CLASSIC GAMING
Grand Theft Auto III
Developer:  DMA Design
Publisher:  Rockstar Games
Year:  2001
Genre:  Action/Adventure
System:  PS2/PC/Xbox


Crime has always been a thing of a dark respect to people.  There is an attraction of its power, its infrastructure and its twisted morality which have made it a prime candidate for movies and books for portraying criminals as either luckless desperate anti-heroes or just plain bad guys.  Videogames never had such a divide until now.

Story - The game takes place in the fictional Liberty City, where the main character (unnamed) has robbed Liberty City Bank but is left behind to take the fall by his ambitious girlfriend Catalina.  The main character is then arrested and during a prison transport, is freed with other prisoners after an attack on the police convoy.  GTAIII's protagonist must rise to power starting as a local thug before being taken higher and higher up to battle the Triads, Mafia, corrupt police force and others to gain power over Liberty City.


Graphics - Being 2001, the graphics are somewhat blocky.  Characters have squinty-looking faces but generally they're all nicely designed with differences enough to be able to tell.  The main city itself certainly feels alive by the varying activity that will happen around you graphically.  Pedestrians randomly move along the streets and across roads, even attacking each other now and again to bring out a colour to the city.
The lighting effects are generally well done due to the changing clock of the day and night and as a result the city itself changes too.  Lights come on for cars and streetlights, the gravel is lit up more and the visible distance becomes less unless you see streetlights ahead.  Motion blurring is also evident at night time for making those high speed car chases look even smoother when your brakelights turn into a stream of red.


Another interesting note on the graphics is the random weather.  Sometimes the weather is a clear sunny day with the sun itself moving from the northeast of the city at 6:00am, to the southwest of the city at 6:00pm approximately.  Other times it's a miserably stormy day which makes the roads and cars look slicker and shinier.  Then after the rain has gone, a rainbow will appear in the distance, always the same distance, just like real life.
It's nothing compared to Shenmue but the smallest touches make Liberty City even more alive.  Lastly, vehicular damage is also well represented.  Hit at the back, your boot gets cracked.  Rammed at the front your hood gets caved in and windshield is cracked.  Get smashed into the sides your doors are dented as well as their windows.

Gameplay - The most powerful driving force of GTAIII is its extensive non-linear gameplay kept as smooth as possible with only a few loading screens for each mission or for moving to another "island" of the city.  Naturally the game has missions, objectives from individual people for you to perform and accomplish in order to progress further into the game, which range from killing a specific person to getting rid of a certain car at the crusher, to picking up some chicks for your employer's night.  They're varied and progressively challenging enough to keep you going.
Cars can be mostly hijacked by you at any time, all you have to do is grab one, but if the police see you, they will go after you and try to arrest you.
You can carry an extensive range of weapons from baseball bats to rocket launchers, which you can buy at certain stores with the money you obtain from missions and sub-missions.
Not only that but there are many sub-missions to accomplish for perfection.  There's finding the 100 packages all over the city, illegal drag races and even moonlighting as a taxi driver, fireman, ambulance driver, even as a cop.


Of course there are some dangers in this city.  Firstly you have the standard health bar of 100 points, which if it goes down to 0, means you're wasted and will be at a hospital many hours later with all of your weapons gone and a little bit of money, but also your health fully restored.  You can be harmed by bullets, being beaten, drowning (your character can't swim), being run over and explosions.  Secondly, the police are (allegedly) always on the watch for crime, and even though you never see them handle any crime, if YOU are involved in it, then watch out.

You have a Wanted Meter, a five-badge meter showing how much trouble you're in with them.  One star means the foot patrols and and patrol cars are onto you.  Two stars makes them more eager for you.  Three stars means they bring in the helicopter to find you and hunt you down.  Suffice to say, it's pretty hard to survive long at five stars.  Of course if they catch you with any health left on you, you get busted, taken to the police station and, like the hospital, no weapons and a bit of money taken with full health back.

Music/Sound - GTAIII has an extensive soundtrack through the use of its own set of radio stations to listen to whenever you're in a car, each one just as alive as a radio show would be.  Double Clef FM has classical music, Game FM is all hip-hop, Flashback FM is 80s music, and finally Chatterbox FM is a radio talk station, worded and scripted well to feel as real as possible with calls ranging from tax problems to relationships to even characters you've met talking about their own problems, a subtle deeper look into the people of Liberty City.  Not only that but there are even made-up commercials on most of the stations.


Grand Theft Auto III is one of the new kids of the block, popping caps and taking names.  While it's not been hailed in the media as a strikingly marvellous game due to its realistic criminality, it is a fantastically non-linear experience of building your criminal empire within the safety of your legally-paid abode.  It may be a game for more mature tastes but it is a game that you can play through once and enjoy trying to do every single possible thing, look over every square inch of the city and steal every possible make of car before wrecking it.  True Grand Theft Auto.

Fun and Innovation - 5
Replayability - 2
Gameplay - 4
Presentation - 4

are you a fucking retard?

neither could swim....


leave it to a black guy!

Same thing happened to me almost when I was writing this but I doublechecked, not your fault man.
Thanks for liking my review.

lol I am replaying right now

if you lack a sense of humor FOAD
asshole

Fuck reading.  There are empty servers waiting for you knob slobbers to fill.  How can this community even exist?  I just got done playing sharpshooter a little cs source 1v1.  I looked at the other servers.  EMPTY.  Almost always empty.  I contribute to the player count on the servers.  You, twitchy, might want to get your priorities straight.  And loosen the fuck up.  This place was once fun.