Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)

Developer:

DMA Design

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Release Date:

2001

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Systems:

PS2, Xbox, PC, Mac, Android, iOS, Fire OS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally getting around to legendary sandbox crime simulator Grand Theft Auto III! I wrote about GTA 1 in 2014 and GTA 4 in 2016, but since then the site has suffered 7 long years of GTAlessness.

A few things have happened during that time, like GTA 3 getting reverse engineered by fans so they could enhance it for modern hardware! Take-Two weren't keen on this though and shut the RE3 project down. Then they delisted the game from online stores and replaced it with the Definitive Edition Unreal Engine remake, which was hilariously half-assed and broken. At this point you can't buy either version in Steam, as they're selling it for the Rockstar Games Launcher instead.

I've played GTA 3 before, but I've never actually finished the game and it wasn't for a lack of trying. I beat Vice City, San Andreas, GTA 4, The Saboteur, Sleeping Dogs and all the old Saints Rows, but this was just a little too tough for me. Back then anyway. Can I actually manage to reach the ending this time and finally get some closure on the GTA that got away? The answer is... no, because I'm only going to play it for an hour or two. Sorry!

Also, I'm going to be playing the classic PlayStation 2 version of the game, so if you were hoping to see some hilarious Definitive Edition screenshots I'm going to have to disappoint you. I ain't paying that much for a bad version of a game I already own. But is the PS2 game the good version? Is any version of the game still worth playing in 2023? I'm probably the wrong person to answer that last question as I'm obviously unstuck in time, but I'll see what it's like and share some screenshots as I go.

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The game began development around the time that DMA Design was bought by Take-Two, which apparently meant the end of the long suffering DMA logo guy. He's officially retired at this point, possibly because he got eaten by robot dogs or carried off by a slime creature into an alien harvester.

DMA got a brand new logo to replace him, but it didn't last long as they became Rockstar North a few months later. In fact both the DMA and Rockstar logos are on the box.

Damn game, you think you've got enough motion blur there?

The game begins with an incredibly hazy intro cutscene showing a getaway driver pulling up at a bank that's currently in the process of being robbed. He's in the nick of time to watch one of the thieves gun down another for not being ambitious enough.

Damn, look at all that readable text!

The newspaper reveals that the game takes place in Liberty City, which is one of the three cities you get to wreak havoc across in the original Grand Theft Auto. We don't get to visit Vice City or San Andreas in this one but they got their turn. In fact, the series has basically been trapped in these three locations ever since, never returning to Anywhere City from GTA 2, or London from the London 1969 expansion pack.

There is one thing from GTA 2 that's stuck around though: not having any character options. This would be the point in a Saints Row game where you get to choose what your protagonist looks like after recovering from his gunshot wounds, but there's no character creator in this game. GTA 1 at least lets you pick from a selection of eight portraits!

Grand Theft Auto 2 (PC)

Here's the protagonist you're stuck with in the second game, a guy called Claude Speed... who looks a lot like the guy from the newspaper up there. Who just happens to be called Claude.

GTA 2 has a live-action intro that got edited down from a short 8-minute film called GTA 2: The Movie, which shows Claude out in the city doing his thing. The thing is, the city in GTA 2 is a weird retro-futuristic dystopia, and not the Basically New York City of its intro, and Claude doesn't actually wear a black jacket like this in-game. The video doesn't really fit GTA 2's style at all... but it fits GTA III perfectly. It's like they made an intro for the wrong game.

Meanwhile, GTA III's intro looks like this:

Or is this Metal Gear Solid 2's intro? It's got the same fuzzy look, the same blue tint, and basically the same bridge.

Metal Gear Solid 2 (PS2)

I feel like I'm going to see Solid Snake walking by the other way any moment. Though even if I did I wouldn't be able to get a clear shot of it, as the way the cutscene's directed and edited all my screenshots are coming out as a blurry indistinct mess.

What happens is that a well-armed squad ambushes a police convoy to break out one of the prisoners, and Claude and his friends are lucky enough to be in the same van. In fact, it turns out they're really lucky, as a news reporter reveals that someone hacked into police records to wipe the identities of everyone in the van. Then they blew the van up, along with half the damn bridge, so authorities don't even know how many of their unidentified prisoners survived. Basically I've been trapped in one corner of a sandbox, but it seems that I'm free to have fun there.

Here, have a loading screen. You can tell the game's not going for an entirely photorealistic approach.

It does go for the 'do all the tedious loading at the start and get it out of the way' approach though, which I appreciate. I mean I'm sure it's streaming data from the disc all the time (while streaming music at the same time, because it's clever), but there's going to be no loading elevators or unskippable loading cutscenes in this one.

Alright, here's the actual game, in a nice British 640x512 resolution because I'm playing the PAL version (I figure the frame rate's going to be dropping down as low as 20 FPS either way). There's an option to play in widescreen, but it doesn't affect the resolution and it makes the interface stretched, so I'm going to stick with this.

My buddy 8-Ball's hands are all bandaged up for some reason, so he wants me to get into that car over there and drive. First though, I want to show off a difference between the versions of the game, with the help of that reverse engineered RE3 port that Take-Two tried to take down.

PC version (RE3)

These are both PC screenshots, but that car at the top looks just like it does in the PS2 game, while the car at the bottom has a more glossy look like the Xbox version. The PC port has the original PS2 look, but RE3 lets you switch between the two shading styles at any time, it's great. Plus it's added a bit of rim lighting to the characters, which helps I think. RE3 also lets you have two monitors plugged in without the mouse falling out of the screen you're playing on, and it switches texture filtering back on like in every other port.

Anyway, there are a ton of little differences between the various versions, but the main difference between the PS2 and Xbox ports is that the Xbox game has extra details like this. Characters have fingers they can move for instance. Shame that particular upgrade didn't make it to the PC.

 

Man, look at those beautiful anamorphic headlight flares! The headlights are even casting light on the road. Though the dreamlike step-printing effect hasn't entirely gone away and it's making me feel like I've been drugged.

One thing I'm noticing right away is how nice the car feels to drive. Not entirely realistic, but nice. Especially compared to some of the other 'chase someone around a city' games of the time. Whipping cars around corners with the handbrake never gets old. I'm also noticing this radio station, as the DJ and the adverts bring the city to life in a way you don't get from just PS2 visuals alone. Close your eyes and you're in a real place. They called the guy DJ Mike Hunt though, because the game was written by 12-year-olds.

If you've got the PC or Xbox version you can set it to play your own music, which helps when you've listened to everything in the game five times over. Though then you don't get to use the PS2's pressure-sensitive buttons to accelerate with (it's not a huge loss).

There are no arrows on the road to lead me where I need to be, but I pointed the car towards the purple square on the minimap and I got there in the end. Then I stopped in the centre of the blue marker on the road as the tutorial commanded and triggered a cutscene. Claude and 8-Ball got out and ran inside the safehouse for a change of clothes, while the tutorial explained I can use the door on the left to save, and the door on the right to store cars. Only one car at a time though; this isn't like Saints Row where the garage is like a bottomless sack of stolen whips.

Claude soon re-emerged, dressed exactly like he was in the intro cutscene, and the two of them got back in the car. Now I've got to drive him over to his pal Luigi's place and if I'm lucky I might even find some work there. Fortunately, GTA games give you a full map in the menu, so I can plan a route.

Uh... where's the map? The game is by the people who'd already made Body Harvest and you check the map for directions every two seconds in that game, so this feels like a deliberate choice. Especially as they must have drawn a full map, as you can see the layout of the streets you're driving down in the minimap!

At least I can turn off the annoying blur effect. I can also check what the last few lines of dialogue were, which is handy when I forget what I was supposed to be doing.

I drove to Luigi's place, parked in the blue marker, and got to see what the cutscenes are like when the screen isn't a blurry mess. The animation's awkward, the hands are blocky, and the mouths only barely move, but it's got some charm to it. I appreciate how it's not dropping a bunch of story on me right at the start, I'm just being told where to go. Plus Luigi's apparently played by famous character actor Joe Pantoliano, so that's cool. They've got some big-name actors in this game and everyone's fully voiced. Well, except for Claude. He's a completely silent protagonist who chooses not to complicate cutscenes with conversation.

