This review contains spoilers
Grand Theft Auto III was the very first time that the chemistry of a team of around 22 people came together perfectly for the first time. The challenge was creating a 3D open world while also maintaining the diversity of its predecessors.
There were issues getting the game optimized on the PS2's 32MB RAM, as well as recording thousands of lines of dialgoue, which at the time was massive, but it eventually came to fruition. Amazingly when it was revealed at E3 in 2001, reception was meh, there was actually more excitement towards State of Emergency, which is unthinkable to assume these days.
Because of the events of 9/11, Rockstar had to delay the game from September to October, and also make changes such as the color scheme of police cars, the removal of school buses, references to terrorism were removed, radio station dialgoue was changed, and planes were designed so that they are extremely difficult to fly.
When I was kid I wasn't allowed to play games like this for its violent content, so I would go to my cousin's house or a friend's house and just play it there. Hell, I would even sneak a copy into the house and play it when no one was home or if my mother was sleeping lol. GTA3 is my first GTA game, when I saw it for the first time I was like "Oh my god, this looks amazing!!"
I was only like 8 or 9 years old when I discovered this game and I would actually beg my dad to buy me the later GTA games and other games like it. Games that I really should not be playing. He didn't know any better, he doesn't know anything about video games lmao.
{ Story }
A bank robbery goes down in Liberty City but main character Claude is betrayed by his girlfriend Catalina. She shoots him, takes the money, and leaves him for dead. He survives the shot but is arrested and is sentenced to 10 years in prison for the robbery. As he is being transferred in a SWAT truck, some cartel gangsters attack the convoy, and he inadvertently escapes along with a guy named 8-Ball.
And for some fuckin' reason, those same Columbian cartel had a fucking bomb with them and it falls out of their truck and the bridge blows up. So much for removing references to terrorism lol.
8-Ball gives work to Claude for the Leone Mafia family. He works for many different people throughout the game in order to get closer to the woman that betrayed him and get his vengeance.
Short, sweet, but effective. Even this game has a better fucking revenge story than The Last of Us Part 2 lol.
These characters were clearly inspired by gangster movies such as Goodfellas, The Godfather, and Scarface. The Leone Family in particular are clearly tropes of the typical Italian gangster. The scope of this game is executed excellently with its world and the action packed missions.
This is one of the first games to have a very sizeable amount of talented voice actors, however the actual storytelling is barely here. It also doesn't help that Claude never talks.
The missions essentially boil down to "do this, do that" and that's it. No questions asked. There will be conversations about current events, but most of the time, you're just flowing through the motions until something really exciting happens.
Though it is possible to miss out on certain missions depending on which ones you deal with first, and I believe some cutscenes can differ, but it doesn't really matter, because the game ends the same way anyway. The game is non-linear by nature so it would have been cool of we could alter the story in any way.
But that's fine. Because the story is used to expose the gameplay mechanics, and those mechanics are used to expose the story. This game was made to attract adult audiences who just liked cool shit.
{ Gameplay }
The world is a shrunken down New York City with three separate islands, and it was actually designed to be how non-Americans think of America. You start off in Portland, and if you want to go to Staunton Island and Shoreside Vale, you need to complete a certain number of story missions. As soon as you start the game, you don't have to immediately do these missions, but it's encouraging otherwise.
Even back then it wasn't the most diverse map. It's miniscule compared to the later GTA games, and the colors are so bleak and gray and that it looks like Liberty City is going through a second Great Depression. But with plenty of things to do, it was also one of the best.
The game is still very playable, every mission is completable but hot damn, this game has some of the most difficult missions in the whole series. Some are really easy while others are really hard and require trial and error to complete them. There is inconsistency when it comes to the difficulty spikes. It can be easy, then it gets hard, then it goes back to being easy again, rinse and repeat, but I think that has become common in the series.
It also doesn't help that the mini-map doesn't give you any clear directions on where you should be going. There's no GPS. So you follow a marker only to then realize that it's on another island entirely. And there is no map in the pause menu unlike in the later games. Trial and error can be acceptable when shooting at people and avoiding traffic at high speeds, but not to figure out where you're supposed to go, let alone on a time limit.
Yeah, some of these missions have time limits and holy shit, some of these time limits are fucking tight. Some of these missions just BARELY give you enough time to finish. You have to push yourself a bit to do these.
It also doesn't help that the Ammu-Nations, Pay and Sprays, Car Bomb Garages, and Import Export Garages don't show up on the mini-map at all. But since the city is so small, you'll most likely remember where everything is.
