Grand Theft Auto III: Play by Play *Completed*

Since the last two games I played on my Steam list turned out to be on the lame side, I decided to go with one I was pretty sure I would like: Grand Theft Auto III. Controversial as it is, I feel like the GTA series is one of the purest gaming experiences because of the freedom it affords the player to just go crazy. I've never been in a fight, never been pulled over while driving, and I practice strict firearms safety when using guns. I doubt any of those things will change any time soon, but within the world of GTA, I have a blast causing havoc.


My initial experience with GTA was with my cousin who had a Playstation. We spent many hours with the original driving around like madmen (I recently played the PC version of the original GTA, and I must say, it doesn't hold up well). I also remember playing a little GTA II and a whole lot of GTA III at his house. Years later, I played a bit of Vice City and San Andreas, which my little brothers had. And then, as recently as last year, I bought GTA IV, the first of the series that I played in its entirety. I have also played through Bully, Rockstar's "GTA lite." All of the games have a very similar structure and an ever-increasing sandbox world.

After a very disappointing 11 minutes with GTA I recently, I decided to skip the first two and start playing the series where it really got good: once it hit 3D. A 3D setup allows for much better immersion and usually better storytelling potential. I plan on playing through at least all of the primary story missions and probably a good deal of the side missions, depending on how well it keeps my interest.

I fired up the game tonight, played through a few missions, and caused some trouble with the citizens of liberty city. The opening cinematic and a few of the missions seemed familiar, so I think I must have played through some of them with my cousin back in the day. The gameplay is pretty intuitive and the early missions do a good job at exemplifying various aspects of the game. One thing I know they improved by later games was having a mouse-controlled camera while driving, but at least the camera stays behind the car and doesn't pull some Tomb Raider "look at the side of the car" crap. The graphics are pretty dated, but I imagine they were pretty good for 2001.

I'm not too sure about story yet. As I recall, the player character is unnamed and silent throughout, which will essentially mean the story has the flattest protagonist possible. Knowing the main character in GTA IV and Bully really drove the story and gave it a lot of depth. But GTA III was long before those games, of course. The story has a decent setup, though, and I know there will be a bunch of crazy characters giving me jobs in no time.

This has certainly been my most positive post in the Play by Play series, but I'm sure I'll find some things to nitpick about. I'm looking forward to writing about my experience with this game.

I've been cranking through some missions on this, but I'm also less than 10% done. I appreciate a game that will last more than a few days of playing.

As I was playing tonight/this morning, I was realizing that some of the things that could be improved already have been in the sequels. There's probably not a great deal of purpose in criticizing a 10 year old game. Nevertheless, I will continue, because this is an outlet for nonfiction writing for me.

One of the main things I noticed that has since been improved is the number of cars. For a city based on New York City, there sure aren't many automobiles. It seems strange that you can be on a pretty major road and see lots of pedestrians but no cars. I am glad, though, that there is no extreme traffic. That would make the game a lot less fun. Having done my share of driving in Chicago, I've learned to appreciate empty roads. I know that in GTA IV, one of the Options sliders (in there with brightness and draw distance) was for vehicle density.

Speaking of the sliders, I have my brightness all the way up, and things are still awfully dark. I wonder if it's a problem with the PC version, or if it just wants me to mess with my monitor settings (which I really don't want to do because everything else looks fine). It's not hampering gameplay, but it's weird that the taxi's are almost black. All the vehicles look very dark.

I'm enjoying it, but I keep comparing it to later games, which kept the same type of fun but made improvements. The series doesn't seem to be as backward-enjoyable as some other game series. For example, Super Mario Galaxy is fun, but I could still go back and play Super Mario world and enjoy it, because they are significantly different. If I could temporarily forget everything I've played since 2001, I would probably be able to have a lot more fun with this.

To give myself (and you, dear reader) a better context of what video games were like in 2001, I will provide a list of some of the games from that year I have played.

Star Wars: Episode I: Battle for Naboo- This was basically Rogue Squadron with an Episode I storyline. I remember it being pretty fun.

Golden Sun- I never beat it, but I played a good bit of this Pokemon-like Game Boy RPG.

Super Smash Bros. Melee- It's Smash Bros. Not much to say really.

Wow, was that really all I've played from 2001? On top of that, I probably didn't actually play any of them the year they were released. None of them compare to the innovation brought about by GTA III, that's for sure.

I've unlocked the second island in the game. This means a fancy downtown to drive around in, new cars, and new people to meet and drive for. One of the first things I noticed was that the radar still shows the location of my safehouse and clients, but now has added Pay-N-Spray and Aummunation icons as well. It's very helpful to have those icons, but it's strange that they are only labeled for the second island. It's not very helpful at all that there is no full map of the city for me to look at. You'd think that would be standard.

