Your opinion about Grand Theft Auto 3

Vince,

The May or June copy of Official PS2 Mag said that SoE sold 700k (world wide I assume). That's not GTA3 sales, but its far from the crap it derserved.

zurich

 

?

whch equates to about 7 million. ouch, quite the underachiever (espescially considering it wasnt even released in japan, another 10 milion consoles that shouldnt even be included in your 'theory', using Sega math again...) so, to correct you, so roughly, basically 1 in 3 PS 2 owners purchased the game. Pretty good, ay? 8) Escpescially considering there is a PC version available...


anyway, yea its a fun game. The target system sucked but they fixed it in Vice thankfully, but it was at the very least workable for 3. Anyway the immersiveness and virtual city are the main attraction for casuals, including myself. Games like Shenmue and Crazy Taxi shouldnt even be muttered in the same breath as GTA 3 concerning a realized enviroment, espescially CT. Heck, GTA 3 is so good, it uses the entire CT formula as a puny mini game.side mission

 

Bad driving ?? IMHO it has very enjoyable driveability and collision/physics that other games should envy.

Bad shooting mechanics?? Only for slight anoyance for targeting with some guns, nothing to prevent me to enjoy rest of the game.

a busted world simulation?? Depends what you want for that. I accept it as game and it doen fine job for me to create living city.

horrendous AI ?? Depends,.. some people cry out when watching MGS2 "idiot" soldiers field of vision that is few metres... Doh, it is a game, it has game rules. I find that AI very nice in GTA3. Just follow some freaked car driver and see how it drives or have some 3-4 stars and cops do very nice job toi chace you.... just great.

Graphics... they are not photorealistic, but do their job nicely. 5-10 miles of visibility, nce weather effects, lots of little nice things..

Oh, you forgot to critisize sound.. Thats very cool too

I tend to create carnage sometimes but it is not main thing, just flavor when not playing missions. Same goes for taxi, police etc. side jobs. Together they all just create the best game I have played...

 

I have the attention span of a speck of dust, so after 5 minutes of GTA3 I'm already bored of it. I'm not joking either, hehe, I've been meaning to get tested for ADD It's games like Final Fantasy with their linear, compelling stories that can keep me glued to the TV for hours on end. There are other exceptions ofcourse, but thats my main problem with GTA3. After 5 minutes of play, my brain decides that it's digested all the gameplay mechanics that the game has to offer, then calls it quits

So, for me, open ended gaming == bad.

zurich

 

Bad driving? Compared to GT3 sure, compared to any other games with the same size and freedom? NAH! the cars handled differently and i quickly learned to use the handbrake combinded with a bit of contra steering. On a keyboard i'm sure it sucked.

Bad AI?
If you think in FPS maybe, but again, it worked very well in this game, the mission where you have to shoot the mafia boss (mentioned above)
Caused me a bit of trouble as well. Since the game really isn't geared towards fps shooting i usually solved missions with cars instead of guns (wherever i could) but this mission required the sniper. My problem was that the target was in plain view for a very short time so i tried something else. I parked a car in front of the club so that he couldn't get out, i firgured a stupid AI would just be standing there.

I was surprised when i saw one of his bodyguards DRIVE MY CAR AWAY!

Stupid? maybe.. but not bad.

 

Hehe, zurich, me too. It's taken me 25 years of playing, but I've finally come to understand that linear video games are the ones I like best. As much as GTA3 wowed me, it still didn't hold my interest much beyond the first island. Give me a set path, and I'll go gangbusters. But open-endedness? That's too much like real life - often more work than fun.

Kolgar

 

How anyone could think that GTA3 is a better world-simulation than Shenmue is almost unbelievable to me. Turning around and looking again changes the cars on the street. LOL!

Seriously guys. Have fun playing Vice, but you guys crack me up. Everyone that I've ever talked to about GTA3 really likes it for the reasons I stated, but then justifies everything else about it (bad AI, driving, shooting). Anyone who criticizes it is considered anal. It's ridiculous.

It's a popular game. It's a huge sales success, but 80% of PS2 owners don't want GTA3. Why is it so surprising that so many of us on this board don't want it either? It's nothing special to most people.

Get over it. I hate GTA3. I love that I hate GTA3. I love that 80% of PS2 owners don't care for it either. I don't care if 7 million people like it. I still think it's crap.

