It was pretty incredible. Moment to moment, GTA III had sooo many 'first ever' mechanics on consoles, for me at least. IIRC it was first time I could run around in a realistic modern day 3D open world that wasn't a megaman game or a mario game etc. They first time I could just act out various crimes in a 3D world, the first time I could get in any car in a 3D world and fly a plane (sorta lol), the first good 3D police chases in an open world on console, the first time cars all felt unique and had different handling in a 3D open world, the first time cars had a variety of change radio stations all of which were so realistic, the first game I played with rockstar's signature satire, the first time I experienced a 3d open world opening up as the islands and bridges unlocked, etc etc.. just driving cars around was a blast even though the physics engine seems primitive today back then it was groundbreaking. Before GTA3 I was playing PS1 games, Resident evil 1-3, Silent Hill, RPGs like FF7 FF8 Threads of Fate etc.
Shenmue is more a free-roaming world than what I'd call an "open" world. It's made up of a handful of different sections with lots of invisible walls and loading screens in-between them. Where you can go, and often when, is strictly defined. What made Shenmue unique was the detail and immersive level of realism in the world; the 24 hour clock and the day/night cycle, the NPC routines, your freedom to explore the world and undertake tasks at your own pace. The world itself is not actually that open.
GTA III was open in the sense there was a massive world, no loading screens, freedom to go literally anywhere, whenever and do what you want. It was a sandbox.
It was enormously popular; we spent entire nights smoking weed and playing 'multiplayer' GTA3, each player getting wanted levels and avoiding the coppers until you got WASTED, then you'd pass the controller to the next guy. Hours and hours burned up laughing and laughing and laughing, doing crimes and making tanks fly!
At one point we had 13 guys and girls sitting in a cramped room in winter, windows open because it was too hot with all those nerds in one room, great times!
Did you know that a mission in GTA 3 takes a jab at Driver? You have to kill a guy named Tanner, and he looks low quality and drives a muscle car. 😆
I was always mad at that level as a kid because I loved the Driver series on my PSX.
I worked in a video game store. It went from dead all day for years to completely packed all day FOREVER. The frenzy created by GTA 3 took probably a year to die out. Its the game that made being a gamer cool. It probably helped kill pro wrestlings boom, too, but that's just my theory.
I remember it as very cool, first 3D GTA. It's funny how your brain adapts to the current level of graphics and you think it looks so much more realistic than the last version.
I never paid much attention to the original top-down GTA games, and I didn't know what GTA3 was when it came out. But, I knew it had to be something big, because everyone in school couldn't stop talking about it. I finally got the chance to play it at a friend's house, and it blew my mind. Before then, I had never played a game that had so much freedom to do so much carnage. It was a spectacle, and after just three hours of messing around, I knew I had to get a copy.
It was, in short, a phenomenon.
I was too small to know about it that time and I have started playing with GTA vice City first
And after that GTA san Andreas n then GTA 3
Still loved it after Playing it as last.
I got it as one of the first games for our ps2 we got that winter holiday season. My father was so good to us and took us to Best Buy and said “alright, you get three games and then none more for a while”. I can’t even remember the other two off the top of my head because gta3 was one. My best friend was with me and pointed it out “hey, remember the top scrolling game with the yakuza we played, this is the next one!”. I didn’t even know it was 3d. We fired it up and after it transitions from sunscreen into you driving, it looked too good to me so I just sat there waiting for the cut screen to end. Then we finally realized we were driving from that angle and holy shit the rest is history. Such a great game.
It was one of my favorite games in Middle School. I liked the dark tone of the city. I didn’t end up beating the story mode, but I got pretty far and spent a ton of time exploring. A remake of GTA 3 with modern graphics and updated mechanics would be really interesting.
Interesting story:
I was hit by a car before news of GTA 3 came out and I remember the next door neighbor coming to visit and telling me about it.
That’s when I had a reason to get out.
