Grand Theft Auto 3 PlayStation 2

If you thought Driver was fun on PlayStation, then you'll love Grand Theft Auto 3 on PlayStation 2. The first couple of Grand Theft Autos, were moderately fun; set with a 2D landscape with 3D object layered on top, the game encouraged the player to steal 2D cars, rip around a massive city landscape and earn money amoung other things. You would be given tasks to complete via telephones, or a beeper. Respectively the game was fun, but only because of the amount of freedom it gave the player, you could ram other cars, run people down, steal sports cars, and practically do it on hours. The actual story of the game wasn't important.

A manual that covers all the areas

With the third game, which is in fact the fourth not forgetting Grand Theft Auto: London, you are given a totally new perspective on this genre. What could be described as a revised version of Driver from PlayStation. Driver was a 3D game where you were given jobs and tasks all done through a nice set of CGI Footage. The game was more fun than GTA - it had destruction, cars and long roads - with ramps. You could do as much as you wanted and the story was pretty good too. Driver 2 allowed the player to get out of their car, as a result graphics turned to a worse state.

Grand Theft Auto 3 has returned to complete what was seen as a plain game, one where the cheats made it more fun, but this time gives a new 3D environment to play with. The game has also been developed with a much more important plot and theme, this gives you plenty to do, and involves a majority of killing itself. Liberty City is the place you are living, here you will find certain districts, which are controlled by mobs, gangsters, and the Police make up for a pretty thorough landscape, complete with long streets, motorways (freeways), police stations, Hospitals, Fire Departments, skyscrapers, factories, piers, Tankers, Petrol (Gas) Stations, taxi's, and the obligatory pedestrian. The typical City landscape. With this you'll get all sort of unique characters, complemented by a look, the homeless with dirty thick coats, the elderly with old cars, the young with funky cars, the office worker, and the usual shopping parent. You'll probably notice how the Taxi drivers are foreign, and the Police men are fat.

The City you are given is separated into three areas. The first area you start in is separated by a broken bridge, you'll gain access to the other areas once the bridge is fixed - enough time to make money by various methods. You can take jobs by people you meet up with. You first start by taking jobs from an alley pimp, eventually ending up to know other people each with various businesses or friends. Other ways to increase your account are readily available. You will be able to make money as a Taxi driver, a Crime Fighter in Police car, a fire fighter with fire truck, or a vigilante by killing certain people, each requiring the right boost. You can just hop into a taxi, and pose as a driver, picking people up and taking to them to a location in the city.

As you progress through the game, following various jobs, of which two are always available, you eventually end up the centre of attention, as various groups start to see what you're doing and they'll start shooting you. The tasks, which you are assigned, usually involve a vehicle, some give you a limo and require you to pick up people, and others need you to round up a bunch of girls off the street. These sort of tasks steadily get a little more challenging. Eventually you'll come to a point where you'll use your knowledge of the city landscape to cut minutes off the time it takes to get somewhere.

The entire landscape of the first portion of the city is indeed highly realistic, the time of day and weather effects are all included, you'll probably wonder why it starts to get really foggy and dull; the clock says 5:00am. Other aspects like how dangerous you are, or wanted as in the police have been reported with you running down a civilian, are included in such a way that it makes a difference to your position in the game. You don't want to get police involved when doing a job. The Police meter, displayed in the top right is made up of six stars, one star would mean a kill by means of roadrage, two would suggest you shot someone in the street. Three may suggest you killed a cop. Anything after this and you won't last long. At four stars you might star hearing a helicopter above you and roadblocks around the corner. Tanks, helicopters, riot trucks; the military, FBI and army start to get involved from five to six stars at this point it won't be long before you're stood outside the hospital or police station with a deducted $1000.

The various areas you can access will often have short ramps, some giving you access to hidden areas, others letting you drive on top of railway lines above the roads and buildings. These ramps however can be very fun to use and a good opportunity to get ride of a tail, you would just ride up an let the Cinema camera capture your decent in slow motion.

An interesting aspect of the game's progression would be the way you swap sides; you'll be ordered to show your performance by killing your old boss. This sort of element make the game's length increase, you'll probably have 20 jobs to do on the first area of the City. Once you come to the end of this section, you will be able to take a boat to the other side of the City. Once here you have more bosses to work for, and you'll hear once in a car a report that the bridge is now fixed. Those first 20 or so jobs which fill up a third of the game tend to get a little dull and boring, if this were to remain at this level the game would be less interesting. The fact you have to work through the game to get to special areas and uncover special places make it much more enjoyable than running around and causing havoc through the city for no reason.

The game is almost faultlessly made, you have a very solid looking game, one which makes use of the PS2's great graphics and algorithms to make the game look and feel like the real thing. The physics behind each type of car seem very realistic. The car reacts with different circumstances, like turning corners as you travel downwards - the car tends to lean over on two wheels, or the way the tall vehicles lean so far over to the point of falling. Even the damage is remarkably real, the car will take all sorts of knocks or impacts, the body work dents, bends, and then hangs off before being torn off. Like the side doors, the will often open up, as you speed along they fly back, but when you brake they fly forward. Even the hood and trunk will unlatch, and fall away.

The graphics of the game are especially impressive, the characters and many pedestrians are all very well portrayed with a good deal of sense on scale. Even the insides of cars are fully loaded with the essentials. The various camera angles give you a good look at the city, the Aliasing is quite heavy, but can be expected with a game, which takes up the RAM mostly for use in the structure. Textures, like bricks pavements and bodywork are all layered pretty finely, the car details are smooth, with a fine line between PC graphics, though nothing to other racing games - Gran Turismo 3 for example. The lighting effects are particularly effective at capturing the atmosphere of the environment, and the special effects like water spray and sparks are nicely placed. Collision detection is a bit off, at times by some margin, but it still doesn't make it any worse. If any game proves the reliability of the PS2 it is this one, as it has to constantly update the surroundings off the disc.

Sounds are also very important; with every knock bump or turn you'll get a plethora or sound effects, not to mention the music. With the dozens of cars available on the game, each one having a unique mass, power and turning specification, they each have their own sounds. And the music in the game, is more based around the idea that the city has around ten radio stations. These radio stations each have around an hour of chat/music running constantly through the game. But there is very little decent music in there, but the chatterbox station is humorous - it includes a number of funny adverts - like how to make an insurance scam from your employer.

Conclusion

From the moment the game loads up with a calm and pleasant piano introduction, you'll immediately realise the developers have matured and produced a game which has both the fun and innovation of the first two games matched by a willing gameplay and limitless life. This might be one of the most improved sequels ever.