• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Damn, GTA III is cheap as hell

Salsa

Member
Alright so, there is no map other than the small gps, no marked location for the gun store/spray n paint, you have to constantly keep doing missions between the different islands so there's a lot of sensless driving involved, and now when i get to the other side of the island to steal this mob car,as it turns out the mob has this super gun that basically sets my car on fire and makes it explode by one shot in 2 seconds. Lost all my weapons and armor, starting again at the Hospital. Gotta drive back to where the mission starts, then off again to the other side of the island, then steal the two other cars first, then steal the mob car only to probably be set on fire again. Repeat.

Wat.

How did i play this back when it came out ? its nothing but pure punishment, cut me some slack ffs

Still gonna finish it probably, its not that the game is hard, its just super cheap, and makes it hard to you by baffling design choices. I know it was the first GTA and i cant really blame it and all, but its amazing how the little things they fixed with Vice City changed the whole experience.
 
You're suppose to use the map that came inside the game case. I had that shit laid out on the table whenever I played it, lol.
 
Wario64 said:
You're suppose to use the map that came inside the game case. I had that shit laid out on the table whenever I played it, lol.

Well that's what happens when you are a kid and you lend each other games i guess :(

Anyway to find this map with marked locations online ? might as well just leave it open on my second monitor.
 
Wario64 said:
You're suppose to use the map that came inside the game case. I had that shit laid out on the table whenever I played it, lol.

Real Talk, + putting stuff on the map as markers where to shit was located was awesome
 
Yeah, GTA III hasn't aged well. It was innovative for it's time, but now it feels very dated and pales in comparison to Vice City and San Andreas.
 
Remember back in the day when games expected more of their players rather than giving them everything but the eye hand coordination - like actually learning the layout of the world by playing it. GTA3 was made during those days.
 
Wario64 said:
It's like Star Wars. You know, how it started on Episode 4? GTA started on GTA 3.
I have to agree with this. As much as I loved the early GTA games they don't hold a candle to GTA3+
 
You're supposed to play with the cheats.

This is bringing back memories. Do you guys remember how tough it was to keep the dodo flying?
 
Sqorgar said:
Remember back in the day when games expected more of their players rather than giving them everything but the eye hand coordination - like actually learning the layout of the world by playing it. GTA3 was made during those days.

Not really, just bad game design.

They released a sequel only one year later that fixed a lot of this stuff, certainly not a change of "era" there.
 
is it a specific mob car or do you just need any mafia sentinel? you might be able to shove one in a garage and do the mission that way. The mafia guys use shotguns so they tear up the car fast. There is a pay and spray just outside the mafia territory near the first safehouse in the game. GTA III ends up with most of the gangs in the game targeting the player which gets very deadly.
 
Yeah I find GTA3, and Vice City to be pretty brutal these days. San Andreas is almost as unforgiving but the mechanics are a bit updated.

It doesn't help that open world games have come a LONG way in terms of mechanics, streamlining, graphics, checkpoints, etc. etc. Makes going back to the early attempts at sandbox pretty difficult IMO.
 
I still have the entire layout of the first island copied perfectly into my mind as well as much of the second and third islands. Both Liberty and Vice City were easy enough to navigate and learn, it got complicated for me at SA onwards.
 
I loved GTA III when it came out and it came with the map. Put that on the wall right above my tele and it worked perfectly. Eventually learned the route and lay out from playing it so much. Airport in the West, rail lines on Staunton, kill all those annoying people in Portland. Helped that I spent a lot of time early on just driving around to explore this big 3D world (for the time) when so few other console games even tried such a thing.

saunderez said:
I have to agree with this. As much as I loved the early GTA games they don't hold a candle to GTA3+

Yet I've found I can still put in 2 or London any time I want and enjoy it.Sure just random fun, driving around to attack people or quick 5 missions finished in ten minutes, but enjoyable all the same.
GTA3 and Vice City, as much as I love them at the time, are clunky, slow, annoy me with their limitations (due to all the games that improved sandbox over the years), glitches, and shooting mechanics. The only way I could enjoy them now is if they were remade using the current GTA engine and even then, like SA and IV, wouldn't last that long. In what they do they are leagues above, but in the long run as someone who wants to replay these games, the original over-the-head titles shine brighter for me in my library.
 
Wario64 said:
You're suppose to use the map that came inside the game case. I had that shit laid out on the table whenever I played it, lol.
I own it on Steam and it's going to suck when I eventually play it then. Is there a PDF somewhere of it I can leave open on the other monitor while I play?
 
Eh, I always liked the Godfather game more than any of the GTA's, personally. Sure, Godfather gets repetitive, but the gameplay mechanics are so much funner. I loved grabbing a guy, dragging him to the window/edge of a roof, and throwing him over. Very satisfying. Also satisfying was the special kill animation each gun had. Or strangling somebody. I could kill people in so many ways in that game.

