There are some rules in life that playing Grand Theft Auto III will force you to reassess. Crime doesn't pay? Oh yes it does. We just battered some passer-by with a baseball bat, they went down in a crumpled heap, and loads of dollar pick-ups appeared. It was sweet. What goes around comes around? Horse dung. So far we've got the blood of at least 50 innocents on our hands and we've barely a scratch in return.
Grand Theft Auto is back, and playing it you'll feel like it's never been away. Violent, controversial, immoral and tons of fun. And this time everything is in glorious 3D.
THE CITY NEVER SLEEPS From the trashy '70s TV cop show opening credits, the scene is set. You are a low-life gangster in a city straight out of every US cop show you've ever seen. And this city is alive with pimps cussing their street girls, punks mugging suits for a few dollars, and gang members strutting as they patrol their turf.
And it's there for you to explore on foot and by car to your heart's content. Bump into people and they'll shout at you. Day turns to night in front of your very eyes and on the roads taxis search for business while police cars, ambulances and fire engines rush to scenes of disaster. Go anywhere, do anything – that's the story behind GTAIII. And for a good few hours you'll find yourself simply rushing round the place causing havoc with a manic grin on your face, like a pig just set loose in a large yard full of steaming crap.
CRUEL AND THE GANG Your goal is to rise to the top of the criminal pile, and to do this you'll need to get yourself in with some of Liberty City's crime bosses.
Each time you visit one of the gang's HQs, they'll give you a mission. From humble beginnings of escorting mafia molls and planting bombs in rival gang leaders' cars, you'll end up grenading Triad vans, tailing suspected snitches and roasting hordes of enemy hoods with a flame-thrower. Fail a mission and you just need to go back to the HQ to start it again. Die and you lose some cash and start back at the hospital. Get busted by the cops and you lose your weapons, get a fine and are placed at the nearest police station. It's impossible to actually 'lose'.
But when running errands for the gangs, it's hard to keep your mind on the job. There are loads of distractions. You're ferrying some gangster's woman over to a nightclub. You turn down an alley for a shortcut. That transit van looks interesting. You get in to check it out and suddenly one of the many mini-games is triggered. You've got three minutes and an unlimited supply of radio-controlled cars loaded with TNT to destroy as many mafia limos as you can. It seems like down every side street and back alley there's something new.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE GTAIII is bound to kick up a fuss in the papers, just like its predecessors did. You can batter women with baseball bats, mow down pedestrians, and machine-gun passing traffic, even though none of the above are likely to aid your progress.
And even when you're trying not to be bad, innocent people seem to die. You cut a corner just as a granny turns it, mashing her under your wheels. A three-point turn after going up a dead end results in four pedestrians losing their lives. And when it hots up with the law on your tail, poor Joe Public really takes a hammering. Mad car chases through crowded streets inevitably leave scores of bloody heaps in your wake.
You can play GTAIII for hours and still find new surprises. You can hijack fire-engines and then go round putting out fires. You can run fares in stolen taxis for some extra cash. There are shops to buy guns, shops to buy bombs, shops to re-spray your cars and car compactors to destroy incriminating vehicles. You'll be amazed they've crammed it all in. Of course there are niggles – the map is not as useful as it should have been, the police can get too easy to provoke and you can't actually go inside most of the buildings. But in the face of such a criminal masterpiece, these are but minor felonies that we'll let go with a caution.
Steve O'Hagan
// Overview
Verdict
Crazy Taxi meets Driver meets Syphon Filter in a dark alley. Brilliantly brutal.
You'll spend most of your time avoiding, fighting or legging it from the cops. As soon as they see you up to no good, your wanted rating will go up and the cops will be on you like flies on doggy-doo. Learning how to shake cops and reduce your wanted rating is the bread and butter of your time in Liberty City.
If the cops spot you committing one of your many crimes, it's time to shake 'em
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