GTA III

Title: GTA III
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: May 20, 2002
Date Played: June - September 2002
Time Played: 40 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5



Opinion:
I remember being largely unimpressed by the original top down GTA games and as such I was skeptical of GTA III; however to everyone's surprise the final product turned out to what might as well be a completely different franchise, and the game (as well as the franchise) went on to define the open world 3rd person genre.

At its release Grand Thief Auto 3 was a PlayStation 2 exclusive, and being strictly a PC gamer I did not get a chance to play it until the following year when the PC port came out. And by that time Grand Thief Auto 3 gained an incredible amount of buzz on the internet and in the media.

I distinctly remember the opening sequence and how stunningly cinematic it was. GTA3 did not mess around and threw you right into the action. Within the first couple of seconds you are being busted out of an armored police truck and a whole bridge size of Golden Gate is blown up. You hop into a car and drive the hell away from the scene, which is littered with dead cops. After that short cut scene the game world opens up, and I remember that incredible feeling of being able to go wherever I wanted and do whatever I wanted.

The world felt like a living breathing city, with unique and detailed buildings and each street felt like it was hand crafted, to the point that after a few hours of playing you could tell where you were simply by looking around.  This fact alone speaks to the quality of the game and efforts Rockstar put into realizing it.  The city felt incredibly big and the ability to hop in and out of vehicles, shoot guns whenever I wanted to gave a great sense of freedom.

Prior to GTA most open world games focused either on world exploration by foot or vehicles. Grand Thief Auto 3 combined these aspects into one cohesive experience, which made a computer world seem more real than ever before. Car driving was handled well, giving you a variety of vehicles, from strong and slow to weak and fast, weapon variety was great enough to allow you to switch between different combat styles and missions changed up from driving, to run and gun and sniping.  And if you got bored of doing missions you could always go on a rampage and paint the city red. Overall it was a great package that kept you entertained for hours on end. 

GTA III was a profound and evolutionary game. It defined the new standards for the third person open world genre to the point that similar games are called "GTA Clones" to this day. 

Living Breathing World