There are lots of games I missed over the years, but in 2001 when Grand Theft Auto 3 landed on the Playstation 2, I was off in MMORPG land, playing Ultima Online, and not really paying attention to consoles anymore. Of course I heard about it from all sorts of media and from co-workers who were playing it, but I was too busy with UO and the fansite I had to take notice.
Not that third person open world traversal was all that new to me in gaming (Tail of the Sun on PS1), but the model was solidified with GTA 3. In its aftermath I enjoyed The Simpsons Hit and Run on the Gamecube and later Bully on the Wii before finally getting on board with Grand Theft Auto 4 in August of 2008 on my shiny new XBox 360.
With the long wait for GTA 6 supposedly ending later this year, I decided to go back to the roots of all this mayhem with Grand Theft Auto 3 The Definitive Edition and just try it out to see if it could hook me. I could have gotten the PS2 version and played it as it was released, but the Definitive Edition has multiple graphic, control, and interface improvements that reduced the frustration of missions that require multiple attempts. The icing on the cake was playing it on my PS5, with load times reduced to seconds.
The core story and gameplay are all intact and GTA 3 reminded me of how much I love the chaos that sometimes comes with these games. The physics of how cars handle takes getting used to as they seem to be lighter than they should be and even a low speed collision can have silly physics consequences.
The story is about what I expected with the glaring exception of the player’s character being mute. It works as a storytelling device as the cast of criminal underworld characters gets to shine with their demands. Cut scenes are all made from the in-game engine and the blocky characters are good for 2001. Whatever level of upgrade they did graphically kept the 2001 look but polished it up really well. Performance is quick and smooth.
The missions that make up the main story are varied, with some on strict time limits. Normally these time limit missions frustrate me, but GTA 3 is so well designed that all it took for most of them are repeated tries once one figures out what to do. One such tight-on-time mission required the player to take out a series of taco stands across all three islands in under nine minutes. It felt impossible at first, but once I realized that they are in the same location during every attempt, it was matter of memorizing those locations, figuring out the most efficient route, and then trying it a few times until I got it right.
Another great design standard established in GTA 3 is the balance between exploration and story progress. By that I mean, if the player follows the story missions, they are introduced to enough of the map to understand the basics of traversal across the three islands and the waterways between them. For explorers like me, the rewards were great enough to give the maps a little more scrutiny. Players can find spawns of health restoring hearts, essential body armor, weapons, and hidden packages by checking out incredibly well-designed map.
The hidden packages were fun enough that I spent a little more time searching for them, and the reward granted for every 10 recovered - a weapon spawn at one' s hideouts - was also worthwhile. I got to about 82 of them, and in the searching I got to to the hidden area in the screenshot above. Other side missions were fun to varying degrees but I did not delve too deep into them.
I had so much fun playing this landmark game over the last month, which is so well made that even the frustrating parts - mostly time limit missions - were manageable and even fun to repeat. Like real life, even when you plan every detail out, running a mission in Grand Theft Auto The Definitive Edition can go a lot of unexpected and crazy ways that are usually so chaotic and silly that one can't help but laugh.
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