You are, of course, entitled to your opinion and I'm sorry you thought GTA3 was a letdown, but I do think you're being pretty unfair in some of your criticisms.
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Forklift81:
I found some fun things to do, like jumping in the back of a flatbed, spooking the driver, and then trying to snipe pedestrians while on the move, but they get old and after a while there aren't very many reasons to go back to the game. No plot, repetitive missions, poor police ai... |
GTA3 is the only PS2 game that has remained at the top of my pile constantly since I got it. Even though I finished it months ago, I can still spend happy hours just motoring around the city, finding new Insane Stunts, flying planes, discovering secrets or just going nuts with a rocket launcher.
As for the repetitive missions, yeah, most of them revolve around "go here, do this, come back", but the vast 3D environment means that the ways you can accomplish the missions is fantastically variable. The mission where you have to whack the Mafia boss - there are dozens of ways to complete that mission, from cunning sniping to all-out street battles. The pseudo-realism of the city means that you can actually think your way around a problem on an instinctual level, rather than being held back by the game engine.
My biggest beefs with the game are the lack of interactivity in the scenery and the "dead" buildings (ie the inability to actually go inside a building and continue the game indoors), the frustrating way the game was divided into three "levels" by contrived transport problems and - as you mention - the less than stellar NPC AI. All of these are addressed in GTA: Vice City, and so I'm drooling in anticipation.
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Forklift81:
I dunno, maybe its because not very many people played the first two games, but for me GTA3 was just more of the same. Its still a good game, but all of the game of the year and revolutionary gameplay bullshit was just that. |
Plenty of people played the first two games - both were best-sellers. If people are praising GTA3 it's because it genuinely pushes the boundaries in creating an absorbing game world. I've given many GTA3 virgins their first taste of Liberty City, and it's great to watch the amazement on their faces as they just wander around this virtual metropolis, realising they can do pretty much anything they want. The only thing GTA3 really has in common with it's predecessors is the crime theme - in every other aspect, it's light years ahead.
I think you're underestimating just what sort of impact the 3D environment has on the gameplay. Yes, you do many of the same things in Grand Theft Auto as you do in GTA3. The difference is, in GTA3, they're worth doing. And worth doing over and over again. The game still impresses me with it's
feel. It's captivating. I want to see all games made like this. I want to explore all my game worlds with this much freedom of movement. I want to play westerns, horror and sci-fi like this.
I genuinely believe that GTA3 represents the next logical step in game design, inching closer to a fully immersive virtual world.
