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.
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.