Also, if you skip a cutscene, you'll most likely miss out on what you're supposed to do. Some objectives are given in the cutscenes instead of in-game which sucks if that happens accidentally. Sometimes it can also be unclear on what you're exactly supposed to do, so failing a mission can be a bitch, because failing a mission means you gotta go all the way back to a mission marker to restart it, and there's no Fast Travel.
The on-foot controls are very clunky; you can't control the camera unless you're standing still, there's no way to properly take cover from enemy gunfire and shoot, and you can't strafe with any weapon other than the pistol or the submachine gun. The actual aiming moves around like the gun is a water sprinkler. It's like Claude is holding guns other than a pistol for the first time in his life.
When you see an enemy you're immediately exposed to gunfire. So if you just run into an area with a group of enemies who are holding machine guns and assault rifles, you get immediately wasted, which is why the sniper rifle is particularly very useful for these situations.
The Columbians in particular wield motherfuckin' M16s with 60 round mags and with the fire rate of a minigun, no joke. And whatever you do, do not drive a car near a person holding a shotgun or an M16, that's just asking for suicide.
Unless you're playing on PC, you shouldn't use the M16 unless it's for blowing up cars, because aiming it on a controller is way too sensitive, and the recoil is insane.
Although Claude is pretty agile, he can't climb up ledges nor swim. Also, don't hold down the sprint button. Tap it instead. Because holding down the button causes Claude to run out of breath within like 6 seconds.
Many of the vehicles control differently and take a certain amount of damage, but all of them are too sensitive. You can literally hit a streetlight and it will already smoke up, which makes the Vigilance, Firefighter, and Paramedic missions that much harder.
If you are a completionist, then this game will be a nightmare for you. Because if you finish a certain number of story missions, rival gangs will shoot at you on sight, which will make the taxi, Vigilante, Paramedic, and Firefighter checklists nearly impossible to do.
There is nothing more annoying than having a gang member spawn near you and blow you and your vehicle up when in the middle of doing these missions. Because you don't get checkpoints in between levels. You have to do it all in one perfect run.
And if your vehicle blows up, you only get like 30 seconds to get another one or else you'll fail.
So you know what that means? You gotta say goodbye to those story missions. Because you'll have to do these optional side missions as soon as you finish the first main story mission, so you'll be spending hours in the beginning just doing busywork.
You do get special rewards for completing these missions along with the RC car, Import Export, and Gang Rampage missions, as well as getting all 100 of the Hidden Packages, such as guns, police bribes, health, and armor at safehouses, but you don't get anything for actually reaching 100% Completion. Except maybe bragging rights.
Plus, the only thing you can buy with the money you earn are guns and armor. Every safehouse is unlockable, and there's no character customization at all. All you get are cheat codes that let you play as the various NPCs in the game.
So the only replay value this game has is just you and the war you create in Liberty City, which is pretty strong even nowadays.
GTA games were made so that you could just run around and do whatever you want with no consequence. You are able to do what you just can't do in real life. There were already open world games out before this game, but what made it special was the size of it, the 3rd Dimension, the mature themes, the diversity, and the amazing soundtrack.
Though be careful cause if you die or get busted, you lose all your weapons. A cardinal sin in these older GTA games is not saving before almost every mission and not going in with full health and armor. Safehouses don't have health pickups so go to the hospital often.
It feels like Liberty City is like a gigantic gladiator arena. Only difference is that you get out of the hospital and you keep going. Though I always found it funny in GTA games that you respawn at the hospital. You go on a murderous rampage, you get shot down, you get saved at the hospital, and then you get released only repeat the cycle anew, when you should be in prison.
And it kinda makes you wonder why the doctor's would even save Claude's life more than once. What is he doing is way worse than that bank robbery in the beginning of the game. Am I digging too deep into it? Probably.
Rampaging in this game is as fun as it ever was, hell it's even better than some of the later GTA games because of how much faster paced and aggressive the gameplay is. Even a one star wanted level will start a demolition derby.
The speed of cars, the hilarious loud explosions, and the hysterical over the top screaming of the pedestrians, this game is like a giant comedy routine. It is one of the most entertaining games ever put on store shelves. Every single time I play this game I always smile and or burst out laughing multiple times. The amount of ridiculous shit that happens in this game is legendary.
Though I need to mention how much of a bitch it is to get a tank. You could just destroy everything until you get a six star wanted level, but these cops are the most aggressive cops in a GTA game. Their aim is super accurate, and most of the time they try to run you over instead of shooting, and getting run over hurts a lot more than getting shot, unless if it's the military.
