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It Was Like Playing a Video Game for the First Time

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 34 / 38
Date: February 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Grand Theft Auto 3 (GTA3) is being released for PC after much speculation that it might not. I am in line for my copy.

As it is not on PC yet, I played the Playstation 2 (PS2) version. Not knowing anything about this game, I picked up the control expecting to play some kind of racing game. And then...

I am standing on a bridge in a prison jump suit. My buddy, who is shot, is climbing into a car before me. He tells me to drive, he "Knows a guy" who can help us.

Without pause, I climb into the car and I am driving. I can go anywhere in this city! I can stop ANYWHERE in this city and get out of my car. I can car-jack anyone's car I want. (Some are junk, some are hotrods and some are fire-trucks!)

I could choose to work my way up the ranks of the mob. Or, I could just choose to go around town and cause trouble! It was like playing a video game for the first time. All I wanted to do was explore this rich world and story-line.

And that is exactly what I plan to do when I get my PC Version. I highly recomend this GTA3 for adult gamers.

If you are a parent, be aware, this game contains very mature subject matter. Including the ability to pick-up ladies of the evening. Nothing graphic, mind you, but the car does rock back and forth as your money disappears.

Destined to be a legend!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 37 / 44
Date: June 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'm 42 years old and really hesitated about buying a game that looked like it was designed by punks for punks. After several fascinating hours of wholly immersive gameplay however, I am so glad I put my preconceptions aside and bought this game. Or should I say 'city simulator'? GTA 3 breaks away from the first two in the series by going with a true 3-D first and third-person design. There's many camera angles that you can choose from on the fly. Drive cars, boats, and even planes, or just walk around enjoying the fantastic sights and sounds. This ambitious and extremely well-executed simulator was originally designed for a console, but the PC version is much better, with ultra-high resolution graphics, no loading once you're in the game, and removal of barriers that were in the console version. I'm still on the first of three islands. I haven't yet discovered how to get to the other two, but discovery is part of the fun here, and my anticipation is half the fun. You can accept missions from a variety of sources, or you can simply run (and drive) freely, experiencing the little dramas unfolding around you throughout the city and even taking part in these little dramas if you choose. The possibilies are endless and it's this free-form design that is what pushes this game way beyond any other. It combines the very best elements of games like 'Carmageddon', 'Thief', and yes, even 'The Sims' of all things. Beware however, there are adult themes here without doubt. Controls are super-easy and easy to customise to your liking. The game is easy to play, and easier to lose yourself in. There's practically no learning curve. By far, easily the best game I've bought in the last year, and I buy many. Every time you steal a car, you'll find there's different radio stations to choose from, with all different kinds of music, advertisements, and talk shows going on. You can switch between them or shut them off entirely. This adds a huge amount of atmosphere to the game, and you can even customize the game by importing your own MP3s to the game files! A note to the developers: In the add-on pack, please include a couple more CDs of this great radio stuff!

However, it has to be said that a 32 meg video card is the very absolute minimum you should have to run this. I've tried it on several of my systems, and on my PII 450 with a 16 meg TNT 1 card and 256 megs system ram, it ran, but very slowly; hardly playable on that system. On my self-built 1.2 ghz. Athlon with a 32 meg GeForce 2 card and 256 megs ram, the game ran fairly well at 640 X 480 and it was indeed playable with options turned down, but it became clear to me that a video card upgrade was needed. So yes, I did purchase a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 with 128 megs video ram just to play this game. And I don't regret it. I can now run the game (and all my other new games) at 1280 X 1024 with all options maxed, and it's super smooth.

Simply put, this game is very graphically intense and there's a living city with lots of pedestrians and cars and buildings and scenery to render, all of it accessible to you with no loading times, so a great video card is crucial! Your computer's CPU is also important, but not as important as your video card. I'm thinking a PIII 600 with a 32 meg video card is minumum, and that same processor with a 64 meg video card will make a dramatic difference in your enjoyment level. I've played this game roughly 10 hours thus far, and haven't yet encountered a single bug, crash, or lock-up. This game is destined to be a classic and I'm looking forward to whatever add-on packs or sequels come along.

The Tale of the Many Hours

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 32 / 51
Date: April 30, 2002
Author: Amazon User

GRAND THEFT AUTO 3 may be considered the best game of this century!! If you've played the PS2 version, you'll know why. Sure there's a lot of violence, thievery, and destruction but hey..wouldn't you want to take a car and just run people over(not in real life)?
You may wonder.....whats its big secret in making it the #1 selling game on the consoles right now?
Well the answer is simple. This game comes with things you always wished to do in life but never had the guts.

BEING A MOBSTER AND CAUSING COMPLETE MAYHEM ON EVERYONE!!

