JamesWong's Full Review: Grand Theft Auto (GTA) 3 for PlayStation 2
Something left me skeptical from the day I heard that GTA3 was going to be made for the Playstation 2. Screenshots of the game didn’t prove anything to me and to be honest with you the original Grand Theft Auto held my interest for only twenty minutes at a time. Granted, GTA’s “free roaming / carjack-as-you-wish” concept was a refreshing and disturbingly entertaining innovation as far as games went. But somehow that wasn’t enough.
Two years have passed and the series continues with its latest incarnation. And I can honestly say that it’s back as one impressive game. Scotland based DMA Design has crafted one of the most interesting and enjoyable (if not just violent) experiences ever, giving justice to the word “fun”.
GTA3 makes you, once again, the criminal. Instead of successfully carrying out an evening bank robbery, you are betrayed by your partner-in-crime / girlfriend, shot by her and left to die in the alley. Luckily you manage to survive but at the hands of law enforcement, only to receive ten years in prison.
In a simple case of good timing, your transfer to prison is “cancelled” when your armored transport is stopped violently by a group of armed men. Once they take their man out of the truck, they make a fast getaway, leaving you and another to fend for yourselves. Enter mission one, and enter Portland, the first of three areas that is Liberty City.
The game does a good job of familiarizing you with the controls from the start by popping up unobtrusive text boxes, which help you learn to control the action in car and out. Eventually you will have to drive to a nearby safe house and garage, which is one of the game’s save points. After you’ve carried out this first mission, there’s a good chance you won’t carry out the following mission and instead roam the city, jack as many cars as possible and make escapes from the cops. “…Because you can.”
But that’s the point isn’t it? What makes this game so morbidly enjoyable is the fact that you can do almost anything you’d want to do as a virtual criminal. See a car you want to drive? Take it from the driver and floor it. Care to start a fight with people on the street for their money? Walk up to them and attack. Need to shoot down the police helicopter that’s chasing you down? Make sure you have the bazooka. The fact that GTA3 offers few limits on what you can do in the city makes the playing experience so fun.
Car variety is one of the staples of the GTA series and this game has over 40 vehicles that you can commandeer, each with its own special characteristics. The “Stinger” handles very well so long as you know how to use the handbrake in concert, and the Land Stalker feels like it has no wheel base at all, making it easy to flip over if you’re not careful when making fast turns. As with previous games, compact / sports cars, buses, fire trucks and SUVs are widely “available” throughout, with some rare vehicles in the mix (the “Mr. Whoopee” ice cream truck, for instance).
A handful of vehicles in the game offer their own sub-games that add even more lasting value. For instance, when jacking a Cab, you can activate a sub-game in the vain of Crazy Taxi in which you pick up city goers and drive them to marked destinations on the map. Should you steal a police car or other law enforcement vehicle, the “Vigilante” sub-game allows you to eliminate criminals by hunting them down and running them over should they make a run from their car.
Whether or not you’re in a mission, the game is just as fun without driving a car. On foot your character starts off armed only with his first. Several missions into the game, however, a stop at the nearest Ammu-Nation makes weapons such as pistols, grenades and shotguns available for use. Since they can cost a bit of money, passing missions or playing sub-games will naturally land you the cash you need. And since some missions require a little extra firepower, it’s not uncommon to play sub-games and buy new weapons to prepare for the next mission (or face off with law enforcement).
When you’ve had enough fun playing all the sub-games and harassing the general public, you can return to some characters throughout the city to progress through story-based missions. Your first set of missions associates you with the Mafia. However whatever ties you have will them will certainly shift as conflicts and double crossings will lead you to deal with, among others, the Triads, Yakuza and the Colombian drug cartel.
Outrunning (or outgunning) the cops has been a staple of the Grand Theft Auto series. I found myself stealing cars in front of cops so that they would chase me. The higher your wanted level goes, the more aggressive the police will be as they try to stop you from running, setting up road blocks if necessary. Get it higher and FBI cars with take you down. Max out the meter and the military will try to stop you by sending out tanks to blast you off the road. There is nothing more hilarious than to see police cars chasing you without reserve, boxing you in as a group, flying over hills at high speed or running straight towards you, without any concern to pedestrians, in order to prevent your escape.
With over 40 story-based missions, each has its own special challenge to face. Some missions are “seek and destroy” while others involve things like planting car bombs or disposing of vehicles with dead bodies in the trunk for the Mafia at the local junkyard. In one instance I had to drive an armored car as a decoy to divert the police. The second I got into the car my wanted level was automatically pushed up a few notches making the two minutes I needed to survive an adrenaline rush.
In several missions you’ll have some extra manpower. Believe it or not, the NPCs in this game do an impressive job of watching out for you. In one instance I was the driver for three bank robbers. Once they got their hands dirty in the bank and got back in the car, I floored it and along the way the police destroyed my car. With only a few seconds until the car’s explosion, I got out of the car and my three partners followed. I expected them to just stand there or follow me without actually assisting in the getaway, but when I looked back two of them were firing back trying to hold the cops off from getting in our way, with the other holding the briefcase of cash. It really made me feel like I was in an action film.
Graphically, GTA3 is looks very nice: cars strike an uncanny resemblance to actual, real-world models, people go about their business on the streets and the city looks gorgeous with a running subway and aircraft heading to and from the International Airport. For the nostalgic, one of the games several camera modes includes the classic overhead view.
Weather in Liberty City ranges from your typical sunny weather to fog to rain in addition to the passing of night and day. Such an element can affect how your missions turn out – because the weather is randomly generated, flooring it from the police in the fog will most certainly be a more nerve-wracking experience than playing the same mission (or simply making any getaway) on a sunny or rainy day.
In addition to the action, the in-game cut scenes are well directed, with exemplary voice talent lent by actors including Michael Rappaport (Higher Learning), Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs) and Joe Pantoliano (The Matrix, Sopranos). GTA3 is a container of stereotypes that, when taken lightly, are highly entertaining.
Another highly amusing element of playing GTA3 is the sound of the radio once you’ve taken someone’s car. There are nine radio stations in the game that offer various styles of music including the 80s, Opera, Rave and even talk radio. The running length of each station until you hear it loop is fairly long, with funny commercials that mimic and mock today’s trendy commercials (prescription drugs with the obligatory disclaimers and dot com ads just to name a few). Making an escape while tuned in to Opera music is certainly an enlightening joyride.
I have only a few problems with this game. When the action gets intense on screen, with pedestrians running away, exploding cars and cops shooting at you, the frame rate can get fairly choppy at times. Some camera views, such as the default chase view, can become inconvenient: when driving through the tunnel to get to other areas of the city, for instance, you may not be able to see the road – just the rear of your vehicle. Still, these two issues are only minor complaints.
With so much to do aside from the story-based missions, Grand Theft Auto 3 offers countless hours of game play. Anyone who owns a Playstation 2 needs to see this game and dabble in it for a few hours to see all the neat things it holds. While it’s not for younger audiences, mature minded individuals will have a blast. This is one of the best games ever.
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