The first job is basically just a continuation of the tutorial, running me through the basics. I'm supposed to drive to the hospital and pick up one of his girls. Then I bring her back. And that's it. Simple.

LUIGI MISSION 1: LUIGI'S GIRLS

Okay, it turns out that the police don't like it when you scratch their paint. I only brushed against their car very very gently, but now all hell is breaking loose and I've got this cop trying to get my car door open. It probably doesn't help that this is all happenen right outside the police station. Well, at least it means I've got something to look at while I get through the 'how to look at stuff' tutorial.

I reversed the car before the cop could yank me out and got myself pointed towards the purple square on the minimap. Then the game decided to teach me that I can cycle through different camera modes and I figured 'why not?'

Turns out that cinematic view makes it kind of difficult to drive, with it switching between different angles all the time. It's especially awkward during high-speed cop chases... or at any time at all really. There's also a top-down GTA 1-style cam, which is both awesome and somehow even more frustrating than the camera in the classic game. I think I'll just put the camera back how it was, while I still have some car left. This is still that teal Kuruma I got from the bridge at the start and I'm growing a bit attached to it now.

I've just realised something weird: I've got a passenger in my car and they're not talking. There's no conversation going on as I drive. It's not a problem, it's just a bit unusual for a game like this.

After dropping my passenger off the game suggested I could go steal a cab and do some taxi missions, but I think I'll stick with the Kuruma for now. Fortunately, my save garage will fix it up free of charge, if I can survive long enough to make it there.

LUIGI MISSION 2: DON'T SPANK MA BITCH UP

Luigi was so impressed that I managed to drive someone a couple of blocks that he's given me a new job: beating a guy up and stealing his car. He even left a free baseball bat in the street for me to use, though it wasn't packaged up in a crate like pickups were in the original game. In fact, I don't think this game does crates at all. There are some secret packages to collect though, if you can find the damn things.

Happily, locating my target was pretty painless. The game's put a handy blue arrow above his head to remove any ambiguity about who I should attack and there are no cops around to witness my transgressive act.

The combat's a bit on the basic side, I press the circle button to do violence, but I only lost 10 health in the brawl so I'm happy enough. The game doesn't have points flashing up on screen when I hit stuff like its predecessors do, but it is quietly depositing cash into my bank account. Alright, now I need to take his car and get it resprayed.

Oh, he's got his car tuned to a classical radio station. It's so weird how that gave me a strong 'this is not my car' feeling right away. Though hang on, if I'm stealing this car that means I have to leave my Kuruma behind! I hope it'll be okay while I'm gone. The cars in Body Harvest stay put where you left them, whatever you're doing on the other side of the map, but this tends to clean things up once I'm busy with something else.

 

My plan was to use reverse view to get a good shot of the Pay 'n' Spray sign as I backed my stolen ride inside for a respray, but then I drove it into a wall while trying to get far enough away to see it. It's fine though, they'll also repair the thing and it's free of charge because it's part of the mission.

Now I just have to get this into Luigi's garage without wrecking it again. There's no need for me to return back to Luigi himself for the reward though, the cash is added to my account automatically.

When the job was done I walked back to Portland Docks hoping that my old car was still there. It took a while though without a map to follow and when I finally got there... I found my teal Kuruma waiting for me! Result. Now I have to get it back over to my safe house so I can save. Then I'll drive back over to Luigi and see what's next.

The game does have a map by the way, as long as you've got a boxed copy. That's the island I'm driving around on the right. It's currently completely cut off from the other two islands due to the bridge incident, so I'm isolated here until I complete enough jobs.

It's a nice map and I always appreciate getting stuff like this in the box, but you need to have a bit of space to fold it out. It's not always convenient, which is probably why the sequels also include an in-game map.

