal police AI.
Bad to straight up unfair mission design.
Forgettable story and characters.

Thank God I played Vice City and San Andreas first.