Amazon.com: Grand Theft Auto III: Playstation 2: Video Games

1,221 Reviews

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4.7 out of 5 stars (1,221 customer reviews)

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78 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece - witty, fun, and incredibly well thought out, November 4, 2001

By	RaabH "Rob" (USA) - See all my reviews

This game is outstanding in so many ways that it is difficult to know where to begin. It will give you hours (no, make that days, possibly MONTHS) of enjoyment.

Some of its more brilliant touches:
(1) You can choose to pursue the "story mode" missions or simply explore the vast cityscape, stealing cars and committing random crimes.
(2) You can leave story mode at any time and start exploring, then return to story mode whenever you're ready (or when you've increased your driving and police-eluding skills).
(3) Liberty City is gorgeously designed, with incredible detail and realistic layout and architecture. True professionals were at work here, coming up with a city as real as any you've ever seen in real life. (How interesting it would have been to set this game in an actual city!)
(4) The vast array of vehicles available to the player is almost endless. Probably due to the violent nature of the game, actual car makes and models are not given but any auto fan will recognize the ones that are depicted here. You can drive many other things besides cars -- such as buses, firetrucks, boats, ambulances, taxis, and of course, police cars.
(5) If you capture a "public servant" vehicle such as a police car, ambulance, or fire truck then the game offers you the opportunity for mini side missions, such as doing away with other criminals (as a vigilante cop), taking wounded people to the hospital (as a parametic), or putting out fires.
(6) The weapons you get are hilarious and fun -- nothing feels quite as good as using a bazooka to shoot that police helicopter out of the sky after it has been following you around the city, shining its spotlight and shooting you. :-)
(7) The missions are varied and sometimes very involved -- everything from delivering girls to the policeman's ball to eliminating your boss's rival to busting somebody out of jail.
(8) Bonus details abound. One of my favorites is the chance to drive a little toy car around on a side mission to blow up the cars of mobsters.
(9) The game has an easy-to-use status display that lets you know how much money you're making through your criminal exploits as well as how badly the cops want to catch you and how much health you have left. (The more "wanted" you are, the more insanely the cops try to catch you.) There is also a much more detailed status screen that you can pause the game to view at any time. This lets you know your "criminal rating" and your other stats.

(10) You can't really die or be permanently jailed! If you get down to zero health you merely end up at the hospital, 100% yourself again and with just a little less money due to the doctor bill. Similarly, if you get busted you merely "bribe" the cops to get free again. (Which is weird when in many cases you've been arrested for killing the police who have chased you. I don't think real cops would be open to bribes after that.)
(11) The cut scenes are clear, concise, and well directed.

(12) There are some very adult "hidden features" that make you laugh and marvel at the same time.
(13) The game actually rewards you for wrecking your own car and other people's cars, as well as for completing wild stunts while driving. You aren't MEANT to be careful, which feels good.
(14) The learning curve is very quick -- within a few minutes the game has tutored you on how to get around, and it prompts you whenever you need its advice or reminders later.

The team that planned and completed GTA 3 should be congratulated for a superb achievement. This is the absolute best PS2 game I've ever bought. Be warned, it is definitely for mature audiences -- there is no moral code among thieves in Liberty City, that's for sure. :-) For replay value alone GTA 3 is also a bargain -- I'm sure every player will be discovering new details about Liberty City for weeks and weeks.

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55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 50 things u can do in GTA3, January 4, 2002