The way you extort people was creative too. Having to figure out what they care about the most, and exploiting it. If they don't like getting hurt, you hurt them. If they don't like you breaking their shit, you break it. Another possibility was you hurting their customers. On that one you pull out your gun and start shooting people (but make sure you don't shoot the owner!). Haha.
 
SalsaShark said:
Alright so, there is no map other than the small gps, no marked location for the gun store/spray n paint, you have to constantly keep doing missions between the different islands so there's a lot of sensless driving involved, and now when i get to the other side of the island to steal this mob car,as it turns out the mob has this super gun that basically sets my car on fire and makes it explode by one shot in 2 seconds. Lost all my weapons and armor, starting again at the Hospital. Gotta drive back to where the mission starts, then off again to the other side of the island, then steal the two other cars first, then steal the mob car only to probably be set on fire again. Repeat.

San Andreas was equally shit in that department. And during the mission you got a crazy woman insulting you or CJ yelling at the player telling him he can't drive (oh sure he's supposed to be saying that to the other drivers but it always sounds like he's bitching against you).
 
Snuggler said:
just open this in your Steam browser

xbox graphics mod fucks with the Steam overlay :P


And yeah, im having trouble with this cause i never really explored early Liberty City enough to know the whereabouts. I kinda "skipped" 3 (as in, never finished it) and went from 2 directly to Vice City. That's the game map i have memorized.

Grayman said:
is it a specific mob car or do you just need any mafia sentinel? you might be able to shove one in a garage and do the mission that way. The mafia guys use shotguns so they tear up the car fast. There is a pay and spray just outside the mafia territory near the first safehouse in the game. GTA III ends up with most of the gangs in the game targeting the player which gets very deadly.

Any car, and thanks. Mostly talking about the game itself though more than this particular mission. I'll get it eventually, i just ragequit after every try and go back to it half an hour later, lol.
 
Sqorgar said:
Remember back in the day when games expected more of their players rather than giving them everything but the eye hand coordination - like actually learning the layout of the world by playing it. GTA3 was made during those days.

ZeroRay said:
I still have the entire layout of the first island copied perfectly into my mind as well as much of the second and third islands. Both Liberty and Vice City were easy enough to navigate and learn, it got complicated for me at SA onwards.

Pretty much this.

I could pick up Vice City now and know everything about it. The first two areas of San Andreas as well.

GTA4 on the other hand, meh, I just let the GPS handle that shit. No need to learn anything in that chore of a game.
 
industrian said:
Pretty much this.

I could pick up Vice City now and know everything about it. The first two areas of San Andreas as well.

GTA4 on the other hand, meh, I just let the GPS handle that shit. No need to learn anything in that chore of a game.

:lol you people kill me. GTA3, and Vice City were easy to learn because they were tiny, and get dwarfed by most open world games these days in size and detail. The mechanics were janky as hell as well. Loving the era of the game is one thing, but letting nostalgia cloud your memory and the whole "those were the days" stuff doesn't work in this instance.

And you letting the GPS "handle" GTAIV is your own fault. I knew most of that city block by block by the end of my playthrough.
 
On the topic of the earlier GTAs, I could not get into GTAII due to how weird the controls are. I spent the majority of the game walking backwards without me even realizing it. <_<
 
Net_Wrecker said:
And you letting the GPS "handle" GTAIV is your own fault. I knew most of that city block by block by the end of my playthrough.

The entirety of GTA4 was a "Go from A to B to do C" affair. There was very little auxiliary content like in San Andreas or Vice City that made me interested in learning more about the setting or exploring it in greater detail.
 
GTA3 hasn't aged well? I mean, not as well as Vice City and SA cause they're more recent but.. really? I think relative to most games that are that old, GTA3 has aged pretty damn well.
 
i've been replaying san andreas after having bought it on steam last week or so when it was on sale. gta classic pack or something.

i was really looking forward to flying airplanes. after 23 hours or so i finally unlocked the flying school, but man i was disappointed. i can't fly for shit. i've completed some of the missions but they are a lot harder than i remember. i actually thought they were a breeze back when i played it on the ps2

i know it's been too long since i used a plane on a gta, so i'm obviously out of practice. but i'm also pretty sure i couldn't do all the missions yet because of the controls. the airplanes control like shit on the pc version

feels bad man.jpg, i've lost my drive to play it. i'll probably just forget about it and uninstall it eventually. i'm glad i got it for cheap, i'd be really pissed if it wasn't for that deal

also, that mission where you're driving the bike for smoke is piss easy ("all you had to do was follow the damn train, cj!"). it's just a matter of driving on the right side of the tracks. some missions seem like they were just designed to be completed in a very specific way. that last mission you do with ryder stealing from the military, for example, forces you to shoot the army guys yourself, since ryder is incompetent and gets killed if you let him handle it

controls aside, the game is better than what i remembered too, at least as far as i got
 
enzo_gt said:
GTA3 hasn't aged well? I mean, not as well as Vice City and SA cause they're more recent but.. really? I think relative to most games that are that old, GTA3 has aged pretty damn well.