Because the military pack M16s, and wanna know what happens next? You get lasered and die in a second. They are fuckin' horrifying.
{ The Soundtrack }
This game has one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a game. I love the soundtracks in every GTA game and this one is no exception. This game has the most hilarious selection of music I've ever heard. There is something just so hysterical about running people over and getting chased by cops while also listening to classical opera music. Double Clef FM, MSX FM, Rise FM, and Game FM have the best songs in the whole game.
And the ads and talk shows are obnoxious and yet really funny.
But they also added in quite a lot of songs from the movie Scarface. Which is kinda funny considering that the closest GTA game that resembles that movie is Vice City. You could tell that the Houser brothers were musical fanatics, hence the name of their company.
{ Final Thoughts }
This game was the shit when it first came out, and even now I still think it is. Parents and politicians detested this game. It's over the top violence and satirical nature isn't something that wasn't seen before, but since it's more authentic to the real world and is so unrestrictive in its gameplay, calling it a crime simulator didn't help, especially since it's more focused on the bad guys.
The GTA series has quite a complicated history when it comes to the subject of violence in video games, but the only thing that all of the controversy surrounding this game did was give it more attention, and since it was once of the best games of 2001, it only just increased already high sales. And you know what? That's okay.
GTA3 isn't the best GTA game, but, it's the most important one. It's the game that made Rockstar a household brand. If it wasn't for this game, the Grand Theft Auto franchise wouldn't be where it is now. It's funny how much people have gone completely off the wall over GTA5, when that game's massive success wouldn't have been possible without the foundation that GTA3 laid down.
GTA3 set the standard of what both open world games and video games in general can really be. They could be bigger, more realistic, more mature, and more attractive to people who just liked edgy shit.
Rockstar have gone a very long way since this game, and any criticisms I have mentioned in this review have been either improved or rectified in later entries, like the enemies wielding assault rifles that shoot like A10 Warthogs, the map issues, the swimming, the inability to sprint with two handed weapons, the lackluster storytelling, and the gun aiming feeling like it was coded on a fuckin' Maxi Pad.
This game deserves all the praise it got. It's the video game equivalent of a likeable horror movie slasher villain. He may be utterly despicable, but he is way too entertaining to dislike.
8/10
There were issues getting the game optimized on the PS2's 32MB RAM, as well as recording thousands of lines of dialgoue, which at the time was massive, but it eventually came to fruition. Amazingly when it was revealed at E3 in 2001, reception was meh, there was actually more excitement towards State of Emergency, which is unthinkable to assume these days.
Because of the events of 9/11, Rockstar had to delay the game from September to October, and also make changes such as the color scheme of police cars, the removal of school buses, references to terrorism were removed, radio station dialgoue was changed, and planes were designed so that they are extremely difficult to fly.
When I was kid I wasn't allowed to play games like this for its violent content, so I would go to my cousin's house or a friend's house and just play it there. Hell, I would even sneak a copy into the house and play it when no one was home or if my mother was sleeping lol. GTA3 is my first GTA game, when I saw it for the first time I was like "Oh my god, this looks amazing!!"
I was only like 8 or 9 years old when I discovered this game and I would actually beg my dad to buy me the later GTA games and other games like it. Games that I really should not be playing. He didn't know any better, he doesn't know anything about video games lmao.
{ Story }
A bank robbery goes down in Liberty City but main character Claude is betrayed by his girlfriend Catalina. She shoots him, takes the money, and leaves him for dead. He survives the shot but is arrested and is sentenced to 10 years in prison for the robbery. As he is being transferred in a SWAT truck, some cartel gangsters attack the convoy, and he inadvertently escapes along with a guy named 8-Ball.
And for some fuckin' reason, those same Columbian cartel had a fucking bomb with them and it falls out of their truck and the bridge blows up. So much for removing references to terrorism lol.
8-Ball gives work to Claude for the Leone Mafia family. He works for many different people throughout the game in order to get closer to the woman that betrayed him and get his vengeance.
Short, sweet, but effective. Even this game has a better fucking revenge story than The Last of Us Part 2 lol.
These characters were clearly inspired by gangster movies such as Goodfellas, The Godfather, and Scarface. The Leone Family in particular are clearly tropes of the typical Italian gangster. The scope of this game is executed excellently with its world and the action packed missions.
This is one of the first games to have a very sizeable amount of talented voice actors, however the actual storytelling is barely here. It also doesn't help that Claude never talks.
The missions essentially boil down to "do this, do that" and that's it. No questions asked. There will be conversations about current events, but most of the time, you're just flowing through the motions until something really exciting happens.
Though it is possible to miss out on certain missions depending on which ones you deal with first, and I believe some cutscenes can differ, but it doesn't really matter, because the game ends the same way anyway. The game is non-linear by nature so it would have been cool of we could alter the story in any way.
But that's fine. Because the story is used to expose the gameplay mechanics, and those mechanics are used to expose the story. This game was made to attract adult audiences who just liked cool shit.
{ Gameplay }
The world is a shrunken down New York City with three separate islands, and it was actually designed to be how non-Americans think of America. You start off in Portland, and if you want to go to Staunton Island and Shoreside Vale, you need to complete a certain number of story missions. As soon as you start the game, you don't have to immediately do these missions, but it's encouraging otherwise.
Even back then it wasn't the most diverse map. It's miniscule compared to the later GTA games, and the colors are so bleak and gray and that it looks like Liberty City is going through a second Great Depression. But with plenty of things to do, it was also one of the best.
The game is still very playable, every mission is completable but hot damn, this game has some of the most difficult missions in the whole series. Some are really easy while others are really hard and require trial and error to complete them. There is inconsistency when it comes to the difficulty spikes. It can be easy, then it gets hard, then it goes back to being easy again, rinse and repeat, but I think that has become common in the series.
It also doesn't help that the mini-map doesn't give you any clear directions on where you should be going. There's no GPS. So you follow a marker only to then realize that it's on another island entirely. And there is no map in the pause menu unlike in the later games. Trial and error can be acceptable when shooting at people and avoiding traffic at high speeds, but not to figure out where you're supposed to go, let alone on a time limit.
Yeah, some of these missions have time limits and holy shit, some of these time limits are fucking tight. Some of these missions just BARELY give you enough time to finish. You have to push yourself a bit to do these.
It also doesn't help that the Ammu-Nations, Pay and Sprays, Car Bomb Garages, and Import Export Garages don't show up on the mini-map at all. But since the city is so small, you'll most likely remember where everything is.
Also, if you skip a cutscene, you'll most likely miss out on what you're supposed to do. Some objectives are given in the cutscenes instead of in-game which sucks if that happens accidentally. Sometimes it can also be unclear on what you're exactly supposed to do, so failing a mission can be a bitch, because failing a mission means you gotta go all the way back to a mission marker to restart it, and there's no Fast Travel.
The on-foot controls are very clunky; you can't control the camera unless you're standing still, there's no way to properly take cover from enemy gunfire and shoot, and you can't strafe with any weapon other than the pistol or the submachine gun. The actual aiming moves around like the gun is a water sprinkler. It's like Claude is holding guns other than a pistol for the first time in his life.
When you see an enemy you're immediately exposed to gunfire. So if you just run into an area with a group of enemies who are holding machine guns and assault rifles, you get immediately wasted, which is why the sniper rifle is particularly very useful for these situations.
The Columbians in particular wield motherfuckin' M16s with 60 round mags and with the fire rate of a minigun, no joke. And whatever you do, do not drive a car near a person holding a shotgun or an M16, that's just asking for suicide.
Unless you're playing on PC, you shouldn't use the M16 unless it's for blowing up cars, because aiming it on a controller is way too sensitive, and the recoil is insane.
Although Claude is pretty agile, he can't climb up ledges nor swim. Also, don't hold down the sprint button. Tap it instead. Because holding down the button causes Claude to run out of breath within like 6 seconds.
Many of the vehicles control differently and take a certain amount of damage, but all of them are too sensitive. You can literally hit a streetlight and it will already smoke up, which makes the Vigilance, Firefighter, and Paramedic missions that much harder.
If you are a completionist, then this game will be a nightmare for you. Because if you finish a certain number of story missions, rival gangs will shoot at you on sight, which will make the taxi, Vigilante, Paramedic, and Firefighter checklists nearly impossible to do.
There is nothing more annoying than having a gang member spawn near you and blow you and your vehicle up when in the middle of doing these missions. Because you don't get checkpoints in between levels. You have to do it all in one perfect run.
And if your vehicle blows up, you only get like 30 seconds to get another one or else you'll fail.
So you know what that means? You gotta say goodbye to those story missions. Because you'll have to do these optional side missions as soon as you finish the first main story mission, so you'll be spending hours in the beginning just doing busywork.