You still haven't gotten a good idea from this review yet but here is my personal review of the game.
GRAPHICS-5 stars
How many games do you know give you such great graphic in such a large world to explore than GTA3? If you've ever played GTA2, you'll notice that the maps are TREMENDOUSLY large if your walking on foot and even in a car. I recommend you test out GTA2 before playing GTA3.
SOUNDS- 5 stars
The sound is amazing, PS2 or PC, there are sounds from almost every possible thing! Think of being a taxi driver in Manhattan and hearing all the chaos and noise going on downtown!
GAMEPLAY- 5 stars
This game will keep you at the edge of your chair, floor, sofa, whatever your playing on! You'll be so into the game that you'd probably wouldn't move ...for hours!
REPLAY- 5 stars
Most people will take this game and worship it for months to come by. The replay is very high since you never know what to expect in each play.

I don't want to ruin everything so I'll give you a brief summary.
GTA3 is a mobster game where you run around, drive a car, kill many people, run or kill cops, make money, find prostitutes, jump off buildings and ramps, complete missions, and spent many hours!

great!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: December 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Now this is one addictive game. I recommend buying a strategy guide first. This is a game of many hidden pleasures. On the pc version, you can even create your own radio station by adding MP3's to a special file included on the disk. However, you need a FAST computer to play this - I have a Pentium 4 1.5 gigs with 640 megs of ram and a 64 meg Radeon card, and it still slows down, usually when multiple cops are chasing me.

If you've ever dreamed of being a sociopath on the rampage, this is for you. You can steal cars, drive over or shoot innocent civilians, play one gang of off another and blast police helicopters from the sky. You don't even need to complete the boss missions, although they're a lot of run also. The police are relentless and aggressive and won't go away simply if you kill a lot of them. Also Liberty City itself is a wonder - an enormous New York/Chicago hybrid with recognizable, distinct neighborhoods and landmarks. For fun you can simply drive around for hours, running over civilians and avoiding cops.

For the PC version, buy a joystick. You'll need it. Also the radio stations are great - you have a choice among rap, 80s pop, rave, reggae, classical, talk and modern pop, complete with annoying DJ's and commercials. If you get tired of the stations (there are about 3 hours of music here) you can create you own station with MP3s. I've never seen a game where the player can create his own soundtrack.

Now there's no multiplayer, but that's not a huge drawback.

An Instant Classic

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 17
Date: May 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PC is a nearly direct port of the PS2 vesion. This doesnt make it any worse of a game, but of course it doesn't make it any better. People who have bought into the hype of the TV commercials and rave reviews may be initially let down. Minor hardware problems may show up even if your system meets the requirments. However, as the amazing world that is Liberty City slowly shines through the fog, even the games strongest critics will be blown away. As the nameless main character you may complete up to 73 missions within 3 gigantic sections that could be games of their own. The freedom to do whatever you want while you're not trying to survive the increasingly difficult storyline is what really makes GTA3 great. No game to date has allowed players to cause this much mayhem. The sound is perfect. Its truly a pleasure to find a game with such fantastic voice acting. The graphics may leave some wanting more. The detail is amazing but the textures are sometimes blocky. The display settings are adjustable and some tweaking may be needed based on personal preference. Overall GTA3 is truly an instant classic. The replay value is tremendous and the game is well worth its price.

I've never broken more laws!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: June 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

For anyone who hasnt played this game, it's the best. Whether you play the missions through or just cruise around beating the crap out of strangers and stealing their nice cars, this game will hook you. I can lose 5 hours with GTA3 and not know the difference. Once you get a mental layout of the city, you can make short work of the missions. The main idea of the game is to break the law. You are an escaped ex-con liberated from an armored prison transport by the Yazuka clan, who are interested in another of your fellow inmates. What luck! From this point on you can follow the missions by doing petty jobs like driving a prostitute to her man, progressing on to becoming a hitman and whatnot, or you can just cruise Portland, the lower-class industrial gang area of Liberty City. Complete missions and you can progress to Staunton Island, the more middle-class, commercial area. Do well enough here and you're off to Shoreside Vale. The interesting thing about GTA3 is that it is very loosly based on NYC. But you can see the resemblence when you play the game: Portland=Queens, Staunton=Manhattan, Shoreside=Jersey. The thing that makes GTA3 so different that it gets its own gaming category is that you never, ever have to do anything. If you don't feel like doing a mission right now, you don't have to. Just go mug some rich people over on Shoreside. You also have 12 weapons and over 50 cars at your disposal. Each car also has several mods, and there are also gang cars (Diablo Stallions, Yazuka Stingers, Cartel Crusers) and emergency cars (firetrucks, enforcers, ambulances). The game has many surprise twists and has a viable plot along with the free-feeling liberty to beat the crap out of that annoying dude who walks down the street saying "in the navy" over and over. Theres even radio stations that continuoulsy play music for your driving pleasure. The new computer version also has much better graphics and and sound, and you can listen to your mp3's on your computer rather than always listening to the same stations.

