AUTHOR: THX 1138
Grand Theft Auto 3
Platform: Playstation 2
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: DMA
The 3-D sequel to Grand Theft Auto is blowing my ass off like a bazooka. Here’s the plot.
You just escaped from prison and some black dude (another ex-con who I swear has Guru as his voice) knows where you guys have to go. You have to steal a car with Guru and take him to a mafia guy named Luigi. Once you’ve completed that mission you’re on your own and, with Luigi’s guidance, you can keep committing crimes and climb up the ladder of crime or you can just piss about. That’s right – it’s just like real life.
You can stand there and think about stuff, beat the shit out of Guru, steal an ambulance and go help people all game, or talk to a cop. You can even become a cab thief that collects fares all day and helps the elderly.
Before I got good at taking my friend to Luigi I would occasionally wander around the living city and fuck with innocent people. One time I picked a fight with this Puerto Rican dude and he pulled out a gun and shot me.
The game is constantly streaming off the disc, so unlike the lame-ass virtual city in Shenmue (where you ask stagnant robots where your father is all day) there is action going on all day and all night. Every citizen in the city goes about his or her business no matter what you do. This has never been done in video games before. The tedium of entering code is now getting the same attention as making the characters, and it makes for a look I’ve never seen before, part of a new breed of games where the line between publisher and developer is totally blurred.
The detail is truly groundbreaking. You can choose from nine radio stations featuring everything from a dub station with Scientist on it to the soundtrack from Scarface; there’s a to-scale day and night system where half an hour is a day and if you miss the Brinks truck at 5:00 PM you have to wait till the next day to get it again. Each car has totally unique physics and handling; prostitutes come out at night; actors do the pedestrian mumbling you hear every time you go by a crowd (There’s a total of 2 000 different quotes including “Where’d you hear that?” and “His mother’s coming. She hates me”).
I’m telling you. It’s the fucking real world. So real in fact you can’t criticize it. Unlike other Rockstar games, parents can’t complain about kids blowing people’s heads off. That’s not part of the game. You get rewarded for killing bad guys but as far as innocent civilians go, that’s your business. If the game is violent your kid is violent.
I played this game for so long I didn’t want to play it anymore so I just walked around and got my head back together. After having a brief stroll around my neighborhood I was ready to go back home and play again until I realized I had never stopped playing. I WAS STILL IN THE GAME (dee nee nee noo, dee nee nee noo, dee nee nee noo, dee nee nee noo).
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