You do get special rewards for completing these missions along with the RC car, Import Export, and Gang Rampage missions, as well as getting all 100 of the Hidden Packages, such as guns, police bribes, health, and armor at safehouses, but you don't get anything for actually reaching 100% Completion. Except maybe bragging rights.
Plus, the only thing you can buy with the money you earn are guns and armor. Every safehouse is unlockable, and there's no character customization at all. All you get are cheat codes that let you play as the various NPCs in the game.
So the only replay value this game has is just you and the war you create in Liberty City, which is pretty strong even nowadays.
GTA games were made so that you could just run around and do whatever you want with no consequence. You are able to do what you just can't do in real life. There were already open world games out before this game, but what made it special was the size of it, the 3rd Dimension, the mature themes, the diversity, and the amazing soundtrack.
Though be careful cause if you die or get busted, you lose all your weapons. A cardinal sin in these older GTA games is not saving before almost every mission and not going in with full health and armor. Safehouses don't have health pickups so go to the hospital often.
It feels like Liberty City is like a gigantic gladiator arena. Only difference is that you get out of the hospital and you keep going. Though I always found it funny in GTA games that you respawn at the hospital. You go on a murderous rampage, you get shot down, you get saved at the hospital, and then you get released only repeat the cycle anew, when you should be in prison.
And it kinda makes you wonder why the doctor's would even save Claude's life more than once. What is he doing is way worse than that bank robbery in the beginning of the game. Am I digging too deep into it? Probably.
Rampaging in this game is as fun as it ever was, hell it's even better than some of the later GTA games because of how much faster paced and aggressive the gameplay is. Even a one star wanted level will start a demolition derby.
The speed of cars, the hilarious loud explosions, and the hysterical over the top screaming of the pedestrians, this game is like a giant comedy routine. It is one of the most entertaining games ever put on store shelves. Every single time I play this game I always smile and or burst out laughing multiple times. The amount of ridiculous shit that happens in this game is legendary.
Though I need to mention how much of a bitch it is to get a tank. You could just destroy everything until you get a six star wanted level, but these cops are the most aggressive cops in a GTA game. Their aim is super accurate, and most of the time they try to run you over instead of shooting, and getting run over hurts a lot more than getting shot, unless if it's the military.
Because the military pack M16s, and wanna know what happens next? You get lasered and die in a second. They are fuckin' horrifying.
{ The Soundtrack }
This game has one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a game. I love the soundtracks in every GTA game and this one is no exception. This game has the most hilarious selection of music I've ever heard. There is something just so hysterical about running people over and getting chased by cops while also listening to classical opera music. Double Clef FM, MSX FM, Rise FM, and Game FM have the best songs in the whole game.
And the ads and talk shows are obnoxious and yet really funny.
But they also added in quite a lot of songs from the movie Scarface. Which is kinda funny considering that the closest GTA game that resembles that movie is Vice City. You could tell that the Houser brothers were musical fanatics, hence the name of their company.
{ Final Thoughts }
This game was the shit when it first came out, and even now I still think it is. Parents and politicians detested this game. It's over the top violence and satirical nature isn't something that wasn't seen before, but since it's more authentic to the real world and is so unrestrictive in its gameplay, calling it a crime simulator didn't help, especially since it's more focused on the bad guys.
The GTA series has quite a complicated history when it comes to the subject of violence in video games, but the only thing that all of the controversy surrounding this game did was give it more attention, and since it was once of the best games of 2001, it only just increased already high sales. And you know what? That's okay.
GTA3 isn't the best GTA game, but, it's the most important one. It's the game that made Rockstar a household brand. If it wasn't for this game, the Grand Theft Auto franchise wouldn't be where it is now. It's funny how much people have gone completely off the wall over GTA5, when that game's massive success wouldn't have been possible without the foundation that GTA3 laid down.
GTA3 set the standard of what both open world games and video games in general can really be. They could be bigger, more realistic, more mature, and more attractive to people who just liked edgy shit.
Rockstar have gone a very long way since this game, and any criticisms I have mentioned in this review have been either improved or rectified in later entries, like the enemies wielding assault rifles that shoot like A10 Warthogs, the map issues, the swimming, the inability to sprint with two handed weapons, the lackluster storytelling, and the gun aiming feeling like it was coded on a fuckin' Maxi Pad.
This game deserves all the praise it got. It's the video game equivalent of a likeable horror movie slasher villain. He may be utterly despicable, but he is way too entertaining to dislike.
8/10