I just finished playing Grand Theft Auto 3 for the second time, focusing on not using any cheats and getting 100%. Unusually for a video game, I loved it even more replaying it. I know it sounds hyperbolic, but for me, the Grand Theft Auto games are really some of the best video games of all time, and number three is the one that started the excellence.
What makes it so great is a combination of a few things. One of the most important one is the free-roaming environment. You could play for many hours following your own whims rather than some game developer's narrowly defined mission. Another factor in this is that the Grand Theft Auto worlds are big. The "artificial intelligence" is also admirably complex and varied. Of course, there are pre-defined missions, too, and part of what makes them succeed so much better than those in many other games is that there are so many ways to accomplish the missions--the game retains its free-roaming attitude for the most part whether you're playing missions or not. The missions do not have to be completed in a strict order, and there are many optional side missions and mini-games. The missions are varied, creative, and a lot of fun to do, as are various situations you can get in during free roam. But as important as anything else, Rockstar got the controls, camera views and such almost perfect. Nothing can sink a game faster than wonky controls or a camera that hinders seeing what you're doing. You don't have to worry about any of that here.
Of course, with the focus on crime, violence and mayhem, the game isn't for all sensibilities, but there's no denying its genius as a game, whether the content is to your tastes or not. It happens to be to my tastes, so I love it even more.
All of the above is so brilliant that I have to wonder why after Grand Theft Auto 3, not every game is developed with a free roaming world and all of those other features. After playing this, I find playing many other games annoyingly restrictive or narrow--even some of Rockstar's own games, like Manhunt, and to a lesser extent, The Warriors.
The fear is probably that others do not want to be said to be copying Grand Theft Auto, but when Grand Theft Auto 3 and subsequent GTA titles are such a revolutionary concept in gaming, this is a case where other developers, and Rockstar for its other games, should just bite the bullet and proceed along the lines of the revolution. It's as significant as the transition from text-based games, like the old Infocom titles, to graphics-based games, once computers gained enough power and memory to handle it.
And as excellent as Grand Theft Auto 3 is, there are many areas that could be improved upon, especially as power and memory increase more in computers and gaming consoles. The worlds could be even bigger and more complex, with more complex player character actions and options, and more missions, side missions, side actions, side objects to interact with and so on (a direction Rockstar itself has headed in with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas). More importantly, the artificial intelligence can become much more complex and varied. As systems allow, the standard for new games should resemble a combination of Grand Theft Auto-styled worlds and sim games, where small decisions and actions have branching, complicated effects, including leading to different missions and outcomes.
Different kinds of content needs to be explored a lot more in these future games. As I said, I love the content of Grand Theft Auto and similar crime/violence games, but there's a lot else I'd love, too. Content is only limited by our imaginations, and we need to exercise and challenge our imaginations as much as possible. Just for one example, I'd love a game where the entire world is literally mapped just as it is and where I can have all the transportation options really available to me (but where there are methods to shorten travel times if I desire, but also the option to keep them the same as they'd be in real time), and where the main, original goal is to go on a variety of archaeological digs in an attempt to prove that humans arrived on the planet as aliens from other worlds. During the course of the game, I could interact with all kinds of things in all kinds of locations--like people, stores, minigames that involve skiing, and white water rafting and on and on, and some things that I do, some decisions that I make, might end up completely changing the goal of the game and the missions that I can follow.
The above idea would take an incredible amount of computing power, an incredible amount of research and resources and programming hours and money, of course, but these are the kinds of goals we should be shooting for down the road, developing more complex free-roaming games on our way to get there. Programming via "modules" that can be re-used is one excellent idea that the gaming industry has started to utilize. The kinds of games I'd like to see will only be feasible with that approach, where future developers can incorporate and expand on previous developers' work.
The Grand Theft Auto games should just be the beginning of this direction, not considered the ultimate expression of the direction that therefore we shouldn't copy and instead go back to games where you must play mission to mission by the numbers with players' characters in small, confined spaces with only a limited set of actions and interactions possible. That would be an almost incomprehensible regression, maybe only explained by laziness and/or cheapness.
