Grand Theft Auto 3 PS2 - And they say children have dirty minds...

Hello everybody! I had a snow day a few days ago, so I thought I’d give my PS2 and Gamecube a little lovin’ by going and renting some games. Surprisingly, the GC area had grown to a bigger selection of games, however my first choices were picked, so I got the next best thing, the newly released NBA 2k2 on Gamecube. Now that I had the game for Gamecube, I browsed through the PS2 racks to see about its new games. Surprisingly, there were only two new releases, but be still my beating heart, there lay Grand Theft Auto 3 behind its respected box. My local Hollywood Video, Family Video, and Blockbuster Video have not had GTA3 in-stock ever since it was released. But finally, my lucky day has come...

Plot/Story
You, your girlfriend, and somebody else are performing a robbery, and as you try to escape in the alley, you turn a corner and your girlfriend turns around and shoots you. Sucks don’t it, criminal find criminal girlfriend, and then criminal girlfriend becomes a bigger criminal by shooting her criminal boyfriend.

Anyway, while you’re in a police convoy, some of his “friends” i guess bust him out, and you goto Liberty City to express your rage(and get revenge).

Home, home on the range, where the criminals and pot heads roam
I must say this, Grand Theft Auto 3 is an AWESOME game and should definitely be owned by any PS2 owner, above the age of 16 or 17 that is. Before I get into the review, Grand Theft Auto 3 consists of an ultimate amount of violence. Whether it be shooting someone, beating an elderly lady walking the crosswalk, or running over a group of people with a semi-truck, an old car, or a brand new Hummer.

Moving along, there are over one-hundred different missions you can do ranging from picking someone up and take them to a rendezvous point, to putting explosives on a building to blow it up. You get your different missions from different gangs, gang leaders, etc., and as you complete missions, your criminal status will go up from pick pocket, to a full blown criminal.

The missions are the main part of the game, but nobody would probably want to do them(ok so people will, but I know a lot of people who have had it since launch, but have yet to bother completing a mission). I say this because like the first two Grand Theft Auto’s, it has an infinite amount of replay value, by just driving around Liberty City and doing criminal things. Like my favorite thing to do is driving around, switching cars and stuff, and then finding new cars.

Alongside stealing cars and bashing elderly people to the ground(which may be fun in the game, but kids...don’t try this at home), you can use a variety of weapons like a couple hand guns, machine gun, baseball bats, ROCKET LAUNCHERS, and of course(you knew this was coming) the all-famous (but deadly) SHOTGUN.

Of course what’s really fun, is that you can find a hooker, go into your car, and...well you know what happens next, they get jiggy with it, which restores your health, then when they walk out the door, shoot her and run over her to get your money back. Kind of a cool concept, but downright gross when you think about it.

Like I said before, the replay value is endless in Grand Theft Auto 3. You could go for days, or even weeks, just driving the different cars, running over people, and just other endless amount of ways for fun(I know I said that a lot)...all this without even doing the missions. Once you start doing the different missions, there goes another month or two of your life having endless amounts of fun.

=======================================
Graphics
Like the first Grand Theft Auto’s, this next one is once again in the 2-D, birds eye-view gameplay and...WAIT a minute, I was talking about the wrong game. Excuse me, Grand Theft AutoIII takes the GTA series to a new level, by being in total, glorious 3-D. The graphics are awesome, even with the Cities being as big as they are, Rockstar did a good job by not decreasing the way cars, buildings, people look so they could fit the whole city in.

I think the jump to 3-D graphics couldn’t have come at a better time, as right when the PS2 was sort of in a dryspell, Grand Theft Auto 3 is released to soothe PS2 gamers over until the next wave of games hit. The people don’t look as good as say... the characters in Final Fantasy X, but considering how big this game is, the characters(or people) look real enough for me. Also, unlike the cartoony graphics in State of Emergency, the graphics in Grand Theft Auto III are EXTREMELY realistic. I mean, so realistic that anybody under the age of 14 or 15 shouldn’t play this game because they might be too immature to handle what happens on-screen and try it in real life. That’s the problem these days, some parents are too irresponsible to pay attnetion to young kids playing games like this, and then when the child goes out and does what he/she played in a game...the parents blame the game industry for making too violent of games(an editorial on this subject will follow shortly).

Moving along, the frame rate is pretty good, however there’s not THAT much happening on screen, but the pixel counts are good and like the buildings don’t appear as you drive, you can actually see them far away.

Control
I didn’t think the controls were all that bad compared to what other people have said, and it’s definitely a helluva lot smoother than State of Emergency. Almost every button is used on the controller to either enter and exit cars, shoot/punch people, scroll through weapons, or to move by using the analog stick and driving using the D-Pad(that’s what I do). The camera is fine, and is not NEARLY as annoying as SOE.

Sound
Voice acting wasn’t near as bad in GTA3 as it is in some games, but it’s still got some pretty cheesy areas of speech. Most of the SoundFX in GTA3 are pretty much up to par, sounding like gruffy voiced thugs(hey, just like in real life) for the voice acting, and then gunshots, people screaming, car crushes, burning tires, and car explosions are all part of the thug experience(including stealing your get away car, which this game is based soley off of by the way, stealing cars; you get tired of one, go jack off a new one).

Overall
Grand Theft Auto 3 was truly one of the best and most entertaining games that I have fed my PS2 in a long while. You’ll get your money’s worth with GTA3, rent or buy.

~Happy Gaming