PC version (RE3) - Cropped

Meanwhile, over in the RE3 port, I get to see what the in-game map could've looked like. You also get an in-game map in the official mobile port, which throws in all kinds of new quality-of-life features to make up for the fact you're playing it with a touch screen. But I haven't tried that version.

It's such a tiny map that you'd think I'd have it all memorised by now, but nope! I have a terrible memory for game levels. I do remember that the first game was all 90-degree turns though, so it's nice to see some diagonals and curves here. There are also some secret passages around that aren't marked on the map, which are handy to know about when you need to lose a tail.

Hey, do you know what game did have an in-game map? Driver 2 on the PlayStation, released roughly a year earlier.

Driver 2 (PSX)

Driver 2 is like a proto-GTA 3 in a lot of ways, as it has you driving around a huge city doing missions. You can even get out of the car and walk around... well, until you run out of time and fail because you didn't chase the other guy's vehicle. The game's really keen on you getting to places in a hurry and would rather you didn't mess around attempting to have fun.

Also, Driver 2 guy suffers from a serious case of tank controls, which are incredibly awkward compared to the control system that GTA 3 uses... that it swiped from Super Mario 64. So if you take the original GTA, Driver 2 and Mario 64 and mix them all together... well, you'll probably end up with something more fun than Driver 2 on its own at least.

Crazy Taxi (Dreamcast)

GTA 3 also came out after games like Crazy Taxi, Shenmue, Omikron: The Nomad Soul, Midtown Madness, Urban Chaos and DMA's own Body Harvest. So people weren't completely blown away at the concept of being able to roam around a city or get out of the car to do some violence. GTA 3 just did it so much better.

It doesn't have The Offspring's "All I Want" on the soundtrack though, so that's one thing Crazy Taxi has over it. The GTA games are known for having amazing licenced soundtracks, but they got their music director Craig Conner to come up with original songs for this one. Some of them are definitely catchy though, which is good because of how often they repeat. "See Through You" is the one that usually gets lodged in my brain (YouTube link).

JOEY MISSION 1: MIKE LIPS LAST LUNCH

The next Luigi mission was incredibly easy, but it introduced me to a new contact, Joey. So now I have a J on my minimap as well as an L, and I get to choose what job I want to do next.

I chose to see what Joey wanted me to do, and it's pretty straightforward. Steal a car, rig it with a bomb, bring it back. The game's teaching me about the bomb rigging shop, which is another feature from GTA making a return. I'm not sure how often rigging cars to explode when an NPC gets in and starts the ignition will come in useful, but it's nice to have the option.

Crap, it turns out the mission's on a timer! I'm not keen on timed missions, they always make me do something stupid. In this case, I drove my car into a lamppost and had to go get it repaired. Now I have even less time to make it to 8-Ball's bomb place!

Things would go a lot better if I stopped hitting things, but it's not always that easy. I mean people keep panicking and leaping under my wheels! I swerve to avoid them but sometimes it's not enough. Though I've seen an ambulance come for them a few times, so I think some of them are going to be alright.

It's weird, but I've been making a real effort not to hurt people this time around. I guess modern sandbox games like Far Cry 6 and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint have turned me soft and empathetic. Now it's only the bad guys that get killed.

Well, I mean except for the guy who owned the car I rigged with a bomb, obviously. He came down, started the ignition, and boom! He really should've read the sign outside. GTA's all about the violence and jokes, and if I'm very lucky I can get both of them in the same screenshot.

I'm also lucky my Kuruma hasn't been erased from the universe yet. I found it sitting in the car park right where I left it, and the game was considerate enough to give me a chance to drive it away from the car before the cutscene triggered.

Alright, the next job is to assassinate a couple of people and I've been given a free pistol for the job. The game's been walking me through every concept so far, so I'm sure this will be a cakewalk.

LUIGI MISSION 4: PUMP-ACTION PIMP

Holy crap, that dude just sent me flying and took off half my health! I'm trying to fight back, but the game forgot to tell me how to aim and I don't know what I'm doing.

You'd think it'd be simple enough, just adjust the aim with the second analogue stick, but this doesn't use it for that. It does control the camera, but it turns it into a first-person look-around mode, so I don't think I can use it for aiming weapons or steering Claude. In fact, I rarely have any reason to use it at all. 

