Grand Theft Auto III (2001)

Finished it one year ago as I started going through all the relevant games in the series in anticipation of GTA 6. Never played it before, so without any blinding nostalgia I would say this is more probably a 3 star experience in 2025, but had to give it +1 for being the game that would transform GTA in the behemoth that is today.

Also, loved the "Scarface" soundtrack from Flashback FM.

Played for the first time in 2025. the definitive edition, I don't know, aside from graphics overhaul, how much improved it is compared to the original.

But, it aged good and this is the real revolutionary one. The map is live, dense and packed. So many assets and things happening at the same time, especially if you get 6 stars.

To be able to pack that in 2001, in the PS2 infancy, it's jaw breaking.

I hold VC, the only one I had played before (in 2006) fond in my memory; but praise needs to be given, GTA III is the best of the 3D universe, by far.

And I have no problem with Claude being mute/silence; I don't get the hate people throw on him. He is way better than the racist stereotype that is CJ.

GTA3 surprised me despite the fact that it was the first ever 3D GTA game and I've already played every single mainline GTA title that came out after.

Gameplay-wise everything is pretty simple - your typical chases and shootouts, with a bit of racing on top. A nice variety and you get to do pretty much everything the game system allows you. The story is a simple revenge crime plot with the character slowly climbing the criminal "career" ladder and exacting his revenge.

The overall tone is very morbid and cold. Most bosses that give you missions are scumbags. Some small and some very obvious hints at very disturbing details about your associates are dropped throughout the game: Sexual torture? Check. Necrophilia? check. Turning people into dog food and selling it? Check. Perhaps the worst thing is that you actually help a lot of them get away with their terrible crimes. And if they don't survive, then it certainly never feels like a divine retribution for their sins, just more death and suffering.

It is almost a cliche by now that in an open-world game a boss will give you a task only to betray you afterwards. That must have happened in every GTA, but in case of GTA3 the opposite happens. You are a true mercenary and you run from one faction to the next looking to find the best way to create chaos and maximize profit. You get to kill one of the bosses which in turn starts a gang war and until the end of the game no one actually learns of your backstabbing ways. Refreshing, but it reinforces this cold, nihilistic tone of the game.

Another shocking revelation for me was that the game is more violent than any future GTA title with people getting blown to pieces from an M16 burst. Legs and arms flying everywhere.

One of the quirks with GTA is that the tone of these games often doesn't gel with the story and the setting. You'd play as CJ in GTA: SA, who seems to be the most level-headed individual in the whole city, but the game allows you to become a mass murderer terrorist. Of course nobody's forcing you but sometimes people get in the way even when playing story missions. Nobody is adressing that nor should they since we all can separate gameplay from story.

In case of GTA 3 that isn't necessary. You play as Claude, a silent protagonist who is simply an extension of the player. He never hesitates no matter what the task is. Which makes it more fitting that if a few people would get caught in a crossfire, Claude wouln't really think much of it.

With GTA6 seemingly leaning into the maudlin with a love story, apparently a story of imprisonment, trying to stay away from crime etc., the gap between the plot and the brutal freeroam is going to widen even more and it actually makes sense. With higher fidelity, we expect more emotional, engaging stories and we treat characters differently. Running over a ridiculous caricature of an urban citizen shouting something silly in GTA 3 is one thing, doing the same with an almost photorealistic human in GTA6 is going to feel that much more visceral.

They're never going to make a game like GTA3 again precisely due to that fact. Pre-9/11 desensitivity to violence, new technology that allowed massive realistic urban environments for the first time, a medium that wanted to move away the idea of videogames being mere kids' toys. It created a game that still makes you feel icky to this day. R* themselves never really leaned as much into that with later GTA games, instead exploring the more disturbing ideas in Manhunt and Manhunt 2 but with a way lesser success.

TL;DR - The sequel that reimagines the series into a 3D open-world action game. And although it is beloved by many, it sadly does not age incredibly well due to clunky controls, a forgettable story, and a rather drab open world to explore. But nevertheless, the GTA series owes its success to this experimental third entry.

OPEN-WORLD ACTION - Follows Claude, a betrayed criminal seeking revenge on his ex-girlfriend Catalina while rising through Liberty City's chaotic underworld.

PROS:

++ Revolutionary. One of the most important games when it comes to the open-world genre. Even though I was too young to understand this game's importance, I still give it great praise for significantly improving the GTA formula. Being able to translate GTA 1 & 2's gameplay in a 3D environment is quite an incredible feat and for it to work as well as it does is worthy of praise.

++ Driving. The driving is still really fun. Some cars are meant to suck, and others are meant to accelerate fast and handle corners like a boss. Driving some of the more exotic cars was really fun and I really enjoyed weaving through traffic at high speeds and seeing how long I can go without hitting anything. I also found it amusing how the lightest hit can send your car flying. It led to some frustrating moments for sure, but also lots of funny moments.

