PS2 Reviews
Grand theft Auto 3
Reviewed by: DementedEffect.com
It begins when the van taking you to the jailhouse is hijacked by a Japanese gang searching for a fellow convict. You make a break for it and set up base in the heavily industrialised Portland area with just a single contact to your name. Like a prisoner freshly released after 30 years of solitary confinement, it's easy for the freedom on offer in Liberty City to overwhelm you, and only you've gotten over the fact that you can car-jack anything on wheels and lay out anything on feet will you be able to settle into some hard graft.
But that's what makes GTA3 such a groundbreaking title. Liberty City is, by a long way, the most authentic urban cityscape ever created, not just because of its impressive size, but because of its depth, variety and life. There's hundreds of square miles of high-rise apartments, sweaty strip-clubs and deserted dockland. Night turns into day, a fog descends then clears, a downpour starts, and all the while the people of this fair city go about their daily business.
And you can sit and see for yourself if you just pull your car over to the kerb and watch for a while. Within five minutes a mugger has pulled a knife on an elderly pedestrian, an ambulance has raced past on its way to an accident, and a mafia shoot-out has kicked off, leaving five people dead and two cars on fire. Not only does this city never sleeps, it never sits down and it never stops shouting.
Liberty City consists of three main areas. Once you've completed a core spine of tasks in Portland, the roadworks clear on the bridge over to Staunton island allowing you to fully explore this affluent business district with its skyscraping business centres and corporate headquarters. Later still, with your notoriety rising and an ever-increasing price on your head, you venture over the Belleville bridge into the Shoreside Vale area, where you lay low amid the villas and plush apartments of this executive commuter belt.
All of these three districts are huge and feature their own architectual styles, unique cars, characters and businesses. The maps have been designed to encourage you to carve your own shortcuts wherever you see fit, and those who explore off the beaten track will often be rewarded, perhaps stumbling into a discused underground train tunnel perfect for escaping from the two Triad fish vans on your case, or uncovering a deserted car showdown that you can ram-raid and empty.
As in the previous two games it's up to you who you work for and when you work for them, though it takes time to gain the trust and respect of Liberty City's major players. You can make a good start by completing a couple of errands for small-time sex trader Luigi Goterelli, who'll introduce you to the massively influential Leone Family. They want you to pick up hookers and deliver them to the policemans ball. They want you to steal Mike The Lip's car, rig it with explosives and return it to where you found it. They want you to pick up a suitcase full of money that's been left in the heart of hostile Triad territory and escape with it intact. And if you've got any sense about you, you'll do all of these with a smile on your face.
Now before you accuse us of spoiling GTA3 by giving away the contents of some of the 70-plus missions, relax. Unlike medal Of Honour, Half-Life or Jedi Knight 2 it's not the pre-designed surprises that makes this game so special, it's the spontaneous moments unique to each game. The journey from A to B is irrelevant, it's what happens in the space between that matters.
As the title suggests, the bulk of GTA3 is spent behind the wheel. Behind the wheel of what is entirely at your discretion. Ice-cream vans, fish trucks, hum-vees, police cars; if you can pull the driver to the ground and give him a good kicking, you can drive it away. Though each of these vehicles handles completely differently, the emphasis here is on French Connection extravagance, so don't expect to be using the handbrake for anything other than turning. A typical car won't last you more than five minutes, with the bonnet flying off after first collision, the doors going after the second, and the engine smoking after the third, and as a result it's not unusual to leave four or five burnt-out wrecks over the course of a pursuit.
Hopping in and out of cars exposes you to GTA3's most endearing detail: its selection of radio stations that between them play a total of three hours of audio, from the K-Jah Crew spinning the finest club reggae through to the Chatterbox DJ and his human zoo of bizarre callers. Those looking to bring out some Sicilian flavours can tune in for a little opera courtesy of Double Clef FM, while Lock, Stock Londoners can keep it MSX FM for non-stop drum n' bass. Performed, apparently, very much in a roughneck stylee.
Like Confucius say: "He who blow up entire fish factory draw attention of police", so it's no surprise that you'll frequently find yourself driving through gardens at 130mph trying to shake the rozzers. There's a nice balance at work here: run a traffic light in front of a copper and he'll turn a blind eye; run over a pensioner and he'll pursue you. With a wanted rating of one you'll be able to escape the cops within minutes using the most basic of driving skills.
Throwing grenades around like confeti and rampaging with a shotgun with garner you a far sterner three-star rating, resulting in a severe increase in the amount of heat on you, and making evasion hard bordering on the impossible. In times like this it's a good idea to pay a visit to the bodyshop to get you car re-sprayed, or to hunt down the police bribe icons scattered about the city that decrease your wanted level by one degree at a time.
Neither of these will work when you've managed to upset the Liberty City authorities enough to be awarded with a full rating of six however, by which time the FBI, the army and a SWAT team will be on your tail, watching your every move. Your only hope here is that when Death comes, he's in a hurry.
But for now let's just enjoy GTA3 as its designers intended, for games like this don't come along very often. In terms of single-player titles only Championship Manager has managed to create a self-contained airtight universe on a similar scale, where no two games ever play the same and where it's almost as much fun trading anecdotes about what happened in your last session as it is actually playing. It's also one of those rare games that sucks in spectators no matter what else is going on in the room.
And there's so much more below the surface of GTA3 that you'll only discover as your plunge deeper and deeper into it. There are hundreds of secret packages to be found, bonus cars to unlock, extra missions to complete, hidden killing frenzies to carry out, and secret areas to explore. The fact that the game keeps a detailed record of everything you do, from the number of innocents you've mowed down to the distance you've walked, adds further longevity, and there's a whole afternoon's entertainment to be had in trying beat your furthest ever jump achieved in a sports car.
GTA3 is astonishingly good. It's got everything we look for in a game: innovation, depth, looks, replay value, humour and variety. A superb game into an iconic one, and you're strongly advised to experience firsthand the most unforgettable game of 2002. A landmark in gaming has been laid down. The future just happened.
Overall 5/5