I lasted a few seconds longer, but the assassinatees became the assassinators.

Saints Row (Xbox 360)

But it turns out that when you get 'wasted', you just respawn at a hospital with your weapons confiscated and your bank balance a little lighter. There are no lives to worry about this time. And even if there were you could just load a save and avoid losing anything.

Oh this isn't GTA 3, by the way. This is a glitch that happened to me when I respawned at a hospital in Saints Row on a real actual Xbox. I just think it's funny and used this as an excuse to show it again. You don't need to see the GTA 3 hospital, it's already in the background of one of those other shots up there somewhere.

In the first GTA once you fail a mission it's gone forever, but this time I can just go and give it another try. So I will.

Alright, it turns out that if you linger around the place that gives you the pistol it gives you a bit of a tutorial and a firing range to practice on. Now I know that holding R1 lets you lock on to a target, so you can run around and dodge while keeping your aim steady, and R2 switches target.

I knew that terrible combat used to be a GTA tradition, but this is even worse than I expected. It's terrible! Having to cycle through targets in the middle of a shoot-out to get to the person you want to hit doesn't work great when they cut through your health in seconds.

 

I wonder what the aiming's like on the PC version. I know that San Andreas lets you use the mouse but I can't remember about the earlier games.

PC version (RE3) - Cropped

Oh damn, this is a lot different. It's still not amazing, there's a bit of a delay before firing so I've started holding the trigger and spraying bursts, but it gets the job done.

In fact, I just found out that headshots make people's heads explode in a fountain of blood, which came as a bit of a surprise. This apparently has to be enabled via a cheat code in the console versions, but the PC game has it on by default.

PC version (RE3)

Uh, maybe I should go back to the PS2 version now. I figured that hitting some pedestrians with a car and getting the police after me would be the quickest way to get hold of a gun and do my aiming test, but shooting people increased the wanted level even higher, and it turns out it's really hard to evade the cops at wanted level 4. I guess I'll have to make use of the Pay 'n' Spray, or maybe those pickups hidden in alleyways that lower the wanted level by one. It's a lot like the first game in that respect.

Though the original game used chattering cop faces to indicate wanted level so there's one change.

Well, it was fun to actually be able to hit targets myself instead of relying on a target lock, but this isn't helping me find a way to complete the assassination job in the PS2 version. I'll say one thing about the bad combat system though: it's forcing me to think outside of the box and be creative.

There, I hit my targets with a car. Problem solved!

They dropped a shotgun for me, so I can add that to the arsenal. Only five shots though, and I can't buy more until it's unlocked at the Ammu-Nation. I've also picked up a wanted level, but it's only one badge so I'll be able to lose it without trying. I don't have to escape a detection range or anything clever.

JOEY MISSION 2: FAREWELL 'CHUNKY' LEE CHONG

Fuck, this bit of pavement is car proofed! I'm supposed to kill someone in there, but if I go in shooting his army of friends will take me down.

Well, I gave it a try and my attempt was ended with a baseball bat around the back of the head. I could just continue from the hospital but I don't want to lose my guns or my beloved Kuruma so I'll load a save instead. Either way, I'm going to have to drive back to Joey to accept the mission and then drive all the way back here again. There are no checkpoints and there's no retry option. I'm really in the Dark Ages right now.

You've got to be kidding me. I drove down to Joey's to accept the mission, took my eyes off the screen for a second to write a note, and then a dude came over to hijack my Kuruma!

This isn't the first time it's happened, and every other time I ended up watching helplessly as my car disappeared off into the distance. This time though, this time, I caught up and got my damn car back! I threw the car thief out into the street and I ran the fool over for his arrogance. The guy had even had the nerve to change the radio station. The radio stays on Head Radio or Chatterbox FM, damnit.

Then this other guy you're seeing here hijacked my damn car as I was taking this screenshot of the first hijacker lying in the street.

