Grand Theft Auto III / Rockstar Studios (2002)

Game Information

91% on IceGameWare.com. 96% on Gaming Illustrated. 92% on Miss Match. 9/10 on "Gamer's Hell." Are these people on the same internet as the rest of us? Did they get the same copy of the game? What the hell's going on here? Goddamn sheep. 

Grand Theft Auto III could have been the greatest computer game ever made. It's not -- not by a longshot -- purely due to laziness. It can be debated whether it's laziness on the part of the publisher (get it in, ship it out, ASAP, lol lol lol) or the devs (PC gamers stuck with us through two previous games, allowing this "franchise," such as it is, to even exist -- let's repay them by not removing the console aspects of the product). What cannot be debated is that the specific designers of this thing -- the pure "idea men" on it (none of the game's designers show up as either coders, animators, or 3D artists in the credits) let this game down and down badly. Without question, it's the four guys listed under "design" that stop it from achieving any kind of greatness.

Overall, the thing is not a total waste of time nor a complete piece of shit. I feel that's the fairest thing I can say about it, due to the fact that it is responsible for a personal decision I made through playing it: I will no longer be purchasing games that do not allow me to save anywhere. I just don't have this kind of time or patience any longer. There are many apologists who show up on sites like Planetcrap from time-to-time who are more than willing to detail exactly why saving should not be in the player's hands. These people (and all persons who subscribe to this mindset) are classically-trained fucking idiots who should be the subject of a wave of hurried genocide and who are unable to form their arguments without total pretension, and little real-world revelance --  for the simple fact that those who wish to save their progress at arbitrary points can always impose those restrictions upon themselves. The rest of us with a goddamn clue, who lead goddamn lives, cannot function under such miserable design decisions. In Grand Theft Auto III, you can only save when you return to your "home base." More, you cannot save while on a mission. Furthermore, you lose all your weapons when you die and the gun store is not always present on your radar, especially in the first city. So the entire time I played this game, it was along the lines of "solve one mission, return home, save, keep playing." Not being able to save wherever I wanted artificially increased the length of this game. I doubt there is much more content within than in Max Payne (a game criticized for being far too short). But because Max Payne was developed by people who had actually played computer games before attempting to make one themselves, I didn't have to keep re-loading the same scene over and over again.

The lack of a save detracts in the following ways:

• Falling into water will kill you. Fair enough. I mean, it's not, but whatever, right? This, alone, is not unique for video games. Anyway, at one point in the game you need to swap boats. These are not any kind of magical, land-faring hover... boats, no, they are in fact boats that fully reside in water. Dangerous, evil, life-slaying water. The designers of this game decided that it would be great fun to work in a small "jumping puzzle" and make you have to really, really work at getting out of a frigging boat. While attempting to jump from the boat to the dock I fell into some water. AND DIED. I had already completed a mission previous and decided to get bold and keep playing without a save, so now I have to do two of them over again.

• You'll eventually get, seemingly, just about one in every two citizens pissed at you, and shooting at you as you attempt to drive around the city. If you need to swap cars for a particular mission (not all cars can carry four people -- while there's no enforcement of hit-and-run, speeding, failure to yield, abuse towards the badge, going the correct way on a one-way road, and shooting people in the back with uzis when a cop isn't around to see it, having people and/or whores go three to a backseat is much to "unrealistic," I guess) you can get involved with what at first seems to be a kind of gang war. Shooting back is what the cops will react to, so it's insane to not save after every mission due to the random fact that at any time you can have the police force after you for simply "defending" yourself. More, should you get far enough in the game you'll eventually find that wandering around the first city will make you a target of rocket attacks. These attacks instantly kill you. A mission will send you BACK to the first city and square into where the rockets are. Not being able to save... I mean, fuck. It's unbelievable. 

•  You'll spend a lot of times just driving from location to location on a mission... oftentimes in a slow vehicle. Luckily, anyone who says "take the limo" to you in an attempt to comport themselves with some class can eventually be repeatedily run over with a much speedier automobile. So justice is served, I guess. But being able to save before the "fun" of some of these missions begins is crucial.