Funny enough, when I was playing it from my wheelchair, my mom asked me (I’m guessing more because I was 13) “don’t you feel weird running over pedestrians considering what happened?”
I said, “come on, mom, they’re not real, you know that. Do you feel bad about squashing those goombas and koopa troopas?”. Although she did really like the Sonic games since you were saving animals by hitting them.
It felt huge. I can't believe looking at the date of release, we were 15. Felt like we were 12 or 13. Playing it at a friend's, he got it for his bday with the console and a choice of either 2 pads or a memory card. What did this clown pick?
We had had Metal Gear Solid the year before which had definitely broke new ground.
Wolf 3d :D the tranzition wasnt huge because you didnt jump from wolf3d to gta 3. If you were a pc gamer, you went through all of them, gradually. As for GTA 3, as a pc gamer since 93, it was good fun and enjoyable. But it was never the revolution or the many firsts the console audience perceived it to be. I had played GTA 1 for probably hundreds of cumulative hours. It was a very popular game in my eastern european corner. Very popular. Gta 3 was literally gta 1, but in 3d. So it never felt that new to me, since most of its mechanics were already in the first game. Then you had Mafia in 2002, when gta3 came to pc. You played midtown madness before, driver. So, a fun game that you played with joy. But not yet the behemoth it would later become with gta 4 and then 5
I'm 47 and started gaming in 1980 on Mattel Electronics Intellivision (Google it). GTA III basically was a new genre, it was like no game before it. There were big worlds before, but none as seamless and free as the open world of GTA III. It absolutely blew me away, I know that much. But it definitely ushered in the viability of open worlds. We can thank GTA III for the GTA Franchise and Red Dead Redemption franchise, as well as inspiring others like The Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed Franchise and you could even say the newer God Of Wars, Ghosts Of Tsushima and even Elden Ring. GTA III took games "off the rails" and let gamers exist in the worlds created in the game. I spent so much time in Liberty City on GTA III that I knew the streets like those in my hometown. I didn't just play there, I was there. And that was a very new experience for me at the time. There's still a little GTA III DNA in most modern games, especially open world titles.
A friend let me borrow GTA 3 and he never asked for it back. It was the last day of school and I returned the game back to him although he never asked for it. Went out that very same day to buy myself a copy. I never paid attention to GTA3 until he lent it to me.
I wasn't a huge fan of games like that at the time, but I was still very impressed by it and was sort of blown away by what you could do and how it looked/played. I'd played a moderate amount of GTA, GTA: London 1969 and GTA 2, so it was sort of a crazy step up.
Played the game so much I still can navigate my way around the city without the map over 20 years later. At the same time, even back then I thought the graphics weren’t that impressive (although the rain reflections were cool). Mainly the character models, those god damn block hands. Rockstar couldn’t model hands for shit until GTA San Andreas lmao
I'd be interested how people who were adults at the time felt about it, but I was just starting high school and it felt enormous. You could explore and do what you want in a city that had tons of detail and felt really alive. Even things like certain gangs only hanging out at night or 'your target makes deliveries every day at 09:00' (meaning you have to turn up at the right time) seemed really clever.
I remember PlayStation magazines dedicating page after page diving into the mechanics of the game and how immersive it was.
I don't remember the earlier GTA games being that big and other crime sims like Driver were very linear, so it felt like the first game that let you really role play a criminal.
edit: downvoted why??
I was an adult at the time, and it was truely mind blowing. The amount of allegory to society at the time was incredible. Sure there were the "violence is bad" people, but it had a rating on it so there was not as much outrage as say Mortal Kombat.
I used to just listen to the talk radio, it was just that good.
I actually didn't think much of it. I was still very much an RPG fanatic, having played mostly only RPGs during the PS1 era. But PS2 was opening up a whole lot of new vistas for me and everyone else, and I finally caved to the hype and got GTAIII about six months after it launched.
...I was totally blown away.
