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.