++ Mini-map. Very simple addition, but very much appreciated. Although there is still no general map, a mini-map was a step in the right direction.

++ Map design. The world wasn't too big and was just the right size. By the end, I started to memorize how to get to certain places without even having to look at the mini-map. And for me, that's a sign of a well-designed world.

++ Police chases. Police chases are still chaotic and lots of fun! Trying to see how long you can survive while having a 6-star wanted level will never get boring.

CONS:

-- Clunky gunplay. Easily my least favourite part of the game. Aiming manually was next to impossible, and auto-aim was incredibly inconsistent and unreliable. There was next to no feedback if you were actually hitting the enemy. To make things worse, enemies hit hard and kill you in a few seconds, and they also have pin-point accuracy. They also just bull-rush you, leaving you no room to breathe. The most effective was to snipe enemies from afar, but even then, aiming in FPS was quite clunky. Near the end of the game, I started using cheats because it was starting to get annoying.

-- Drab city. Although I appreciated the map's layout, the overall atmosphere and visuals of the city is drab and forgettable. And it holds few memorable landmarks.

-- Voiceless protagonist. I really am not a fan of voiceless protagonists, and Claude is no exception. He has no character, no personality, and has seemingly no ambition beyond what he is being told to do. I'm really glad they changed this in future games.

-- Forgettable story. Because Claude lacked any charm and personality, the overall story was unengaging. No memorable characters, and just really didn't do too much for me.

-- Lack of checkpoints. I always try to play older games as intended, but I had to resort to save states for this game. Dying in a mission sets you all the way back, forcing you to drive to mission start and do it all over again. This was way too tedious, and I really missed the modern convenience of checkpoints.

-- Mission design. Like all Rockstar games, there is a lot of driving. But the driving is noticeably more tedious since there's no road banter or conversations when heading to a mission as is typical with future Rockstar games. This leads to a lot of "dead" time.

Grand theft auto 3 is a 2001 action and adventure game.DMA Desing, the game's producer, and Rockstar Games, who have taken over the distribution of the game, have done a great job.The story of the game is as follows.A character named Claude is betrayed during a bank robbery and ends up in prison.The gameplay is as follows.in this game consisting of 54 chapters, you are trying to complete the tasks.The music of the game is beautiful.The graphics of the game are not bad.My rating for the game: 10/10 (y) Good games to everyone 🙂

Feels very 'stripped down' compared to today's standards but the love and respect I hold for this game is seismic. It may have it's fair share of setbacks like awkward gun handling, limits on things the player can do, dreary setting, but it makes up for it with a excellent main story, awesome side content and interesting characters. A true gem that should be played at least once.

With rumors circulating that a remastered trilogy is coming to all consoles (including, YES!!!, the Nintendo Switch), I thought I would review this title, a game that blew me away in 2001 when I picked it up for the PS2.

While there were two other games before this one, this was the one that made GTA a legendary series. As someone who moved away from Nintendo consoles and got a PlayStation 2, I was shocked at how, shall I say, adult this game was. Hijacking cars, killing people in cold blood, drug use, sex... for someone used to family friendly Nintendo, it was a a definite change of scenery.

I think what I loved about this game was the freedom. Want to pursue missions? Go for it! Want to drive around like a maniac in a car, running over everything in your path? Why not! The world is your oyster, and while some of the game has aged, in 2001 it was amazing.

I'm very excited about the potential trilogy coming to the Switch. III, Vice City and San Andreas I feel are still the pinnacle of this series.

This Game is so old school, Very freaking Aggressive in a good way, very fast, very Hard, it's just Pure Enjoyment out of Crazy Gameplay and Crazier missions.

I had tons of fun playing the Main Missions of this game, Even more that San Andreas's Missions.

the world feels Alive and vibrant (Going to Aruba - You big Tough Yankee boy - It's no problem to kill you), The Sky box is so Relaxing, so Winter-y kind that makes you comfortable and the Radio helps too.

the Difficulty too, Gave this game a good challenge and Even with the aged design of some of these missions.

But the Peds models are Really Ugly especially in Cutscenes, The controls, the Driving, a lot of problems this game has. and while we're at it the Side missions feels like they're there just for the sake of content and it's annoying me so much, they could've done WAY better.

Rating: ★★★★ (Great)

An interesting game to look back at. Game's very simple overall, but still fun to play through.

Story's crude and hard to follow. Acting is eh... alright. People trust Claude too quickly. But I kinda like the fact you are a nobody. It provides a sense of no-urgency. Sandbox as much as you want.

