The WhatsNext verdict
If you enjoy learning a compact city, creating your own criminal chaos, and soaking in radio-filled drives, GTA III delivers a distinctive sandbox. It suits players willing to tolerate dated controls and unforgiving missions.
What it does best
It defined the modern 3D open-world sandbox
A city built for unscripted criminal freedom
Liberty City feels like a city worth learning
The radio makes every drive feel like a scene
What might put you off
Clunky controls and weak gunplay
Unforgiving mission design
The setup
What you are walking into
Featuring a fully 3-D living city, a combination of narrative driven and non-linear gameplay and a completely open environment, Grand Theft Auto III represents a huge leap forward in interactive entertainment. For the first time, players are put at the heart of their very own gangster movie, and let loose in a fully-realised 3 dimensional city, in which anything can happen and probably will. With a cast of hundreds, 50 plus vehicles, ranging from sports cars to ice cream trucks and from boats to buses, 3 hours of music, including opera, reggae, house, drum and bass, pop and disco, a huge array of street ready weapons and some of the seediest characters in video game history, Grand Theft Auto 3 is a sprawling epic which will show you that sometimes, crime can pay and sometimes it can pay you back. Available now for PlayStation2, Xbox, PC and Macintosh.
Where it lives
Genre
Vibe
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