Guess what - 50% of Xbox owners don't like Halo. I can live with that too. 8)

 

Shenmue = World Loading Simulator

 

At least people don't keep dissapearing and reappearing right in front of you )

 

I'll sum it up for you:

GTA series in 2002-2004 => The suck
GTA series in 2004+ => Game of the Millenium

 

Hehe, don't be so sure. I don't see Sony giving this one up that easy

 

I wish they released GTA3 in arcades because then people could get their 2 hours of pimple faced teenage "cheap thrills" for a couple of dollars

 

Why are people talking about the freedom in GTA like it's anything new or revolutionary?

I got just as many laughs out of Sim Copter. In fact the only difference between the two games (besides not being able to hijack vehicles *ahem*) is that no matter how many passengers I kicked out of my helicopter at 3000 feet, the cops never came down on me.

 

...maybe because people need to find reasons to justify why they jumped on the bandwagon..

LOL, if Yu Suzuki wanted Shenmue to be that way he would've made it that way. I don't think mindless violence and chaos was the theme of Shenmue...fortunately

 

You do realise that GTA3 is the game, as in the game that everyone knows of or has played. I went back last weekend to visit my fraturnity chapter and see whats been goin on since I left and someone was actually talking about GTA:VC. I don't think you realise just how far GTA3 has inroads into our current society as far as videogames go.

Why do I get the distint feeling that your favorite games are the steroetypical games that are played by a hard-core niche of people composed of sunlight deprived, freckle infested pasty white skinned people who claim to be above such topics as those in GTA3?

I mean, people here can talk all the shit they want about the game - but the fact still stands (1) GTA3 is the most talked about game I can ever remember. (2) The game which moved video gaming into a more mainstream arena. (3) The first game to mix so many forms of gameplay into an open-ended and freeflowing enviroment that was based on presently "hot" topics (ie. Sopranoes, ect). (4) It's just fuckin fun.

In summation, people like to fight the trend and status quo - their will allways be people whose conscious mental state will deny them the ability to experience the game and have fun with it. Then their will be the other 6 billion people who inhabit this earth.

 

Edit: post deleted.

 

It's not personal, I just hate how people like you can say that it's "pimple faced teenagers" who play this - when infact it's the first game that has actually broken the steroetypical mold surrounding videogaming and people like yourself who are looked at as the only people who'd play a game.

I've forever been advocating that Carmack needs to go as a "reolemodel" for the industry. GTA3 and PS2 are this vehicle that will puch gaming mainstream.

PS. On a personal note, I've probobly had under 10 pimples, no acne(thank you mom and dad) my life. It's those damn ingrown hairs under my chin that made shaving a bitch untill I realised that tweezers were a godsend.

 

You have obviously misunderstood me. I was not implying that *exact same* or simillar scenes should be in Shenmue. Why there aren't any kids playing with the ball on the street, so that one of them can kick it away and other has to run for it, or they accidentaly crash someone's window and run away scared, or someone reads newspapers, wind blows it away, so he has to run around collecting the papers, or... Events of that kind, that make environment so much more believable and alive are sorely missing from the Shenmue, and GTA offers suprising and offbeat things like that seemingly on every step. Yes, some of them are brutal, which is in the vein of the game, but some are just plain funny.

 

Right.

GTA3 is nothing special. It's hardly "the game". That's utterly ridiculous. I doubt that many more people are playing games due to GTA3. 80% of PS2 owners don't even own it. Besides, who cares if games go mainstream? I want games to get better, not necessarily more popular. The two don't always go hand-in-hand.

You GTA3-lovers can defend it to your death, but GTA3 is nothing new. Simulated worlds have been around for ages. As someone else already stated, if Shenmue wanted to have the same elements it could have.

I find 350 simulated lives in a virtual town where you can enter shops and interact with the citizenry with something other than a baseball bat to be far more impressive than GTA3. There aren't any real simulated characters in GTA3 except the main ones you occasionally talk to.

Here's something: If GTA3 is so good, how come the publisher and Sony didn't run TV spots for it when it first came out? The answer is simple: It's not that good. Sony and Rockstar had no idea that it was going to become a phenomenon. The reason why legions of industry people (including reviewers at E3) overlooked GTA3 was because by all objective measures it's nothing special.

 

Still waiting for some one to explain how GTA3 is superior to GTA2. It's the same game with a 3D face-lift. If the core gameplay is the same as GTA2 (which recieved a mediocre reception), I don't see what there is to be excited about in GTA3.

I predict the series popularity will fade away after Vice City.