Radio doesn't contain that many songs, thus it becomes repetitive quickly. Though the songs available are interesting. Many of them were produced by Rockstar Games, and they're actually good. Other songs are nice representatives of the state of music at the 2000s. Others are tributes to a certain movie soundtrack. A huge plus to the radio commercials and commentary (specially Chatterbox FM). I had good laughs. The satire is incredibly well written and doesn't feel dated at all.

There's a few design flaws here and there. For example, by the end of the game most areas are hard to navigate due to gangs being aggressive towards you. And why is that a big deal? Because side-missions, such as the paramedic one, become impossible to complete. Worse, some story missions disable other story missions, incapacitating your 100% completion if you don't follow things in a certain safe order.

I liked the side-missions and stunt jumps, but not the hidden packages [was that a way to sell magazines back in the day?].

Overall, a sandbox in its simplest form, positively.

My first attempt to play GTA III was in a weird backwards playthrough series I attempted...whereby I played the 3D GTA games in reverse order. I made it through 5, 4, 4 DLC, San Andreas, Vice City Stories, Vice City, Liberty City Stories and then gave up about five hours into GTA III. How did I make it so far and then fail at the last hurdle?

The answer is actually pretty straightforward. Each game I played was a tad more frustrating; each taking away features or polishes that to me felt necessary. By the time I got to 3 there was no cover, no way points, no swimming, no map in the pause menu and the cars explode and flip on a dime. Comparatively, it felt impossible.

Approaching the game now, having not played one of these in a while, it actually wasn’t that hard. Yes, some parts were teeth grindingly annoying; but mostly it was surprisingly fun. And this time, instead of seeing what this game lacked, I could focus on the things that really worked.

This was a classic because it laid the groundwork so solidly for this genre. And it is heaps of fun. The storytelling is pretty lame, but it’s early experimentation for Rockstar, and only tangential to this game as an experience. The missions are also in kind of a fascinating weird limbo where the developers were clearly still clinging onto some of the arcadey structure of the early games. In the end, it all works. The pretty goofy but surprisingly great soundtrack of original music tops it off as well.

I’ve gotta say, GTA 3, when viewed without skepticism, actually holds up!

Grand Theft Auto 3, for PC

Rating: 8.2/10; Great

Highly recommended for fans of GTA, though if you have not played any similar games you may want to play a later game instead of this one.

Grand Theft Auto 3 is a third person shooting and driving game which pretty much created the genre of “GTA clone”. The story is not bad, though it is nothing amazing. What is amazing is the ambiance and world building that make the game world seem like a real city with real people. Everything from the way random pedestrians and drivers act and speak to the in game radio stations, signs and places to visit. It is fairly common to see random npc behaviour cause vehicle accidents or crimes which can result in emergency vehicles being summoned.

The basic gameplay has you go around on foot with some simple running and jumping, and the ability to melee, shoot and get in and out of vehicles. The console version features an annoying control scheme where the character must first turn in the direction you want him to move, rather than sidestepping or backpedaling. Most guns also use an auto target lock system instead of allowing free aim. The PC version allows you to use the console movement and shooting control scheme, or one more typical of a shooter (which has no auto targeting). The shooting is poor though because only the sniper rifle and RPG allow precise single shots. For all other guns, you must hold down the shoot button and fire the gun as fast as possible because of the time delay between the normal stance and shooting stance before a shot is fired. This delay has a pretty good chance of getting you killed if you try and pick your shots or conserve ammo.

Where the game shines is with the driving. With multiple camera views to choose from, solid controls and different performance for different vehicles, the sheer act of driving around the city is tons of fun just by itself; regardless of whether or not you obey traffic laws. On top of this, you get high speed chases, vehicle combat, racing, jumps and other cool things to do with your vehicles. The open world nature also makes each play session and repeated mission attempts different, because traffic and pedestrians are random. Most missions allow you to bring whatever vehicle you want, or to switch to new vehicles you find, which can have tactical implication for the mission.

However despite how great the core gameplay is, there are a number of minor issues that bring the game down. The most annoying part of the game is how rival gangs become hostile and their randomly and infinitely respawning members on the street shoot at you the instant they see you, regardless of what you are doing or driving. They must have magic or something. This is not a huge deal by itself, but when they have shotguns you will be faced with many sudden and random deaths. You see, for some reason shotguns are comparable to other guns when damaging people, but they can VERY quickly destroy vehicles. It is more like a mini RPG launcher. I find it hard to believe that this made it past quality control as something that is acceptable and fun for a game.

