Grand Theft Auto III Review

Liberty City is the achievement, not the missions. A contiguous city streams off a PlayStation 2 disc with traffic, pedestrians, weather, and a dozen radio stations you can hear from the pavement, and the moment you steal your first car you understand that the rules of the place apply to you exactly as they apply to everyone else. The wanted system gives the world teeth, escalating from one patrol car to roadblocks to helicopters, and mission design finally has room to breathe because the map itself is the level.

Silent protagonist Claude is a hole in the middle of the story, and checkpoint-free missions punish you brutally for a bad final thirty seconds. The camera fights you in tight alleys, pop-in hides behind fog, and the gunplay is little more than a lock-on button. None of that mattered in 2001, and most of it stopped mattering because this game defined what everyone would fix next.