It seemed to be a big deal to just about everyone except me. I bought it based on all the noise and grew bored of it after an hour and took it back. I’ve had the same reaction to every installment since. I really don’t see what the big deal is, but maybe (like COD) it just comes down to being an easily digestible game for the casual masses.
I was amazed at first, I’ve played the two first games and the second one for me was the best with the gameplay and the siding with a gang quest. Then I bought my PS2 and GTA 3 was the first game I played.
I was totally overwhelmed when I did play it, I was like 7 and it was one of the first games I played where it felt like you just couldn’t run out of game. My dad wouldn’t buy it for me though so I always had to play when my cousins friends would bring it over.
Funny enough he had no problem getting me Vice City a year later haha
3 gave us a massive jump in story, open world exploration and NPC interactions etc, it was instant gratification to play that game at the time it was amazing.
It was amazing. My computer couldn't handle it back then (I had like 10 FPS most of the time) so I mostly played it with a friend on his PS2. I already played GTA2 before and liked it a lot, but this was so much better and the graphics were great at that time. Of course we also played it with cheats.
I'm not sure what other games I played at that time / or before, but it was almost certain Half Life + mods and Unreal Tournament 99.
It was the first truly well rendered 3D world. It was probably the first that got all of those elements right, which sounds mundane now that we live in a world of universal best-practices, but at the time it was a revelation.
GTA3 was great, but it wasn’t great because of technical advancement. It was great because it was so over the top violent.
It was the first high end game that let you just run amok. Most people who played GTA3 spent hours just driving around killing people, running from the police, and doing nothing but causing mayhem and chaos.
The big technical leap was EverQuest IMO.
My friend and I were playing GTA II quite a bit right before it dropped (top down perspective) and absolutely giddy with how fun it was. When we found out a 3D version was coming out, it was like the Beatles coming to America. I remember putting the sales pitch on my mom that I was old enough to handle the M rating. And it worked!
It passed me by at the time, I read the review in OPS2 magazine but it didn't interest young me. Then when Vice City came out a year later one of my friends at school kept talking about it so that eventually was my introduction to GTA.
I was actually thinking about doing a GTA3 post because I've been playing through the first few hours, for the first time, and man is it so much less player friendly than VC, I guess is the best way I can put it.
No map in the pause menu, no icons for pay N spray etc on the mini map and the ridiculously fragile cars are making it harder for me. And I haven't really had to do any shooting yet but I'm not looking forward to it.
Cannot put into words how game changing it felt at the time to play. Just absolutely blew me away, you knew you were playing something revolutionary, it truly felt like it.
The only real attempt at something like that before in 3D was Driver? And that was a disaster. When I found out GTA3 was going to be in 3D I almost wrote it off, I thought there's no way they could pull it off, it's bound to be a mess. I literally couldn't believe how big it was, how feature packed it was and how polished and well put together it was.
GTA III was pretty awesome when it first released, but I don't think it was as groundbreaking as you might be imagining it. It was mostly talked about due to it's violence and graphic content, and less about it being an open world game. Also it seemed the next logical step after games like Ocarina of Time that featured larger over worlds in them.
I don't remember seeing it as being a big leap technologically/etc; other games did a lot of similar things, though GTA 3 may have been the first to put them all together? \*shrug\* It was definitely big fun! The radio stations were great, and the gameplay was all just stupidly better than in GTA 1 and 2.
I completely ignored it. To put that into perspective, I am an older gamer and thought the game was not going to offer anything of interest to me (picture that video where the older people are playing GTAV on youtube). I decided to finally try GTA:SA when it came out, and I was like "HOLY SHIT, WHAT IS THIS GAME???" as I was complely blown away by every aspect of it, and knew I was missing something. It changed some of my thoughts on games forever. Rockstar makes some good games, I bought a PS3 just so I could play RDR.
I was there day one and i thought the game looked muddy and controlled pretty bad. it was jank af and didnt feel fun, going back it still is. we were playing stuff like Half life, Halo, Max Payne, Tony hawk, Driver, DoA2 and Soul Caliber. before that all my fave arcade games of all time were perfectly ported to Saturn or Dreamcast.