In any event, play this game if you haven't already!
What makes it so great is a combination of a few things. One of the most important one is the free-roaming environment. You could play for many hours following your own whims rather than some game developer's narrowly defined mission. Another factor in this is that the Grand Theft Auto worlds are big. The "artificial intelligence" is also admirably complex and varied. Of course, there are pre-defined missions, too, and part of what makes them succeed so much better than those in many other games is that there are so many ways to accomplish the missions--the game retains its free-roaming attitude for the most part whether you're playing missions or not. The missions do not have to be completed in a strict order, and there are many optional side missions and mini-games. The missions are varied, creative, and a lot of fun to do, as are various situations you can get in during free roam. But as important as anything else, Rockstar got the controls, camera views and such almost perfect. Nothing can sink a game faster than wonky controls or a camera that hinders seeing what you're doing. You don't have to worry about any of that here.
Of course, with the focus on crime, violence and mayhem, the game isn't for all sensibilities, but there's no denying its genius as a game, whether the content is to your tastes or not. It happens to be to my tastes, so I love it even more.
All of the above is so brilliant that I have to wonder why after Grand Theft Auto 3, not every game is developed with a free roaming world and all of those other features. After playing this, I find playing many other games annoyingly restrictive or narrow--even some of Rockstar's own games, like Manhunt, and to a lesser extent, The Warriors.
The fear is probably that others do not want to be said to be copying Grand Theft Auto, but when Grand Theft Auto 3 and subsequent GTA titles are such a revolutionary concept in gaming, this is a case where other developers, and Rockstar for its other games, should just bite the bullet and proceed along the lines of the revolution. It's as significant as the transition from text-based games, like the old Infocom titles, to graphics-based games, once computers gained enough power and memory to handle it.
And as excellent as Grand Theft Auto 3 is, there are many areas that could be improved upon, especially as power and memory increase more in computers and gaming consoles. The worlds could be even bigger and more complex, with more complex player character actions and options, and more missions, side missions, side actions, side objects to interact with and so on (a direction Rockstar itself has headed in with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas). More importantly, the artificial intelligence can become much more complex and varied. As systems allow, the standard for new games should resemble a combination of Grand Theft Auto-styled worlds and sim games, where small decisions and actions have branching, complicated effects, including leading to different missions and outcomes.
Different kinds of content needs to be explored a lot more in these future games. As I said, I love the content of Grand Theft Auto and similar crime/violence games, but there's a lot else I'd love, too. Content is only limited by our imaginations, and we need to exercise and challenge our imaginations as much as possible. Just for one example, I'd love a game where the entire world is literally mapped just as it is and where I can have all the transportation options really available to me (but where there are methods to shorten travel times if I desire, but also the option to keep them the same as they'd be in real time), and where the main, original goal is to go on a variety of archaeological digs in an attempt to prove that humans arrived on the planet as aliens from other worlds. During the course of the game, I could interact with all kinds of things in all kinds of locations--like people, stores, minigames that involve skiing, and white water rafting and on and on, and some things that I do, some decisions that I make, might end up completely changing the goal of the game and the missions that I can follow.
The above idea would take an incredible amount of computing power, an incredible amount of research and resources and programming hours and money, of course, but these are the kinds of goals we should be shooting for down the road, developing more complex free-roaming games on our way to get there. Programming via "modules" that can be re-used is one excellent idea that the gaming industry has started to utilize. The kinds of games I'd like to see will only be feasible with that approach, where future developers can incorporate and expand on previous developers' work.
The Grand Theft Auto games should just be the beginning of this direction, not considered the ultimate expression of the direction that therefore we shouldn't copy and instead go back to games where you must play mission to mission by the numbers with players' characters in small, confined spaces with only a limited set of actions and interactions possible. That would be an almost incomprehensible regression, maybe only explained by laziness and/or cheapness.
In any event, play this game if you haven't already!