Finally on the PC and i'm PO'D!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 20
Date: May 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

God i wish i wasn't mad at this game right now. I picked my pc copy up yesterday after work and couldn't wait. After patching it to work with XP, I started off on my life of crime. To my surprise that game doesn't run well for some reason. I've got a 1.6 ghz pentium 3, 256 mb ram, geforce2 32mb, and defragged my hard drive and still can't get the game to run smooth over 640x480x16. i did all the speed recommendations and it's playable now most of the time. Hopefully they'll release a patch soon as the only problem i could think of would be something to do with windows xp. I still give it 4 stars because i've played it and love it but i'm just a little sore right now. But damn is this game fun. I saw a guy mug a "lady" while driving so i chased him down, did a driveby, took his money, and went back for a little R&R with my new lady friend. This game is gorgeous, deep, funny, inventive, and most importantly open. There's so much to do and so many places to go, by the time you get tired of this game, gta4 will be out and that ain't gonna be for a while. So pick it up, dish out some pain, and have a ball but please, pray for a patch, pray for me....

Greatest Game EVER

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 16
Date: February 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have always dreamed of the GTA series going 3D. With GTA3, a whole new era of gaming has come of age. As far as I know of, this is the only game that goes from on-foot gameplay to driving without reloading a new interface. This game provides a storyline (unlike other GTA games), and the classic GTA unlimited continued gameplay. It also includes new taxi, paramedic, firetruck, and vigilante missions. These allow you to still get goals to preform long after all the main storyline missions have been completed.
Not sure if it would come out for PC, (and knowing my current PC would never run it,) I bought a PS2 largely for this game (and for the PS2's other perks, like MGS2, Final Fantasy X, etc.), and have not regretted it. Maybe the PC version could add new things, like the ability to make new cars, character skins, etc., which would be great. One thing is for sure, it is going to be worth every penny.

Absolutely Amazing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 15
Date: June 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Grand Theft Auto III is unlike any computer game I've ever played. I can't tell you how amazing it is to get to do what you want, when you want in a game. Feel like playing just the main missions? No problem. Want to make a little extra cash between missions by putting out fires, busting other criminals or driving a cab? No problem. Want to just drive around the massive city wreaking havoc and seeing how long you can get by with it? No problem. It's games like this that show the possibility of what gamemakers can do when they think "outside the box."

There are hundreds of hours of gameplay in Grand Theft Auto III. And chances are, you'll want to go back and play various missions through again because many missions can be done in different ways.

The voice acting is superb and the overall sound is also excellent. The radio stations that every car plays are hilarious. The PC version allows you to place MP3 and/or WAV files into the game, so that you can have your own radio station to listen to as you drive around.

Graphically, the game is nothing special. It looks good, but it's not going to win any awards. It's hard to complain, however, when the game world is so large. Liberty City, where you play, is broken up into three distinct parts. The developers had to draw the line somewhere! But, I'll take amazing gameplay over amazing graphics any day.

A couple notes of caution, however. First, this isn't a game for the children in your house. There's something about drive-by shootings, hooking up with prostitutes and lobbing Molotav cocktails into city parks that isn't really appropriate for younger kids. Frankly, I'm not sure a lot of adults would like that either, HOWEVER, the game does it in an over-the-top comical way, so while it can be a bit graphic at times, it's not realistically graphic.

System requirements can be quite steep, too. The required and recommended specs won't get things running with all the bells and whistles turned up, though that may not bother you. I'm running an Athlon XP 2000+ CPU. That works wonders on loads, but my GeForce 2 MX 400 card is going to need to be upgraded to get this game running without really choppy framerates in some parts of the city at 800x600 resolution.

Bottom line....If you have the ability to run the game, you'll enjoy it if for no other reason than the incredible gameplay.

WOAH, GOOD GAME TO THE EXTREME

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: June 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This, has got to be one of the best games I have ever played IN MY LIFE! I would give it 5.5 stars if i could. The graphics, plot, game play, sound, heck even the voice acting in the cut scenes is EXTRAORDINARY! This is a must have for ANY PC gamer. You can just sit an play this game for hours on end. And then you will wonder where all the time went. If you do all of the missions, you are only 70% finished. THAT MEANS THAT 30% of the GAME IS EXTRA WAY COOL FAR OUT STUFF?! BUY THIS NOW! BEFORE IT GETS TAKEN FROM THE SHELVES FOR VIOLENCE!

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