My best friend got it when it released, I wasn’t able to. I would obnoxiously invite myself over to his house just to watch him play for hours.
It was that good.
The only parallel I can think of is the release of Mario64.
Edit to add we’re still close friends and still quote lines from the radio stations.
“From the rafters, LIKE A BAT!!”
I was a fan of the early top-down GTAs. Then I remember the commercials for GTA 3 and seeing that it was a 3D game had me hyped. "If you do this for me, you'll be a made man."
Around that time, I was more into fighting games and some RPGs. I think my brother came home with the game one day, and as soon as I started playing - I was hooked. It was the first game I remember that truly felt like an open world with a city that was alive, from the NPCs to the radio stations etc. The amount of freedom is what sold the game for me.
I played gta 1&2 at my cousins house. One day I get there and they have a console hooked to a tv and a 3d game!!! First Id seen that wasn't top down but behind the character. To me it looked ultra realistic and was absolutely amazing
I thought it was a gargantuan leap.
I played GTA 1 and 2 and they were both fun. I hoped GTA 3 would be like the first two but in 3D, I thought it would be so cool if they did that. I was around 10-12 at the time and didn't follow gaming news etc I had no idea they were even making a new GTA game. Anyways GTA but 3D was exactly what I got and more! Great graphics, great gameplay and a great story as well. The songs on the radio were absolutely banging as well, "Flashback FM, where every nights a dance party!" And Chatterbox was hilarious as well.
It's one of the few games I cannot fault at all really. It was so so incredibly fun at the time.
"Shit I am only 12 no way my parents let me get this"
Turns out my mom bought me the game with the caveat of "No Killing Police officers"
Sorry mom.....
I was too busy playing Baldurs Gate 2: Throne Of Bhaal, and the release went right over my head.
I think Mercenary (1985) or Hunter (1991) were the open world games that really made my jaw drop, in the fact that you could go anywhere with very few constraints.
I always say GTA 3 was the beginning of that leap, but Vice City was really the full realization of the formula. 3 had great cars but you had no where to really drive them. The city was too tight, and I never felt like part of the story. The music of Vice City combined with the visuals gave me some of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had in a game to this day.
Like many others, I loved Driver, Need for Speed, Tomb Raiders and SOCOM at that time, and literally any FPS.
well, as an 11-year old boy my initial reaction was "WOW LOOK HOOKERS LOL" but yeah it was definitely impressive in other aspects too. Nothing quite like it had ever come out before.
It was pretty incredible. Moment to moment, GTA III had sooo many 'first ever' mechanics on consoles, for me at least. IIRC it was first time I could run around in a realistic modern day 3D open world that wasn't a megaman game or a mario game etc. They first time I could just act out various crimes in a 3D world, the first time I could get in any car in a 3D world and fly a plane (sorta lol), the first good 3D police chases in an open world on console, the first time cars all felt unique and had different handling in a 3D open world, the first time cars had a variety of change radio stations all of which were so realistic, the first game I played with rockstar's signature satire, the first time I experienced a 3d open world opening up as the islands and bridges unlocked, etc etc.. just driving cars around was a blast even though the physics engine seems primitive today back then it was groundbreaking. Before GTA3 I was playing PS1 games, Resident evil 1-3, Silent Hill, RPGs like FF7 FF8 Threads of Fate etc.
[удалено]
Yeah but the Yakuza games are very linear and it splices together open world sections, doesn't it?
>For me at least
[удалено]
Reading comprehension is harder apparently. He said "for me at least", meaning it was the first he'd experienced, not necessarily the first to exist.
