NTSC-U copy played on a region modded PlayStation 2 Slim.
Despite me having played this game pretty much since it's release (and despite the fact I was roughly 7 at that time) this past weekend marked the first time I actually took the time to sit down and finish Grand Theft Auto III for the PlayStation 2.
I feel like folks from my generation who played these games grew up mostly playing them with friends, not really knowing what to do or understanding most of it and just inputting the flying cars and weapons cheats and having a blast. In fact, a frequent challenge whenever my friends and I were over at someone's house who had these games would be to take turns "flying" over to the other islands and see how far we'd get before the police obliterated us. Maybe we'd play a mission or two as well, but they never really held our attention long before we would return to hijacking cars, with mindless destruction and mayhem.
And I feel that's the aspect that's really held up the most over the years, the core feature of the sandbox where you can go wherever you want, explore hidden areas and generally muck about to your heart's content. It was an incredibly innovative release back in 2001 and it holds a large amount of responsibility for where video games are today.
The other department I feel still holds up is the art direction - the environments range from the dirty, grimy approximation of New York City to the more upper class suburban areas of the outer city areas, with a dynamic weather system introducing fog and rain with the occasional glimmer of sunshine. There's a bit of cartoonyness featured in the characters, but I feel it comes off more as caricature to better fit in with the overall satirical tone of the game alongside the cheerful radio adverts for shoes made with child labour.
As for the general gameplay and story, well the missions are fun and adhere to a very arcade-like sensibility. There's optional stuff available like street racing and emergency-vehicle missions to offer a change in pace to the insanity the regular gameplay provides. Punishment for failure is often not very severe outside of having to do the mission again while being arrested or dying results in a cash penalty along with your weapons being frustratingly confiscated which is exacerbated by the lack of an in-game map. Being in need of weapons or trying to ditch a wanted level can often leave you frustrated trying to find gun shops and pay'n'sprays whenever you're in need of them - you need that foldout map that came with a boxed copy of the game, otherwise you'll have to have one saved on your phone. The camera is also a relic of a bygone era, relying on a combination of buttons that never feel natural while the framerate and full-screen motion blur can be incredibly distracting. You can adjust to these "features" over the course of the gameplay, but it never really feels quite right and you'll constantly be resetting your expectations whenever you boot the game up again.
The story itself adheres very much to the "it's expected to be there, but it's not important" model of video game development that was the standard during this period. You start off with a cutscene of the player character being betrayed during a bank heist and being arrested, before making a break for it during his prison transfer. After that it's a case of meeting a series of criminals for missions and working up the proverbial ladder, earning more money and gaining access to other areas of the world map. It's not until you're near the end of the story where the woman who betrayed you at the start shows up by sheer coincidence and you go on one last mission to kill her and rescue a woman whom your former boss was in lesbian with. The characters you meet along the way range from moderately amusing to downright offensive but there's no-one that ever particularly stands out bar the characters on the radio stations. It's all just window dressing to make you play more ellaborate missions and have a fun time while doing so.
All in all, Grand Theft Auto III is still a fun time - the aesthetics and general gameplay to a good enough job of distracting you from some of the more awkward features present. For me it used to only ever be the sandbox to have whacky high-octane bursts of imaginitve fun in, but I have come to enjoy the actual mission content that is available too. The radio stations feature the best comedic moments available where the story beats feel janky and non-existant. I wouldn't recommend beating this version of the game in any way, I believe the PC port fixes a lot of the gameplay issues I had, but it's definitely still fun to pick up and play for a couple hours here and there from time to time.
Special shout out in particular to my copy of the game that would freak out whenever I had the radio on or drove in a police car for too long. The world would just start disappearing and the game would freeze up for indeterminate amounts of time, rendering progress I'd made useless unless I saved after every mission
Despite me having played this game pretty much since it's release (and despite the fact I was roughly 7 at that time) this past weekend marked the first time I actually took the time to sit down and finish Grand Theft Auto III for the PlayStation 2.
I feel like folks from my generation who played these games grew up mostly playing them with friends, not really knowing what to do or understanding most of it and just inputting the flying cars and weapons cheats and having a blast. In fact, a frequent challenge whenever my friends and I were over at someone's house who had these games would be to take turns "flying" over to the other islands and see how far we'd get before the police obliterated us. Maybe we'd play a mission or two as well, but they never really held our attention long before we would return to hijacking cars, with mindless destruction and mayhem.
And I feel that's the aspect that's really held up the most over the years, the core feature of the sandbox where you can go wherever you want, explore hidden areas and generally muck about to your heart's content. It was an incredibly innovative release back in 2001 and it holds a large amount of responsibility for where video games are today.
The other department I feel still holds up is the art direction - the environments range from the dirty, grimy approximation of New York City to the more upper class suburban areas of the outer city areas, with a dynamic weather system introducing fog and rain with the occasional glimmer of sunshine. There's a bit of cartoonyness featured in the characters, but I feel it comes off more as caricature to better fit in with the overall satirical tone of the game alongside the cheerful radio adverts for shoes made with child labour.
As for the general gameplay and story, well the missions are fun and adhere to a very arcade-like sensibility. There's optional stuff available like street racing and emergency-vehicle missions to offer a change in pace to the insanity the regular gameplay provides. Punishment for failure is often not very severe outside of having to do the mission again while being arrested or dying results in a cash penalty along with your weapons being frustratingly confiscated which is exacerbated by the lack of an in-game map. Being in need of weapons or trying to ditch a wanted level can often leave you frustrated trying to find gun shops and pay'n'sprays whenever you're in need of them - you need that foldout map that came with a boxed copy of the game, otherwise you'll have to have one saved on your phone. The camera is also a relic of a bygone era, relying on a combination of buttons that never feel natural while the framerate and full-screen motion blur can be incredibly distracting. You can adjust to these "features" over the course of the gameplay, but it never really feels quite right and you'll constantly be resetting your expectations whenever you boot the game up again.
The story itself adheres very much to the "it's expected to be there, but it's not important" model of video game development that was the standard during this period. You start off with a cutscene of the player character being betrayed during a bank heist and being arrested, before making a break for it during his prison transfer. After that it's a case of meeting a series of criminals for missions and working up the proverbial ladder, earning more money and gaining access to other areas of the world map. It's not until you're near the end of the story where the woman who betrayed you at the start shows up by sheer coincidence and you go on one last mission to kill her and rescue a woman whom your former boss was in lesbian with. The characters you meet along the way range from moderately amusing to downright offensive but there's no-one that ever particularly stands out bar the characters on the radio stations. It's all just window dressing to make you play more ellaborate missions and have a fun time while doing so.
All in all, Grand Theft Auto III is still a fun time - the aesthetics and general gameplay to a good enough job of distracting you from some of the more awkward features present. For me it used to only ever be the sandbox to have whacky high-octane bursts of imaginitve fun in, but I have come to enjoy the actual mission content that is available too. The radio stations feature the best comedic moments available where the story beats feel janky and non-existant. I wouldn't recommend beating this version of the game in any way, I believe the PC port fixes a lot of the gameplay issues I had, but it's definitely still fun to pick up and play for a couple hours here and there from time to time.
Special shout out in particular to my copy of the game that would freak out whenever I had the radio on or drove in a police car for too long. The world would just start disappearing and the game would freeze up for indeterminate amounts of time, rendering progress I'd made useless unless I saved after every mission