Grand Theft Auto III

To coincide with the release of the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition I’m taking a look back on my first interaction with a title that was to forever change the gaming landscape.

Yet, what can be said about one of the most influential games of all time, that hasn’t already been written? There’s not much that hasn’t already been covered by writers much more talented than I, but I can at least give you my account of being a kid and witnessing first-hand the effect this game had on my world.

For people who didn’t experience it at the time, it’s hard to describe what a game changer GTA III really was. Whilst sandbox titles had existed before on the PS1 and PC, many gamers such as me had never experienced one of that size and scale before. The graphical jump from the PS1 to PS2 alone astounded me and I honestly thought gaming couldn’t get much more realistic than this!

GTA III was released on to the PlayStation 2 back in October 2001 and was the first truly 3D instalment to the previously 2D top-down popular series. Back then, I was just fourteen years old and practically begged my parents to ignore the 18 rated age certificate and buy me the game for Christmas that year. Luckily for me, Santa didn’t give two shits about parental guidance and on December 25th I unwrapped one of the best games I’d ever have the privilege of playing.

The dialogue was hilarious, and each main mission so varied with a plethora of side quests to occupy your time in what felt like an endless sandbox to play in. My ten-year-old brother and I played it non- stop, taking turns causing mayhem and passing the control pad between ourselves when one of us died. Many of our friends would come over and crowd my parents’ conservatory just to catch a glimpse, a shared communal spectacle that now feels extinct in this modern era thanks to the likes of Youtube.

We played it so much so that the cheat codes are still burned into my memory to this day. The cheat codes (a lost art these days) were one of my favourite aspects of the game, we never used them to aid us in the story campaign but simply to have fun causing as much damage as we could and seeing how long we could survive. My favourite of all the cheats was probably the infamous flying tank.

Rumours of the flying tank went around my school like crazy, we had to rely on gaming magazines and school library internet print outs done on my lunch break. For this trick, you simply had to enter the low gravity cheat and then spawn a tank, then turn the turret around and continuously fire backwards whilst simultaneously driving forward. This propelled the tank upward and into the air, with a little practice you’d be flying around the city in no time…just avoid flying directly inside the stadium, you have been warned.

I distinctly remember putting in that disc for the first time and driving over the first granny that I saw, my brother and I howling with laughter at the ragdoll physics as we committed heinous crimes against the NPC citizens of Liberty City. Reading back what I’ve just wrote sounds vaguely psychopathic, yet neither my brother nor I have killed anyone yet…to the best of my knowledge.

In hindsight there is something a little wrong with letting a both a 14 and a 10-year-old simulate murder, vehicular manslaughter, and a host of other crimes. Yet my parents had next to no knowledge of the games we played, being of a generation who still thought video games were just for kids.

It wasn’t the first time that violence in games caused controversy and just like Doom & Mortal Kombat before it, there were soon complaints in the media about video games warping the minds of today’s children. I survived that era, and I honestly cannot recall anyone pulling their face off and breathing fire from their mouth for a Scorpion style school yard fatality…just saying.

I couldn’t write about GTA III without mentioning the in-game radio, which was truly something special. I’d actually park up my car and just listen to Lazlo on Chatterbox and all the classic songs from the movie Scarface that often featured across the stations. The commercial jingles for likes of Pogo the Monkey and Zaibatsu Thunder all came flooding back to me whilst writing this article, from some dark recess of my mind.

In all honesty, I’m actually quite hesitant to play the Definitive Edition of GTA III. Games have moved on so much that I may be frustrated now with its limitations, especially as this is a remaster and not a complete remake. Yet for me it will always be one of the greatest games I’ve ever played and most certainly one of my favourite gaming experiences. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun when playing a video game and whilst Vice City and San Andreas are definitely superior games, nothing can ever replicate that first time playing GTA III.