So this will do it for me. There comes a time in a man's life where he realizes that he's spending way too much time playing computer games in his free time. I'm almost thirty for the love of Black Christ. After taking a long look in the mirror I realize that this is a great hobby, but all-too addicting. The frustration levels given due to the fact that out of outright, damnable fucking sloth this game doesn't adhere to 20 years of previous PC gaming expectations aren't worth it. Publishers can either pay to overtime to have their games function correctly on the medium or else they can go straight to hell. There are far too many games that are put together with a clue where this shit isn't going to fly any longer.

All that being said, the game almost... almost makes up for its flaws due to the 'wow' and 'get a load of this' factors. Crazy Taxi, Carmageddon, Spy Hunter and Driver are essentially included as mini-games. The physics engine we're playing with is enough like real-life to perform as expected and enough like video games to be fun. The graphics are very nice (although there could stand to be a few more "states" for the different cars, in terms of relative damage) and the audio team did a great job as well (there are around ten different radio stations, and you can create your own that plays your MP3s by copying shortcuts to them in one of the game's directories). And the recognition of "insane stunts" provides many a laugh and good time.

Does any of that matter? No, not a bit. In addition to some bugs (I need to go into the Control Panel and re-calibrate my gamepad before playing after rebooting my system-- way to go, guys... oh, and I count the "place save games in C:\My Documents" as a bug, because it's retarded that this kind of thing is going to be the norm, apparently) that have to do with the interface, there are bugs in whatever twisted logic was used to develop the average mission and interface. Here's the list: 

• The Pay and Spray shop gets the cops off your back. This HAS to be an option on the radar at all times. Yeah, they gave me a nice, full color map with the game. Word-fucking-up. Maybe it's acceptable to consult a map during an role-playing game, or text adventure or something, but not when I am in a white-knuckle chase scene. But modifying the radar would mean adding a level of complexity to getting the game out the door! Oh noes!!

• The second city is way too "three dimensional" for the rest of the game. As gamers, we're always going to be the lazy ones and always take the path of least resistance. The devs need to be the better man. Trying to navigate the mess of the second city on a flat, two-color, 2D radar DOES NOT WORK. It fails on missions, it fails on finding the Pay and Spray shop there, and it fails when trying to get to the first batch of missions. If Prima was putting three dimensional depictions of some of the static dungeons in their crappy Daggerfall hint books six years ago, then a game in 2002 trying to have a map feature in a 3D world needs to at least implement the same.

• Way too many timed missions, and the times are impossible to nail on the first try. Oh, this creates replayability, does it? No, no, no! You stupid sons of bitches, that is NOT replayability! Replayability is "Hm, I got Leonardo's Workshop first on a big continent, I wonder if I could do it on an island?" or "I lost three guys using these tactics last time, I'll mix things up next time the aliens attack" and so forth. It's not just playing the same frigging scene over and over again.

• It constantly uses player death to "teach" you how to play through missions. This is Video Game Design 101 here, but it's apparently lost on Rockstar. 

• You officially need three hands to play this. As the game does not move the camera when you are on foot, and as the controls suck when attempting to move around a car on something other than a gamepad, you need to have the mouse and keyboard available when on foot and go back to a gamepad while in a car. How there's not an option for the camera to assume THE SAME FREAKING VIEW ON FOOT AS IT DOES IN A CAR is just beyond me. They went out of their way to fuck this up. It's the only explanation. 

And, the horrible truth is... does any of the above matter, either? No. No... it really doesn't. Rockstar and Take Two made a mint on this game. If you have a Playstation II you have been practically issued a copy of it. The next one, exclusive-deals aside, will eventually come out for all the consoles and onto the PC. And because it has been so brazenly cock-polished by just about every "independent" game review site out there, the PC version will be just as bad a console port as this one is. It's sad commentary on the state of PC game reviews that GTA3 -- as incredibly frustrating as it is, and how indefensible the decision to ship without a multiplayer component and without save-anywhere support is -- has been getting nothing but one accolade after another. There are some fun parts here, definitely, which no doubt appeal to the clapping, feces-hurling monkey part of all of our brains, but the negatives do not nearly outweigh the positives. Not nearly. This game, aside from the beauty of its graphical engine and how it did at the retail level, should be considered a failure of modern gaming. The fact that it won't is pretty goddamn sad. 

Post a comment in the BBS.