It's weird to be in a city where I am becoming increasingly hated, despite getting more and more jobs. Each set of tasks seems to make another gang hate me, so now I get shot at whenever I drive through their territory. The Triads, Colombians, and probably the Mafia all want me dead at the moment.

I've been getting a lot of really hard missions lately, and it's mostly because it's really hard to lose the cops in this one. I really need to learn where all the "Police Bribe" icons are, but that gets pretty hard when there's no map screen. Oh, how I wish there was a map screen.

After some pretty tough missions, I've made it onto the third island. Unfortunately, the two big mission-givers are still on island #2, so that means a lot of extra travel time for me.

I'm actually kind of getting bored with the game a little, and I think it's mostly because of my memories of the superiority of future games. I want to ride a motorcycle, I want to be able to accurately aim weapons, I want a sky and land textures that don't hurt my eyes. It could also have to do with this game being a significantly longer time investment than the previous two. I may take a break from it for a while. It's not like I have to worry about remembering a great deal of story.

I've been noticing something strange about how the game renders cars and people; specifically the nebulousness of their existence. For example, if I'm on foot looking for some wheels, I'll walk into the street. Since the vehicle population of Liberty City is rather small, it can take some time. I look one way, and see a car way off in the distance. I turn around, hoping to find one closer in that direction, but no luck. Turning back around, the distant car is not- as logic would dictate- closer. It is simply gone. Things seem to only exist as long as you are looking right at them. I can understand that not rendering stuff might be useful for memory, but when things just totally disappear, it can make it hard to get a car.

I looks like I'm on the last mission of the game's story, and it's turning out to be quite difficult. It seems that the only easy way to accomplish it is to first complete the package-collecting minigame. Every 10 packages collected spawns one more weapon at my base, but I basically need to find all 100 of them to get the weapons I really need for this last mission. I'm all for collecting things on the side, but when the last mission suddenly requires you to have a bunch of weapons very handy due to a time constraint, it gets a bit irritating. I looks like my options are to either 1) Try to find the remaining forty-odd packages, 2) push my luck with the time and go buy the needed tools, or 3) cheat. I will endeavor to accomplish #1 and probably give #2 a couple tries while I'm doing that. If I start getting really bored with that... on to #3! We shall see how it goes.

Option number two deals with something in the GTA world I've been wanting to address: Money. Obviously, in these games, your character does his dirty deeds for cold, hard cash. It just makes sense. The thing is, you don't need money at all. You don't need to buy cars, clearly, and with a little work, you can get all your weapons for free. And there are only ever a handful of missions per game that require spending. I recall one mission needing $10,000 for explosives. I had over $300,000 at the time, so it wasn't an obstacle at all.

Why am I complaining? Isn't an abundance of money a good thing? Certainly, it doesn't hurt, right? Sure, but it makes a lot more sense when there's stuff to buy. One of the big obstacles at the beginning (and sometimes later as well) of RPGs is having no money for the sweet gear. Future GTA games have gone that route a bit. You can buy clothes, get haircuts, go out to eat, go on dates, etc. But, it's still not stuff you need to do, and even if you do it, it doesn't make a big dent in your horded treasure.

I have over a million dollars in GTA III right now. It would take a long time to spend that, and it would probably be mostly spent on ammunition. I remember also in Bully and GTA IV, I also had an absurd amount of money at the end and nothing to spend it on. And, again, not having much in the beginning did nothing to challenge gameplay.

This isn't so much a big issue for me as much as it is an interesting challenge to solve. I don't play the game to collect money; I doubt anyone does. We play it for a fun story and causing as much chaos as possible in an imaginary city. But still, I'd like to see something done with the money for the character's sake. What if you could buy property and build a sweet base of operations? What if you had to buy gas? What if you became a crime lord and could hire your own goons to do your dirty work?

I'm sure some of you have noticed this in various games. What are your thoughts on dealing with fictional finances?

Well, it turns out there was another option that was much easier. There was a rocket launcher (the most necessary tool for the mission) on a roof that I had previously though inaccessible. It turned out that I didn't absolutely need it when I got it, but it made things easier. I was able to complete the mission in just a couple tries.

So it's done... for the most part. I could probably go around and collect more hidden packages, do vehicle-based side missions, or whatever. I don't think I will, though, especially now that there's no point. I was unaware of the benefits (convenient weapons and armor) of doing such things until I started consulting strategy guides near the end of the game. I think I'm just under 80% completion, and I'm alright with that.

Overall, GTA III is a great game, especially for its time. It was influential in sandbox gameplay and pushing the limits of acceptable entertainment. It was full of violence and criminal activity, but it also kept it very light-hearted. Just listen to the radio and the civilians: "Learn to rid your apartment of vermin by means of a penny whistle and a mysterious prancing German named Hans," "Mah mother's mah sister," and so on. I've detailed most of my issues with it in the above entries, so I don't really need to go into them here. I had fun, and that's what's most important, and I'm looking forward to playing Vice City and San Andreas in the future.