My Kuruma's gone now. I watched helplessly as it disappeared off into the distance. Now I'm going to have to load my last save if I want it back, and I do. I've kept this car through every mission so far, it's mine, and they're not having it.

EVENTUALLY

Oh come on, I had him that time! I had a plan and everything. I went to the pedestrian-only zone and then fired a few shots at one of the goons guarding my target. This caused my target to flee to his car, so I ran back to my own car to intercept him. Then this cop yanked my door open and shoved a gun inside!

Getting busted is pretty much the same as getting wasted, and both are an immediate mission failure, so I'm trying to avoid it. It's times like this that I'm glad the briefing cutscenes are skippable, though I can't skip the drive back to Joey's.

I eventually managed to get my target to run for his car again and this time I gave chase. It was a pretty long chase, but I rammed his car a few times with my Kuruma and that finally encouraged him to bail. I'm still terrible at combat, but I've got that shotgun now and I know the lock-on button, so once he left the car he was dead. My boomstick put a quick end to his delusions of escaping on foot.

JOEY MISSION 3: VAN HEIST

Okay, I think I've finally found a mission I just can't do in my own car. I'm supposed to be ramming an armoured truck until the driver gives up and lets me steal it, but when I tried it my car blew up! This then caused the armoured truck to blow up as well, in a beautiful chain reaction of fireballs. Hard to steal a pile of burning debris though..

I'm going to need to load my save and find a tougher car for this mission, which might take a while. The PlayStation 2 only has 32 megabytes of RAM so there aren't many parked cars around and when you see people driving around they tend to come in groups of the same car.

Fortunately, I eventually came across a giant truck cab, so I borrowed it and that got the job done. This isn't the kind of sandbox game that has tanks and artillery lying around for you to commander, it's mostly cars and cars. But it's cool to find something rare that can smash everything else off the road.

EL BURRO 1: TURISMO

I got a message telling me to check out a ringing pay phone, classic GTA style, and I got a job there from a guy called El Burro. Well, it's actually a race, and I'm starting to think I should've chosen a faster car than my Kuruma. They're driving fake Ferraris and their crappy driving isn't giving me enough of an edge to keep the lead.

It doesn't help that my driving is also terrible right now, partly because I'm struggling to hit the checkpoints. There's a detailed 3D city filling my screen but I'm checking the route on a tiny minimap because the best the track itself gives me are blue checkpoint markers that I can only see when I'm already going the right way. It's bad, I don't like it. I prefer it when they actually block off the sides with obvious walls so there's no possibility of uncertainty.

At least the camera's in a good place to give me a decent view of the road in front. GTA 4 wasn't always so nice to me.

Racing is hard.

But hey, at least I made it back into 3rd place before I got flipped onto my roof. Unfortunately, there's no coming back from this, as a flipped car will always set on fire and explode, just like in the movies. It's easy enough to get out in time and even if I didn't I'd just respawn at a hospital so it wouldn't be the end of the world. That's my car though! My beautiful teal Kuruma. I'm going to have to reload my save to undo this disaster. Then I'm going to go swipe a fake Dodge Viper from a showroom I saw along the way and try again with some horsepower.

One thing I should mention is that the cars don't make horrifying noises when they're close to exploding anymore, and so far I've not encountered any heavily damaged cop cars suicidally ramming into me and blowing us both up. So that's a nice upgrade from the original games.

EL BURRO 3: TRIAL BY FIRE

I think El Burro must be feeling guilty for starting with such a tricky racing mission, as he's been giving me some really easy jobs to make up for it. First I had to steal an ice cream truck which plays the same jingle as the one from Body Harvest to lure in some gang members and blow them up. Now I'm setting some Triad members on fire with a flame thrower. It's a good old-fashioned Kill Frenzy! Except in this game, it's called a Rampage.

When the job was done I was about to head home and save, when I noticed some stairs leading up to the roof. You don't see many stairs in this game. Also, I found a secret package stashed up there and you don't see many of them either. Because they're hidden secret collectables not, uh, Crackdown agility orbs or something. No levelling up in this by the way... except there apparently is. It seems like your maximum stamina is tied to your 'Distance travelled on foot' stat, so you're able to run for longer as the game goes on.. 

