It's the sirens again (Grand Theft Auto III (PC))

Member Name: The_bulldog

Product:	Grand Theft Auto III (PC)
Date:	24/07/02 (665 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great graphics, sounds etc, Good conversion, design wise, You'll keep coming back for more!

Disadvantages: No multiplayer, poor conversion, technically

I was hiding behind the charred shell of a flatbed Truck, and bullets were zinging over my head, while a Police helicopter was taking pot shots at me from above. I gripped my uzi and dashed out from behind the sorry carcass of the truck, to be met with a hail of gunfire. I took out three Columbian gang members with a spray of my uzi, and darted towards the nearest building for some cover. In the distance I could hear the familiar sirens getting closer.
I was rudely shaken from my thoughts when an everyday thug, oblivious to the firefight around him, came up and punched me straight in the ribs, I took one look at him, and despatched the arm that had hit me, and he fell to the ground. It was then I noticed, to my curiousity that the columbians had stopped firing. I Peeked round the corner, and there in front of me, on the other side of the road was a SWAT team and several armed police officers.
I switched to the rocket launcher, and screamed at the top of my lungs "You'll never take my alive!!!" and came round the corner, aimed the rocket launcher, and blew up the swat van and several police officers. The chain reaction blew up almost everything in sight as I spinted down the street. I turned a corner just to be met with an oncoming FBI Kurama. I didn't stand a chance. I heard the screaching of tyres, then it went blank.

Such occurences are everyday and normal in the world of Grand Theft Auto. Liberty City is a city full of crime, coruption, and er Prostitutes.

Let's start of with the city itself. It is designed brilliantly well, with all three districts feeling very different, and this is helped by what cars you see : e.g, you are much less likely to see are Ferrari like Cheetah in Portland than you are on Staunton Island. the atmosphere is also helped by the people you see on the streets and the buildings, the Red Light District is always full of pimps and hookers, and the buildings are all rundown and/or strip-clubs

and the like. Then if you go to Cedar Grove in Shoreside Vale, it is full of SUV's and big houses with Swimming pools. The city is probably one of the best designed areas in a game EVER.

The storyline isn't at all bad either, especially with the way if you want the whole city, then you have to play the story- as certain missions open different parts of the city instead of certain amounts of money in the previous games. All missions are somewhat original, and even the early missions are only repetitive a couple of times.

The amount of 'secrets' and Easter Eggs in this game is phenominal - such as the sign that says 'You weren't supposed to be able to get here you know' in a certain area and NO I'm not going to tell you where. Then there's the 'sorta secret but not quite' blowing up gang cars missions with the RC Bandits (remote control cars which can be found in blue vans with the 'TOYZ' logo on the side'.
The hardest cars to get are the Bullet Proof cars (apart from theBP Patriot which you get at the end of a certain mission). So far I have got a bulletproof/Explosionproof/flameproof Cheetah, BP Patriot, and everything proof stretch limo.

The music is great too, with some of the callers into Chatterbox FM being simply hilarious. such as 'Your orginisation's called CRAP?' etc. etc.

It's a shame then, that all this is spolied by a frabkly rubbish technical conversion by Rockstar. Even on a P4 2ghz 256mb RAM+ it wont run smoothly on its out-of-box state. Basically every owner of this game has had to change something to get it to work properly. And there's also a bug that on some computers, files that alow to change the resolution have accidently been installed as read only files. this happened to me and it took me about an hour to find the right file.

It's also a shame that there is no multiplayer, but as it is such a good single player

experience, it can be overlooked. This Time.

The_Bulldog

Summary: