Grand Theft Auto III

Other products by 2K Games

Product Features

• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Genre: Action/Adventure

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005O0I2
• Item Weight: 5.4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1,218 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,819 in Video Games (See Bestsellers in Video Games)

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  Video Games > PlayStation 2 > Racing & Flying

• This is item 4 in The Grand Theft Auto Game Series.

Product Description

Platform: Playstation 2

Amazon.com Review
With Grand Theft Auto III, Rockstar proves that not all developers are concerned with toning down the violence in their games. This sequel is even more bloody, violent, and sadistic than its popular predecessors, offering up an enormous 3-D city in which nearly any criminal act is possible. Players are free to steal cars, beat up the local population for their money (or weapons), make time with prostitutes, or simply roam to their heart's content. Those seeking more structure can embark on dozens of plot-driven missions or steal cars that let them play minigames. Nab a cop car and you can go on vigilante missions. Grab a cab and you can play a deadly version of Crazy Taxi. Take a fire truck and you can earn money putting out fires. The game just never gets boring.

As in real life, there are consequences for your criminality. As your random acts of mayhem mount up, the police start hounding you, eventually calling in SWAT trucks, the FBI, and even the army if you continue down the path of destruction. Shaking these pursuers is easily the most fun part of the game, especially when a bunch of friends are packed in the room to witness your narrow escapes.

Grand Theft Auto III is fine-tuned to near perfection in every category. All the vehicles, from slick sports cars to lumbering dump trucks, handle exactly as you'd expect and smash apart realistically when abused. The three islands in the game are rendered in terrific detail considering their size, and are packed with traffic, pedestrians, and hidden jumps. The audio is equally amazing. Pedestrians talk, cops scream at you, and you can tune in nine different radio stations whenever you are in a car. It all adds up to a monumental achievement: the rare console game for adults that manages to get everything right. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• Offers an enormous world for players to exploit, rendered in staggering detail
• Equally fun whether you go on plot-based missions or run around as a freelance crook

Cons:

• Ultraviolence, foul language, and adult situations mean you'll want to keep this far away from kids
• It takes too long to get from one island to another, making some missions tedious

Product Description
Grand Theft Auto 3 has you in a new adventure in the seedy underworld of Liberty City! Avoid damage and bad weather to get away clean, or else!

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 82 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.

52 of 55 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.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Attention to Every Detail, November 11, 2001

By	Jordan Reed "anomiechaos" (San Leandro, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Rockstar did a fantastic job paying attention to all the minute details of this game. Grand Theft Auto III goes a long way to show off what the PlayStation 2 is capable of. They have generated a giant city and paid close attention to all the little details involved including the way cars show signs of damage, leaving of bloody footprints while running away from recent victims, radio stations in the car with chatty DJs, the ability to steal boats, and you can even see your character shift gears when he steals a manual convertible. Rockstar obviously spent a lot of time adding many unnecessary and brilliant touches to the game. This game is quite mature. There's a lot of often bloody violence, plenty of adult language, and great amounts of sexual innuendo. Keep away from children!

The basic premise of the game is similar to earlier versions. You're a criminal mercenary who'll sell your services to the various gang bosses for money. Yet, unlike the previous Grand Theft Auto games, this one has a consistent and progressing story line. You start by helping out those that busted you from jail, but once they betray you it's time to start doing work for their enemies.

Your actions come with consequences. Hits against the gangs will make them start shooting at you the moment they see you. Often I'd be driving in the game and just start hearing random gunshots. A quick look at the map would show me that I was on turf controlled by a gang I'd upset one too many times. Far more entertaining, hits against the cops will get the man on your back. There's a police response indicator that goes from cops just trying to pull you over to the military calling martial law on the city to hunt you down.

If you need to round up some extra cash in the game, there are four sub-games to help you do it. Steal a cop car and go on a vigilante run. Steal a taxi and you're playing Crazy Taxi. Steal an ambulance and get people to the ER. Steal a fire truck and put out fires.

The handling in the game is amazing. Every car handles differently and just how you would expect. There are fast sports cars, top heavy mini-vans, dump trucks, buses and even boats. They all have a different feel for handling, fish tailing, and breaking with either the normal breaks or parking break. Different types of cars have horns, sirens, even the ice cream truck can play its wonderful music for you. This game easily could have just been a racing game and done well for itself.

One of the PS2's biggest problems is load times, but GTA3 does a superb job of avoiding them. You'll here the game loading almost continuously in the background for cars, terrain, people and all the amazing features, but very rarely will the game actually pause to do a load. Based on the incredibly detail of the game, it's great that they avoided almost any pauses for loading.

There are a few places I could see some improvement, but they are mostly just minor polishing issues. The game cheats from time to time. I once pushed a villain's car over a cliff into the ocean, only to find it re-appeared slightly down the streets. Your car can become quite flammable on certain missions they want you to do on foot. The cop's AI takes no account for personal safety when they're hunting you down as the blindly crash into each other and innocents while trying to get you. Cars tend to crash into each other a lot, and I especially like turning on a siren on a bridge and watching them drive off the sides in an attempt to pull over.

Replay value is amazingly high for a story based game! Even when you finish the story line, you'll want to improve your "insane stunt" high scores and continue to play with the various sub games in the emergency vehicles. Trying to take down as many cops before they get you is also incredibly fun, even if it doesn't advance you at all.

My final recommendation is if you're a mature audience, this game is a must.

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