Then on my way back down, I realised I had this beautiful view of the second island to look at. Well, I think it's beautiful anyway. I even got here at the right time to photograph the train as it went by.

This reminds me of a screenshot I took of GTA IV, when I launched one of Niko's cousin's taxis into the river for a laugh.

Grand Theft Auto IV (PC)

It's funny because Niko's cousin sucks.

Graphics came a long way in just five years. Though that's not the only reason that Liberty City looks so different. They changed the layout of the city entirely, just like they did for GTA III. I'm usually a big fan of consistency and continuity and not screwing around with things because you're feeling creative, but it's hard to argue against them changing the layout to suit the hardware and the gameplay. I mean GTA 1's Liberty City is a nightmare world filled with 90-degree turns. I replayed it for a bit in preparation for this and the objective arrow kept sending me slamming into walls because I was meant to go around to a bridge or whatever.

You can't swim by the way, which is weird because you can in Body Harvest (for a few seconds). Though you can ride the train, in all three of these GTA games I keep mentioning.

PC version (RE3)

Well, you can ride inside it anyway. Train surfing isn't possible sadly. I really tried though.

I remember putting the draw distance up in PC San Andreas and being amazed at how much of a difference it made, but it's not a dramatic change in this one. Maybe because this island just doesn't have much of a distance to draw.

Reducing the draw distance makes a difference though...

I was just driving around and suddenly this fog came in and things got a bit Silent Hill. I love the way the lights seem to illuminate the fog around them, so there are patches of orange or green mist, it's a really nice effect.

The game's full of surprises like this. I mean, I was impressed by how much character Liberty City has from the start, even with PS2 graphics. But every now and again it'll do something to impress me all over again, like perhaps it'll start raining for a bit, or maybe I'll turn around to get in a car and suddenly get a faceful of sunset.

TONY MISSION 1: TAKING OUT THE LAUNDRY

That's so pretty. Man, this has to be the biggest jump in visuals between video game sequels since Duke Nukem 2 to Duke Nukem 3D or Donkey Kong to Donkey Kong Country! The series has gone from some of the jankiest visuals on the PlayStation to some of the most advanced graphics on the PS2, especially in 2001!

This is a really frustrating mission by the way, as it's got me hunting laundry trucks with grenades. It's fine if I can catch the trucks before they're onto me by blocking the road and causing a traffic jam, but once they're spooked nothing will stop them and nothing seems to destroy them either. Nothing but grenades, which are kind of hard to use on a moving truck.

I think Tony's just trying to get back at me after I accidentally launched his car up onto the elevated train tracks. While he was sitting in it. I didn't make an ideal first impression to be honest.

CONCLUSION

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Sometimes I'll go back to an older game I used to enjoy and I'm shocked at how badly it plays now. All the things I used to put up with back in the day seem unforgivable now and the things it does right have been done better in dozens of other games since.

But I think in Grand Theft Auto III's case I was well aware of its flaws right from the start. I mean if you go from PC shooters with mouse aiming and quick saves, and then play this, you're going to notice how bad the combat is and how much it wastes your time. And I mean it really wastes your time, as it takes no skill to drive down to the quest giver icon to give a mission another try, there's no purpose to it after the first time, but you have to do it anyway! It's not a problem as long as you never fail any missions, but GTA 3's jobs sometimes take a bit of figuring out. The objectives are clearly marked, but plans don't always survive first contact with the enemy, especially when they can cut you down in seconds while you're still trying to get the bloody game to lock onto the right guy. I haven't put in the time to really get to grips with the lock-on system yet, but my initial thoughts are that it's bloody terrible. Absolutely embarrassingly abysmal. It's incredible that they thought that this was good enough, especially considering that they gave us a much better combat system in Body Harvest, and it's jarring how bad it is because everything else about the game is damn slick.

