Last year, I noticed that I have most of the Grand Theft Auto games. I haven't played any Grand Theft Auto game, so as the world changed forever, I decided to start. Now that I've been playing this on and off for over a year, I realize that I'm not having fun, so I'm posting this to move on.

GTA 3 is an open world crime simulator. Gameplay consists of stealing cars, driving them around, running people over, and avoiding cops. Unfortunately, I'm the gamer who usually chooses the good guy option, so unless this game has something compelling, I'm bored.

There is no inventory system or mission tracking. You can't even see the whole map! This is despite this game having an inventory, missions, and an open world. You have a health meter, but it doesn't regenerate, and can only be filled with powerups that appear at one spot in the whole city!

For example, I get a mission to pick up a car at a certain place, then kill rival gang members. The guy said something about going to 'Newport' for the car, but I don't know where that is. There's no marker on the minimap, and there's no way to tell which part of town that is unless you happen to be driving through it. Ok, I'm there; I see an apartment complex, so I grab a car there, but I forgot what I where I was supposed to be going after that. Wait, was there somewhere else that I supposed to grab the car? Who knows! I thought this was supposed to be fun, but mucking around in haystacks isn't fun.

The graphics are terrible, as are the animations. (Granted this ran on Playstation 2, so what can you expect.) The weapons aren't better, because they handle very rigidly and feel very unnatural. Getting even one kill feels like a miracle. When you die, you respawn at a hospital with no weapons, meaning you have to find them all the way across the city again.

The story started with your character breaking out of jail. I don't know how he got in there, and I don't remember if it was even mentioned. The character won't tell, because he's a silent protagonist, and as mentioned, there's no mission or log anywhere. I get tossed around the criminal underworld, working for one gang, then another. It's not clear what my end goal is, aside from going around and wrecking other people's stuff.

I don't recommend this, since it bored me to tears. There was a remastered edition of this game recently, but it was bad for mostly technical reasons. I've had more fun with one of Todd's games than I can ever see myself having in this. I've heard GTA 3 is pretty rough, so let's see if I like the others better.