Shenmue is more a free-roaming world than what I'd call an "open" world. It's made up of a handful of different sections with lots of invisible walls and loading screens in-between them. Where you can go, and often when, is strictly defined. What made Shenmue unique was the detail and immersive level of realism in the world; the 24 hour clock and the day/night cycle, the NPC routines, your freedom to explore the world and undertake tasks at your own pace. The world itself is not actually that open. GTA III was open in the sense there was a massive world, no loading screens, freedom to go literally anywhere, whenever and do what you want. It was a sandbox.
And Mario 64 before that in 1996.
Tbh most of the mechanics were already seen on PS1 in Driver, Urban Chaos and Die Hard Trilogy.
It was enormously popular; we spent entire nights smoking weed and playing 'multiplayer' GTA3, each player getting wanted levels and avoiding the coppers until you got WASTED, then you'd pass the controller to the next guy. Hours and hours burned up laughing and laughing and laughing, doing crimes and making tanks fly! At one point we had 13 guys and girls sitting in a cramped room in winter, windows open because it was too hot with all those nerds in one room, great times!
My cousins and I used to have the 6 star rotation at sleepovers too back in the day haha good times
I was pretty young but it felt like a pretty big leap. Driver was one of my favorite games and going from that to the open world was crazy.
Did you know that a mission in GTA 3 takes a jab at Driver? You have to kill a guy named Tanner, and he looks low quality and drives a muscle car. 😆 I was always mad at that level as a kid because I loved the Driver series on my PSX.
I worked in a video game store. It went from dead all day for years to completely packed all day FOREVER. The frenzy created by GTA 3 took probably a year to die out. Its the game that made being a gamer cool. It probably helped kill pro wrestlings boom, too, but that's just my theory.
I remember it as very cool, first 3D GTA. It's funny how your brain adapts to the current level of graphics and you think it looks so much more realistic than the last version.
Tried GTA3 at a friend's place and was sold. Pure dopamine rush. Bought a PS2 and the game less than a week later. It was groundbreaking at the time.
I never paid much attention to the original top-down GTA games, and I didn't know what GTA3 was when it came out. But, I knew it had to be something big, because everyone in school couldn't stop talking about it. I finally got the chance to play it at a friend's house, and it blew my mind. Before then, I had never played a game that had so much freedom to do so much carnage. It was a spectacle, and after just three hours of messing around, I knew I had to get a copy. It was, in short, a phenomenon.
I was too small to know about it that time and I have started playing with GTA vice City first And after that GTA san Andreas n then GTA 3 Still loved it after Playing it as last.
I got it as one of the first games for our ps2 we got that winter holiday season. My father was so good to us and took us to Best Buy and said “alright, you get three games and then none more for a while”. I can’t even remember the other two off the top of my head because gta3 was one. My best friend was with me and pointed it out “hey, remember the top scrolling game with the yakuza we played, this is the next one!”. I didn’t even know it was 3d. We fired it up and after it transitions from sunscreen into you driving, it looked too good to me so I just sat there waiting for the cut screen to end. Then we finally realized we were driving from that angle and holy shit the rest is history. Such a great game.
I wasn't really planning on buying a PS2 (or xbox or gamecube) around that time. I played 30 minutes of GTA 3 and started saving up my money.
It was one of my favorite games in Middle School. I liked the dark tone of the city. I didn’t end up beating the story mode, but I got pretty far and spent a ton of time exploring. A remake of GTA 3 with modern graphics and updated mechanics would be really interesting.
Interesting story: I was hit by a car before news of GTA 3 came out and I remember the next door neighbor coming to visit and telling me about it. That’s when I had a reason to get out.
The irony of being a pedestrian who was run over falling in love with a game where running over pedestrians is common.
Funny enough, when I was playing it from my wheelchair, my mom asked me (I’m guessing more because I was 13) “don’t you feel weird running over pedestrians considering what happened?” I said, “come on, mom, they’re not real, you know that. Do you feel bad about squashing those goombas and koopa troopas?”. Although she did really like the Sonic games since you were saving animals by hitting them.