By	John Bell (Larchmont, NY USA) - See all my reviews

1. steal over 60 different kinds of cars
2. run over people with your car
3. make time with prostitutes
4. do insane stunts for $
5. rob people on the street for their $
6. get the cops on your back
7. change your license plate & paint your car to fool the cops
8. earn money as a taxi driver
9. Put out fires in a firetruck.
10. Bust bad guys in a cop car.
11. get people to safety in an ambulence
12. buy guns or beat people up who have them
13. take a boat ride in the "reefer" or "speeder"
14. listen to 10 different radio stations with over 30 min of different music/commericals
15. take the subway around Liberty City
16. steal an airplane at the airport
17. take a train ride
18. enter a car race and get money
19. honk your horn at people so they get out of your way
20. kill people for large sums of money
21. find hidden packages
22. ram into cars for money
23. put a bomb in your car and make it blow up
24. snipe people off the roofs of buildings
25. receive beeper messages giving important info
26. smack people with a baseball bat in the park
27. make distractions for others to bomb things
28. improve your criminal rating.
29. pick up hoes in your car.
30. deliver drugs from place to place.
31. watch detailed cinema scenes with excellent voiceovers.
32. feel the vibration from crashing into things
33. do slaughter missions by killing large amounts of people in a certain amount of time.
34. help people rob banks
35. get negative comments from numerous types of people
36. save your data at your home and a certain car along with it
37. use a GPS map to help get your way around the large islands.
38. Get the LCPD(Liberty City Police Department), FBI, Swat team, and even the army on your case for your actions.
39. explore sound options and the brightness of screen.
40. run from the cops or just walk casually.
41. have lock-on aim or zoom in on your enemy.
42. get randomly placed heatlh, armor, and wanted level items scattered around the neighborhood.
43. loose $ by dying, failing a mission, or getting killed by the cops.
44. take a car to the crusher
45. blow up a boat with a bazooka.
46. complete several missions with no importance of order in which they are completed.
47. collect pornography magazines for El Borro.
48. Find secret passages and hidden alleys.
49. experience different weather climates, night and day, and base missions on the times.
50. Have endless hours of fun.

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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything I love in a game and more..., November 12, 2001

By	"cclaya" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

If you've read any of my other reviews, you know what a huge Driver fan I am. Grand Theft Auto 3 has supplanted Driver as my all-time favorite game. Exploration and freedom of action have always been things I hunger for in a game, and the more immersive the environment, the better. Without my even having really expected it to, GTA3 has surpassed my most fevered dreams of the ultimate interactive experience.

Liberty City is one of the worst places in America, according to the game's literature, and GTA3's designers pulled no punches in depicting this seedy sewer of a metropolis in decay. It may come as a surprise to a lot of gamers that the designers of the game are British, and after playing GTA3 for a few hours, it's easy to appreciate the twisted and sarcastic view of American crime culture that inspired this game.

In this fictional and fully realized world, the player can do almost anything his darker nature inspires, including random and pre-meditated murder, vehicular manslaughter, grand theft auto (of course), armed robbery, assault and battery, and red-light running. The only restrictions involve actually entering structures, although there are a few for which this is possible as required by the game's plot. There are subways, trains, cars (lots of these), boats, planes and of course the freedom to jog anywhere you would be able to in real life. The streets are jammed with other people and cars, some just bystanders and some real bad guys (and girls). There are bridges and bays, a couple of ammo shops, a men's room in a park, a tunnel, and lots of guns. This is the closest thing to a real living city I have ever seen in a video game.

The main part of the game itself is mission-based and plot-driven, similar to that in Driver, but so much better thought-out. The variety of missions is wonderful and keeps the player interested in the plot. The mission structure is mostly non-linear, so if one boss asks you to do something and you don't feel like doing it right away, you can get a different job from another boss and come back to the first one later. Of course, some missions must be completed to advance the plot, but many are simply there to add spice to the game.

What if you don't feel like playing a mission? No problem. Just hop in a car, boat, taxi, police car, truck, ambulance, firetruck and so on, and hit the road. Running around aimlessly is fun, too. You can busy yourself looking for all 100 hidden packages, hitting strategically placed ramps to get a stunt bonus, taking patients to the hospital in an ambulance, being a taxi driver, running down dangerous criminals in a cop car, putting out fires in a firetruck, beating people to death and stealing their cash, stealing specific types of cars and delivering them to a warehouse for money, blowing up gang-members' cars with a radio-controlled bomb, sniping innocent victims from the safety of a high rooftop, making yourself wanted and then running from the police, or just looking around.

There's a lot to see. Just walking down one of Liberty City's streets will expose you to all kinds of seedy elements. Gang toughs will threaten and chase you if provoked, prostitutes will proposition you, drunks will mumble at you, drivers will shout expletives at you, crimes and car accidents will occur as you witness them, and, if you've made the wrong people mad, people will shoot at you.

Or you could just marvel at the detail that went into the city's design. Buildings are lifelike and architecturally interesting, there are landmarks and parking lots, college campuses and warehouses. There is a construction site that I swear has actually progressed in completion as the game days increase. There are parking garages and shopping malls and an airport.

GTA3 is definitely for adults only. I'm sure that most people would not have to be told this given my description of the shenanigans going on, but some people just don't read. Pay attention to that big M on the cover-it's well-deserved in this case.

This game is an escapist's dream come true-it is an immersive interactive experience like none other. If you are like me and liked nothing more than just cruising around the cities in Driver, you will find Liberty City an interactive envirnment that will never bore you.