There are several other poor design decisions that make the game less fun. The lack of a map in the pause menu makes it very obnoxious to get around. Even when I was near the end of the game and I knew my way around fairly well, sometimes I still had to drive around for a couple minutes to figure out where exactly I was and wanted to go. It was especially annoying to have a timed objective and be unable to check a bigger map to see where it was. Also extremely annoying was the lack of map icons for ammunition, pay n spray and other useful things (unless going there was needed for a mission). This made it harder than necessary to do routine things (like get more ammo) and is made even worse by the fact that the map icons exist in the game, but are just not used.

Despite its flaws, this is an amazing game which is well worth every hour played, even if those hours are spent just running or driving around rather than doing any structured activities.

Pro

• Fairly good story and dialogue
• Very immersive world with npc dialogue, activity, behaviour etc. Plenty of interesting things to observe simply by standing around and watching the world
• Option to use WSAD style movement (where left and right strafe, and back backpedals), or console GTA style movement (where you first turn in the direction you want to go)
• Good driving, with solid controls, variable performance for each vehicle and surface
• Vehicles display damage, and based on where the damage occurred
• Game does not end
• Large variety of things to do besides story missions
• Decent enemy AI, especially when they are driving

Con

• Jumping over things (like walls) is harder than it should be
• Cannot change weapons while game is paused (it often takes too long to select the weapon you want), which is made worse by…
• Inability to run with most weapons, and only the weakest allow running
• No reloading until the current clip is empty
• Bad shooting (except sniper rifle and rpg), where there is such a delay between pressing the shoot button and the guy shooting that you have to hold down the button and fire full auto all the time (or semi auto as fast as possible for guns which are not full auto)
• No ability to melee with guns (especially noticeable when random pedestrians start punching you during a rocket launcher rampage)
• Grenades/molotovs cannot be aimed and are thus very difficult to throw. Also very high chance of hurting yourself
• Hostile gang members that infinitely respawn and shoot at you regardless of what you are doing. The ones with shotguns are extremely overpowered and WAY too easily destroy vehicles
• Some activities (mainly paramedic) end if you get out of the vehicle. I did accidentally press “f” to exit the vehicle on paramedic level 11
• Many missions and activities have unforgiving time limits. While I like the pressure to drive both fast and safely, some of the time limits are way too short
• One mission about following a trail of porn magazines which has such a bad time limit that I finished it with 1 second remaining after 10+ attempts
• Collectables and minor missions do not show up on the map. It is too hard to find them and keep track of what you have done
• No large map in game (which makes it obnoxiously difficult to find things and get around)
• Map icons are only occasionally present during some missions. Things like the safe house, pay n spray, ammo store, hospitals, police stations etc should always show on the map
• Mini map automatically changes zoom based on how fast you are going. Given the lack of main map, I would want max zoomed out all the time
• Third island is poorly designed. Why is there no shortcut leading from the airport area to the safe house area?
• Can’t swim (you drown instead)
• Can only save at safe houses
• People cannot take damage while inside a car (no shooting people through windows)
• Money is not used for much, and you can use other means to get armor and weapons. Money is more like a score
• Police attention is extremely unrealistic. Things like speeding, driving on the wrong side or sidewalk, ignoring stop signs and traffic lights, accidents, and killing people with vehicles do not get attention (you have to kill a lot of people). Killing someone with a gun, accident with police vehicle, assaulting police and stealing police vehicles only give minor attention. These things should give more police attention to make the game more challenging and encourage legal driving for important missions. Driving a tank should give automatic max police attention
• Cannot replay missions
• Escort mission where the ally driver got stuck in an alley and I had to kill him and try again

I first played this game on PS2 back in the day, though my cousin owned it. I did not play much of it, but I liked it enough to go buy Vice City. For some reason back then I never thought to actually get this game until recently when I seen it cheap on steam.

My % completion is a little over 60% and I do not feel like doing the rest because those activities are not much fun. I skipped the off road missions, taxi, some rampages, jumps and the civilian vehicle collections. I did paramedic, vigilante and hidden packages early on to give advantages for story missions. I am unusual in that I play GTA games in 1st person view for driving. My fav vehicle is the police car for its excellent balance of speed, acceleration, handling, durability and siren, though I also gravitated towards sports cars, fbi car, patriot, ambulance, fire truck and barracks truck. I mostly used the uzi (because you can run with it) and sniper rifle (because you can fight from far enough away not to worry about movement speed) I spent endless hours doing vigilante on Vice City for fun, and it is just as enjoyable in this game, being my favourite thing to do (I would honestly rather do vigilante over and over than max out my %). My fav radio stations are doublecleff and flashback; all the other stations have terrible music.

I didn't play GTA III (or any GTA game) until about two years ago. I had heard all of the stories about it, good and bad. I decided to finally see what all of the hype was about.

GTA III was one of the best games I had ever played -- from a guy who didn't play through until 2015.

I've played through most of the GTA games at this point, but GTA III still holds a special place in my heart. I love to fire it up and relive some of the good times.