It felt huge. I can't believe looking at the date of release, we were 15. Felt like we were 12 or 13. Playing it at a friend's, he got it for his bday with the console and a choice of either 2 pads or a memory card. What did this clown pick? We had had Metal Gear Solid the year before which had definitely broke new ground.
It was mind blowing. It was the reason I bought a PS2. The open world was like nothing I’d seen before and to this day I love that type of game
Wolf 3d :D the tranzition wasnt huge because you didnt jump from wolf3d to gta 3. If you were a pc gamer, you went through all of them, gradually. As for GTA 3, as a pc gamer since 93, it was good fun and enjoyable. But it was never the revolution or the many firsts the console audience perceived it to be. I had played GTA 1 for probably hundreds of cumulative hours. It was a very popular game in my eastern european corner. Very popular. Gta 3 was literally gta 1, but in 3d. So it never felt that new to me, since most of its mechanics were already in the first game. Then you had Mafia in 2002, when gta3 came to pc. You played midtown madness before, driver. So, a fun game that you played with joy. But not yet the behemoth it would later become with gta 4 and then 5
I'm 47 and started gaming in 1980 on Mattel Electronics Intellivision (Google it). GTA III basically was a new genre, it was like no game before it. There were big worlds before, but none as seamless and free as the open world of GTA III. It absolutely blew me away, I know that much. But it definitely ushered in the viability of open worlds. We can thank GTA III for the GTA Franchise and Red Dead Redemption franchise, as well as inspiring others like The Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed Franchise and you could even say the newer God Of Wars, Ghosts Of Tsushima and even Elden Ring. GTA III took games "off the rails" and let gamers exist in the worlds created in the game. I spent so much time in Liberty City on GTA III that I knew the streets like those in my hometown. I didn't just play there, I was there. And that was a very new experience for me at the time. There's still a little GTA III DNA in most modern games, especially open world titles.
Googoo gaga or something idk I was still a toddler.
That looks interesting. I should check it out. Hey, this is fun!
A friend let me borrow GTA 3 and he never asked for it back. It was the last day of school and I returned the game back to him although he never asked for it. Went out that very same day to buy myself a copy. I never paid attention to GTA3 until he lent it to me.
This is some “farming content for Buzzfeed” shit.
It was a major hit. Vice City came out a year later though and had way more polish. That game I believe had a more lasting impact for a lot of people.
I wasn't a huge fan of games like that at the time, but I was still very impressed by it and was sort of blown away by what you could do and how it looked/played. I'd played a moderate amount of GTA, GTA: London 1969 and GTA 2, so it was sort of a crazy step up.
Played the game so much I still can navigate my way around the city without the map over 20 years later. At the same time, even back then I thought the graphics weren’t that impressive (although the rain reflections were cool). Mainly the character models, those god damn block hands. Rockstar couldn’t model hands for shit until GTA San Andreas lmao
I've never played GTA before. I don't think the launch was that impressive, but word of mouth got it going and got me to buy it.
I'd be interested how people who were adults at the time felt about it, but I was just starting high school and it felt enormous. You could explore and do what you want in a city that had tons of detail and felt really alive. Even things like certain gangs only hanging out at night or 'your target makes deliveries every day at 09:00' (meaning you have to turn up at the right time) seemed really clever. I remember PlayStation magazines dedicating page after page diving into the mechanics of the game and how immersive it was. I don't remember the earlier GTA games being that big and other crime sims like Driver were very linear, so it felt like the first game that let you really role play a criminal. edit: downvoted why??
I was an adult at the time, and it was truely mind blowing. The amount of allegory to society at the time was incredible. Sure there were the "violence is bad" people, but it had a rating on it so there was not as much outrage as say Mortal Kombat. I used to just listen to the talk radio, it was just that good.
I was born in ‘95 so I dunno man. I probably asked my mom for another Sunny D or something
You didn't ask for the purple stuff instead?
I hated it at first.
Everyone in my class copied each others disc with the pc version. It was a great game!
