Grand Theft Auto 3 iPhone, iPad Review: A Strong Contender For Game of the Year

Funny how things play out, isn’t it? Back in 2001, when Grand Theft Auto III (GTA III) was originally released on the PlayStation 2, the overriding challenge was to bring the previously 2D series into the realm of full 3D. There would be few among us that would argue against Rockstar successfully and magnificently pulling off the challenge; thus providing the spark that would signal players’ love affair with all things sandbox and open-world.

Fast forward 10 years and Rockstar are again faced with a challenge. This time in how to bring a game held in such high regard by so many to a device without buttons, without analogue sticks and primarily designed as a means of communication and fart machines.

Perhaps that’s playing Apple’s box of tricks short (this review is based on the iPhone edition), after all this is the same device that has provided full 3D experiences (of varying success) in the form of Dead Space, Infinity Blade , various EA Sports titles and others.

No matter how you look at it, though, bringing the full living, open-world of Liberty City to the palm of your hand is an altogether different proposition. Not only are there technical issues to solve, but Rockstar has got to provide a framework of inputs and controls that not only work but are intuitive to GTA III newcomers and veterans alike.

At the end of the day, this is a Rockstar game. Rockstar don’t tend to pick or produce half-baked projects. Rockstar showed us that you can make an expansive desert fun in Red Dead Redemption and that the simple act of asking questions can be extremely engaging in L.A. Noire.

They’ve now shown us that full open-world environments work on a pocket sized touch-screen devices. To say that this 10th anniversary edition of GTA III represents an achievement on the same scale as the 2001 release would be a gross overstatement, but to say it works is not.

Those elements that make it work are exactly the same as they were 10 years ago. However, the way you interact with them is, obviously, not.

There’s no doubting that this edition of GTAIII has the best “virtual analogue stick” implementation I’ve just seen on the iPhone – it’s a far cry from the comparative crap offered by iPhone editions of Gameloft knockoffs and Fifa. In a bit of particularly smart thinking, anywhere you touch on the left side of the side becomes the central point of your virtual stick, removing the need for pinpoint finesse and needlessly accurate muscle memory.

It’s the rest of the controls that fail to live up to par. Sprinting, jumping, entering/exiting cars, shooting et al are plonked onto the right side of the screen as a series of buttons sitting next to each other. For someone with large thumbs like myself, accidentally hitting jump when I want to shot the guy gunning for me does (and will) lead to too many premature deaths - in turn leading to frustration and too much cursing.

Problems also exist when inside vehicles as camera movements are handled by tapping and sweeping at the centre of the screen. Unless you’re an octopus, this forces you to take your thumbs away from the steering and/or pedals, which is particularly annoying when you’re being chased and want to look at your pursuers while remaining on the road.

Still, things are hardly a nightmare and, as I alluded to above, there are many examples of how to approach similar problems in an inferior manner.

Controls aside, this rerelease is universally excellent. It seems that nothing has been cut from the original; all the voiceovers, radio stations, missions, car types and locations retained. The silent anti-hero protagonist is as good at letting the rest of the colourful cast take centre stage as he ever was and the plot line still provides the sense of wackiness, post-modern reference and divisiveness as it ever did.

Given the fact that these kinds of games have moved on quite some distance since GTA III’s initial release, some of the missions do feel outdated and repetitive. Replaying it some 10 years later makes it clear that the design team had a difficult job trying to figure out how to properly integrate some mission plots into the bigger narrative picture.

Add that to the issues with the control schemes (which can make time limited missions especially taxing) and you’ve got an experience that will likely turn as many people off as it does on. Essentially, there’s no doubting that the PS3 version remains the definitive edition.

If you’re going to take the plunge and pick this up for the grand old price of £2.99 then you really do need to put on your patient hat on and enter into proceedings knowing that some difficulties lay ahead. Once you accept that, and engross yourself in the world, you’ll find a game that is worth the pain and effort – if only for the characterisation and plot alone.