Grand Theft Auto (PC)

It's funny how similar the game is to GTA 1 and 2, because somehow it feels nothing like them. It seems revolutionary, like a new genre just came out of nowhere as a polished complete experience. But it still has you stealing cars, answering phones for jobs, evading police, running over pedestrians, collecting items, doing kill frenzies rampages, rigging cars with bombs etc. The Pay 'n' Spray's still there, mission briefings are still short and sweet, and there isn't actually whole lot of story going on. But it's had a perspective switch, and evolved from arcade action to become more of an immersive simulator. In GTA 1 you steal a car, take off like a rocket, and slam into a wall because you can barely see in front of you. But in GTA 3 the driving is so great that just getting the car out of the safe house garage is a joy. You reverse it out, whip the front around 180, then jump down the little ramp onto the street. Unless you forgot to put a car in the garage when you saved, in which case you're left walking around trying to catch a taxi (and steal it).

It seems weird to talk about how detailed the city is and how nice the graphics are, seeing as it looks like an early PlayStation 2 title, but it really is detailed! And the graphics are really nice! At least compared to some of the other games I've been playing recently. The city's small but it's got a ton of personality and life to it and it doesn't feel like a designer just copy and pasted some buildings around. Really the game had to get two things right to work: the driving and the city, and it nails them both. Well, three things really, as it also had to get the missions right.

So far the game's given me a mix of stuff to do, introducing me to things like racing, combat, and taking prostitutes to blue circles on the road. The jobs haven't been all that elaborate, but they haven't been a pain in the ass either. The silver lining of the bad combat is that you're encouraged to find more creative ways to solve a problem, like figuring out which car a guy escapes in and rigging it with a car bomb in advance, and the game often gives you room to have some fun. I haven't had to defend a mission critical target or shoot half an army with a turret yet! Though I have had to kill a lot of drug dealers.

The game's more of a crime-themed mayhem simulator than a crime drama. It's full of prostitutes, drugs and murder but it doesn't take any of it seriously for a moment. I mean it's not wall-to-wall comedy either, but it's more detached from its characters and the dark consequences that find them than later GTAs. Most of the comedy comes from the radio stations, which do a way better job of making the world feel real than the radio stations in earlier games. They're less funny when you've played it enough to memorise every damn line, and you know every Pogo the Monkey and Pets Overnight commercial by heart, but the first time around I was amazed by just how much talk radio they give you. And how horrible the people in this world are. It's like the game wants you to run them over.

I've played so many modern sandboxes since GTA 3 that I actually struggled to get back into the mindset of having zero conscience or restraint. I was trying really hard not to hurt anyone and I even had my own car to drive around so I could keep the carjackings down to a bare minimum. Did you know the game keeps track of a whole bunch of stats for everything except how many cars you've stolen? How did they not think to put a 'grand theft auto' counter in a Grand Theft Auto game? Or, you know, a map.

I've never tried the 10th anniversary mobile version, though I hear it has an in-game map and mission restarts, and is actually good for a mobile game. And I feel like I'm probably better off not trying the recent Definitive Edition. But I have played the PS2, Xbox and PC games and they're pretty similar to each other. The Xbox version has better graphics and gives the characters actual hands, while the PC version... has a lot of potential for improvement. You can run it with the RE3 port or a bunch of fan patches from the PCGamingWiki, crank the draw distance up to full, and have fun actually aiming at enemies yourself. The PC game even lets you change your character's textures to play as someone else. I wasn't disappointed by the good old bare-bones PS2 version though; it still contains the recommended amount of GTA 3 gameplay and rarely ever dips below 20fps! Though one thing all the versions have in common is that none of them have multiplayer. Just felt like something worth pointing out, I don't really care.

So is there a point in playing Grand Theft Auto III in 2023, when you could be playing Watch_Dogs Legion, or Far Cry 6, or Grand Theft Auto V? I dunno, probably? You may want to jump to Vice City or San Andreas if story's your main interest, but the game still has its charms. I enjoyed playing it again.

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You're going to have to get out your glasses for this clue image I'm afraid, or maybe a microscope would work better. Thanks for dropping by and reading this by the way! I know it's been a while since the last game but I've had a nasty cold that's really slowed me down. Come back next time to see my next excuse for taking forever to get something published!