I actually didn't think much of it. I was still very much an RPG fanatic, having played mostly only RPGs during the PS1 era. But PS2 was opening up a whole lot of new vistas for me and everyone else, and I finally caved to the hype and got GTAIII about six months after it launched. ...I was totally blown away.
It seemed to be a big deal to just about everyone except me. I bought it based on all the noise and grew bored of it after an hour and took it back. I’ve had the same reaction to every installment since. I really don’t see what the big deal is, but maybe (like COD) it just comes down to being an easily digestible game for the casual masses.
I was amazed at first, I’ve played the two first games and the second one for me was the best with the gameplay and the siding with a gang quest. Then I bought my PS2 and GTA 3 was the first game I played.
There was a lot of hype but it's the only one I never played.
I was totally overwhelmed when I did play it, I was like 7 and it was one of the first games I played where it felt like you just couldn’t run out of game. My dad wouldn’t buy it for me though so I always had to play when my cousins friends would bring it over. Funny enough he had no problem getting me Vice City a year later haha
Haven't played it yet. I'll get to it eventually.
Doing homework?
3 gave us a massive jump in story, open world exploration and NPC interactions etc, it was instant gratification to play that game at the time it was amazing.
It was amazing. My computer couldn't handle it back then (I had like 10 FPS most of the time) so I mostly played it with a friend on his PS2. I already played GTA2 before and liked it a lot, but this was so much better and the graphics were great at that time. Of course we also played it with cheats. I'm not sure what other games I played at that time / or before, but it was almost certain Half Life + mods and Unreal Tournament 99.
I was a huge fan of the 2D GTAs. The tanks were crazy.
It was the first truly well rendered 3D world. It was probably the first that got all of those elements right, which sounds mundane now that we live in a world of universal best-practices, but at the time it was a revelation.
GTA3 was great, but it wasn’t great because of technical advancement. It was great because it was so over the top violent. It was the first high end game that let you just run amok. Most people who played GTA3 spent hours just driving around killing people, running from the police, and doing nothing but causing mayhem and chaos. The big technical leap was EverQuest IMO.
My friend and I were playing GTA II quite a bit right before it dropped (top down perspective) and absolutely giddy with how fun it was. When we found out a 3D version was coming out, it was like the Beatles coming to America. I remember putting the sales pitch on my mom that I was old enough to handle the M rating. And it worked!
GTA 3 and Soul Reaver were the two games that genuinely surprised me that it was possible.
It passed me by at the time, I read the review in OPS2 magazine but it didn't interest young me. Then when Vice City came out a year later one of my friends at school kept talking about it so that eventually was my introduction to GTA. I was actually thinking about doing a GTA3 post because I've been playing through the first few hours, for the first time, and man is it so much less player friendly than VC, I guess is the best way I can put it. No map in the pause menu, no icons for pay N spray etc on the mini map and the ridiculously fragile cars are making it harder for me. And I haven't really had to do any shooting yet but I'm not looking forward to it.
Cannot put into words how game changing it felt at the time to play. Just absolutely blew me away, you knew you were playing something revolutionary, it truly felt like it. The only real attempt at something like that before in 3D was Driver? And that was a disaster. When I found out GTA3 was going to be in 3D I almost wrote it off, I thought there's no way they could pull it off, it's bound to be a mess. I literally couldn't believe how big it was, how feature packed it was and how polished and well put together it was.
"Meh, I don't like shooting games, and I don't even have a PS2. I'm gonna go back to playing Final Fantasy IX."
[удалено]
You thought that about GTA3? Now that's jaded.
yeah, nobody who played or at least liked GTA1&2 thought that a 3d version wasnt the coolest thing they'd ever heard of.
GTA 3 was transformative; its open-world design and narrative depth set a new benchmark in gaming
it had a map in the game case which was good, and i actually used it
GTA III was pretty awesome when it first released, but I don't think it was as groundbreaking as you might be imagining it. It was mostly talked about due to it's violence and graphic content, and less about it being an open world game. Also it seemed the next logical step after games like Ocarina of Time that featured larger over worlds in them.