It's totally playable, it just has some tough design choices that are downright flaws.
 
so many memories with gta3...i remember being on the last mission in gta3 and then i lost my memory card when i took it to my friends house the next day. i never completed it =/
 
Never could get into GTA, or any sandbox games in general. I need some kind of overall goal to work towards. I hate being thrust into a bigass world with no instructions other than "Do whatever.". I end up wandering around for hours, wondering what I should be doing. Eventually, I grow fatigued and quit/sell the game. :(
 
enzo_gt said:
GTA3 hasn't aged well? I mean, not as well as Vice City and SA cause they're more recent but.. really? I think relative to most games that are that old, GTA3 has aged pretty damn well.

Talking relative to MOST games is pointless since MOST games will age badly by default as only the timeless games are remembered fondly. GTA3 though, being that it's one of the top class free roam action games from that era, has not aged well IMO. The controls, camera, and shooting mechanics are enough to dock points.

Aging well to me means that if you were to do a "HD Upgrade" version of the game without touching the mechanics, the game will still be as great as it was back then. That can't happen with GTA3, or even Vice City to be honest. It's not a knock on those games, but the genre has come a LONG way, and I think Rockstar would agree.
 
Electivirus said:
Never could get into GTA, or any sandbox games in general. I need some kind of overall goal to work towards. I hate being thrust into a bigass world with no instructions other than "Do whatever.". I end up wandering around for hours, wondering what I should be doing. Eventually, I grow fatigued and quit/sell the game. :(
gta has goals. you just have to follow the markers to the missions
 
If you think this is bad, go back and play GTA2, or worse, Body Harvest. Now there's two R* games where you'll be perpetually lost. Vice City is still really playable, mitten hands and all.
 
It was a huge step up from all previous games, ushering in what I still think as the current generation of games. It was janky as all hell but it offered so much potential for you to play with. Not to meantion the attention to detail with the pedestrians and radio stations. Vice City improved everything, the mechanics were tightened up and the content polished. Future GTA will still be built on the foundations laid in GTA3, I still go back and play it for the atmosphere and the city. Still love the story too. Much more enjoyable than GTA4. Recommend playing on PC to avoid the jank through use of mods.
 
Speaking of cheap, did you do the "Expresso 2 Go" mission yet, op ?

A decade since its release, the mission was designed in such a way that it's become burned in my memory, despite only having finished the game once.
 
SalsaShark said:
Alright so, there is no map other than the small gps, no marked location for the gun store/spray n paint, you have to constantly keep doing missions between the different islands so there's a lot of sensless driving involved, and now when i get to the other side of the island to steal this mob car,as it turns out the mob has this super gun that basically sets my car on fire and makes it explode by one shot in 2 seconds. Lost all my weapons and armor, starting again at the Hospital. Gotta drive back to where the mission starts, then off again to the other side of the island, then steal the two other cars first, then steal the mob car only to probably be set on fire again. Repeat.

So just like GTAIV only you get to keep your weapons when you die?
 
Wait, what? Missions were marked as were mission points, IIRC? Maybe not on the map (though I'm sure they were) but the mini-map? I know Spray and Pays and stuff like that showed up on the map and mini-map.

Anyway, it wasn't an issue as over time you'd learn the city and places. Salvatore was on Portland to the far "north" coming from Staunton's bridge and to the west of that North.
 
Flying_Phoenix said:
So just like GTAIV only you get to keep your weapons when you die?

Sure, if you dont count the in-game map, checkpoints and autosave :/


TheSeks said:
Wait, what? Missions were marked as were mission points, IIRC? Maybe not on the map (though I'm sure they were) but the mini-map? I know Spray and Pays and stuff like that showed up on the map and mini-map.

Spray n paint shows up on the map in specific circumstances. Say you need to get a car to a garage in mint condition, if you beat it up too much, a spray n paint will appear. After that its nowhere to be found if you get cops following you and whatnot.
 
I personally enjoyed playing the game without a map. The sandbox felt much bigger that way. And it meant that you'd have to recognize places by heart to know know how to get around. It just makes you feel like less of a tourist and more of an actual resident once all the places are in your memory.
 
Electivirus said:
I know. I probably didn't state that correctly. What I'm basically saying is that I get overwhelmed by choices.
You only ever have 2 or 3 missions at a time to choose from. Just power through the story if you're not interested in the open world stuff.

The Spoony Hou said:
I can't play GTAs because I just get lost on the map. Requiring a physical map is bullshit.
GTAIV has in car GPS.
 
Flying_Phoenix said:
I guess you're right. It just feels that GTAIV is cheap as hell sometimes as well.

Currently playing it now.

GTAIV had a LOT of dumb things in there as well, and Rockstar knew since they were (mostly) fixed in the expansions, and more so in Red Dead Redemption.
 
Top Bottom