This is a review for GTA 3 only. Grand Theft Auto 3 has come to the Xbox, and do yourself a favor. Pick i
As for gameplay, this game has nailed it like no other. Grand Theft Auto 3 features a really innovative gaming experience with smooth controls, and very gamer-friendly mission designs. You have two choices. The first choice would be the mission mode, where you drive, fly, boat, or run around liberty city and do the intense assignments you are given, or the second choice, Free Ride. "Free Ride" isn't really a whole seperate mode, but free rise takes place when you are not currently assigned any missions, and you just want to roam the streets, free to do whatever. The mission mode is really exciting, and you will collect a bunch of cash along the way, but once you're done with that, or if you just plain don't want to do it at all, the free ride is extremely addicting, considering the city is so large and there are endless possibilities. Both modes of the game have really easy controls, and this was surprising because it was ported from the ps2, and you would wonder how the controls would work on the Xbox controller. But once you start playing, you'll see they work amazingly well. Y is to get in and out of cars, the d-pad changes your weapons, X is jump, R is shoot, and L is the targeting mode, which makes the shooting a whole lot easier, and more fun overall. Driving around in Liberty City is very enjoyable, because the cars handle perfectly. You won't see any faults in the handling of the vehicles whatsoever. Your character walks and runs at a decent pace, but if you want, you can hold down the A button to burst into a sprint, but this won't last but 10 seconds at the most. But, the sprinting mode works well if you need a quick getaway from a flood of cop cars or mob leaders. Shooting in the game, like I said before, is very satisfying. You'll notice the game's wide variety of weapons, and all of them have a certain use for something in the missions. The weapons all pack a real powerful punch, and are all equally fun to kill your enemies with. Speaking of variety, there are various amounts of different vehicles as well. In the past, you have played games like Driver 3, where you will notice there are only a few different cars to steal here and there, but as for GTA 3, this is not the case at all. Even after looking at the tons of different car models, you can board planes, boats, and trains, and there are many different models of these as well. Other things you will find as you roam around the city include incredibly smart enemy and civilian AI. Even if you're not fighting at all, you will see cops chasing other random criminals. You will see random gang fights taking place, and you can also listen to some of the civilians funny conversations. Rockstar did a great job of really adding life and realism to GTA 3, and you will feel it as you keep playing.
You wouldn't expect the graphics to be too great in Grand Theft Auto, considering they weren't that impressive on the Playstation 2, but you will be surprised to see GTA 3 run on the xbox's impressive hardware. You will notice much better lighting and reflection effects on vehicles, characters, and many buildings. One other cool effect in the game was the rain effects. If you are in a car while it's raining, you will notice really cool looking raindrops fall onto your screen, like the rain was hitting the game's camera lens. I thought this was really impressive and also adds to the realism of gameplay. Even without the raindrops on the camera though, the rain effects to look pretty sweet, the way they fall on the ground and anything else. The character models look fantastic, especially compared to the Playstation 2 version. Some of the faces can look ugly up close while actually playing, but in the cutscenes, they look simply gorgeous. Car models and even the weapon models are all detailed down to the last screw, or bullet casing. The cutscenes look especially good as well, but wait until you hear how they sound.
When I was watching the cutscenes of this game, I realy thought I was watching some sort of theatre film. Since they look so good, and they sound revolutionary, Grand Theft Auto 3 features the best video game cutscenes ever. No questions asked.
Since there is so much to do in Liberty City, you'll start thinking of the replay value. And let me tell you, there is PLENTY of it. The mission mode contains hundreds of missions, which will take you a decently long time, and even if you manage to get through that, you still have free ride, and that will never get old. Since the enemy AI is so smart, you'll never experience the same thing twice here.
All of Grand Theft Auto 3's wonderful features add up to one of the few greater xbox games. If you own an xbox, and still haven't bought this, you need to ask yourself what in the freaking heck you are thinking. You will never find a game like this on the xbox, or any other platform. Period. The game rocks, it's cheap, go buy it. You won't regret it.