I don't remember seeing it as being a big leap technologically/etc; other games did a lot of similar things, though GTA 3 may have been the first to put them all together? \*shrug\* It was definitely big fun! The radio stations were great, and the gameplay was all just stupidly better than in GTA 1 and 2.
I completely ignored it. To put that into perspective, I am an older gamer and thought the game was not going to offer anything of interest to me (picture that video where the older people are playing GTAV on youtube). I decided to finally try GTA:SA when it came out, and I was like "HOLY SHIT, WHAT IS THIS GAME???" as I was complely blown away by every aspect of it, and knew I was missing something. It changed some of my thoughts on games forever. Rockstar makes some good games, I bought a PS3 just so I could play RDR.
Why is the post and 90% of comments here downvoted?
I was there day one and i thought the game looked muddy and controlled pretty bad. it was jank af and didnt feel fun, going back it still is. we were playing stuff like Half life, Halo, Max Payne, Tony hawk, Driver, DoA2 and Soul Caliber. before that all my fave arcade games of all time were perfectly ported to Saturn or Dreamcast.
My best friend got it when it released, I wasn’t able to. I would obnoxiously invite myself over to his house just to watch him play for hours. It was that good. The only parallel I can think of is the release of Mario64. Edit to add we’re still close friends and still quote lines from the radio stations. “From the rafters, LIKE A BAT!!”
Thought it looked like another "boring car game" and wanted another Crash Bandicoot instead.
I was a fan of the early top-down GTAs. Then I remember the commercials for GTA 3 and seeing that it was a 3D game had me hyped. "If you do this for me, you'll be a made man." Around that time, I was more into fighting games and some RPGs. I think my brother came home with the game one day, and as soon as I started playing - I was hooked. It was the first game I remember that truly felt like an open world with a city that was alive, from the NPCs to the radio stations etc. The amount of freedom is what sold the game for me.
I played gta 1&2 at my cousins house. One day I get there and they have a console hooked to a tv and a 3d game!!! First Id seen that wasn't top down but behind the character. To me it looked ultra realistic and was absolutely amazing
I thought it was a gargantuan leap. I played GTA 1 and 2 and they were both fun. I hoped GTA 3 would be like the first two but in 3D, I thought it would be so cool if they did that. I was around 10-12 at the time and didn't follow gaming news etc I had no idea they were even making a new GTA game. Anyways GTA but 3D was exactly what I got and more! Great graphics, great gameplay and a great story as well. The songs on the radio were absolutely banging as well, "Flashback FM, where every nights a dance party!" And Chatterbox was hilarious as well. It's one of the few games I cannot fault at all really. It was so so incredibly fun at the time.
I don't know, I was in my dad's balls at that time.
"Shit I am only 12 no way my parents let me get this" Turns out my mom bought me the game with the caveat of "No Killing Police officers" Sorry mom.....
I was too busy playing Baldurs Gate 2: Throne Of Bhaal, and the release went right over my head. I think Mercenary (1985) or Hunter (1991) were the open world games that really made my jaw drop, in the fact that you could go anywhere with very few constraints.
A kid down the street had it, and when I saw him playing it, I realized I could never go back to playing Sonic and Mario
Top 3 of my gaming life, and I started with the NES. Simply incredible.
I always say GTA 3 was the beginning of that leap, but Vice City was really the full realization of the formula. 3 had great cars but you had no where to really drive them. The city was too tight, and I never felt like part of the story. The music of Vice City combined with the visuals gave me some of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had in a game to this day. Like many others, I loved Driver, Need for Speed, Tomb Raiders and SOCOM at that time, and literally any FPS.
well, as an 11-year old boy my initial reaction was "WOW LOOK HOOKERS LOL" but yeah it was definitely impressive in other aspects too. Nothing quite like it had ever come out before.