We so often forget just how much quality the PS2-era GTA games packed when it came to narrative and character. Many of us remember them initially for their technical prowess – pulling off an open, 3D world. After that, we remember them for the vast array of options they afforded when it came to rampaging around the environment and figuring out ever more ingenious means of ending lives.

The experience locked away in GTA III is beautiful. Unfortunately, the control scheme represents a complicated key.

Grand Theft Auto III Tops iPhone Sales Chart

Every week, we rounds up the top-grossing iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad applications, as current that day in the iTunes App Store. This week's U.S. revenue charts see Grand Theft Auto III and Kick the Buddy earning top iPhone sales, while Battle Nations and The Sims: FreePlay emerge as big sellers on the iPad.

These charts allow end users to see who is making the most money on the App Store that day. It differs significantly from the Top 10 Games chart, which is ranked by sales, and therefore is dominated by lower-priced titles that sell more copies.

Data comes courtesy of Apple's public sales information. All titles in the App Store's "Games" category are considered in chart rankings.

This week's top-grossing iPhone titles are:

1. Grand Theft Auto III ($4.99)
2. Poker by Zynga (Free)
3. DragonVale (Free)
4. Kick the Buddy ($0.99)
5. Infinity Blade II ($6.99)
6. Angry Birds ($0.99)
7. Card Ace: Casino (Free)
8. Tiny Tower (Free)
9. Modern War (Free)
10. Social Girl (Free)

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto III heads the iPhone's revenue charts in its debut week, unseating last week's sales leader Infinity Blade II. Poker by Zynga continues to generate brisk microtransaction sales at second place, as Backflip's DragonVale takes third in today's rankings.

App Store newcomer Kick the Buddy ranks in at fourth place thanks to an especially popular free trial version, while Crowdstar's latest simulation title Social Girl premieres at tenth.

Here are this week’s top-grossing iPad applications:

1. Battle Nations (Free)
2. The Sims: FreePlay (Free)
3. Angry Birds HD ($4.99)
4. DragonVale (Free)
5. Card Ace: Casino HD (Free)
6. Modern War (Free)
7. Grand Theft Auto III ($4.99)
8. Smurfs' Village (Free)
9. Sonic CD ($1.99)
10. Infinity Blade II ($6.99)

Z2Live's war-themed simulation title Battle Nations leads the iPad's top-grossing apps chart for the second week in a row, while last week's second-highest earner Infinity Blade II drops to tenth place in today's rankings.

Grand Theft Auto III only manages to earn seventh place despite a strong showing in this week's iPhone results, meanwhile, as Sega's recently ported platformer Sonic CD claims ninth in its first week of release.

Grand Theft Auto III: 10 Year Anniversary Edition Launch Trailer

One of the greatest games our generation is making its way to your mobile devices. The full console version of Grand Theft Auto III in the palm of your hand. Spend hours listening to Game Radio and shooting pigeons. Available now on select ios devices and Android devices.

'Grand Theft Auto III' Review - Ten Years Later, Still a Great Game

Prior to Grand Theft Auto III I'd say I had fun messing around in Grand Theft Auto games, but never really enjoyed myself. The top-down view felt incredibly claustrophobic, and, at least for me, made getting immersed into the game world incredibly difficult. I don't think it's hyperbole at all to say that GTA 3 changed everything.

Originally released in 2001 as a Playstation 2 exclusive, Grand Theft Auto III featured a full 3D game engine for the first time in the game series. At least for me, this transformed a silly and entirely too controversial set of video games into a living and breathing universe. It's debatable how well the game has aged in ten years, but in 2001, after the initial cut scene rolls and you're driving through the beginnings of Liberty City, there was no way your jaw wasn't on the floor.

This magic is alive and well in the iOS port of Grand Theft Auto III. There have been a number of open world crime games, most notably Rockstar's own Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and Gameloft's highly "inspired" Gangstar games released on the App Store but neither game holds a candle to the original GTA3 The level of immersion that's possible in the full 3D Liberty City, especially as you become familiar with the cast of characters you'll spend your time taking missions from, feels downright incredible. In games like this, that very same level of immersion is what has kept me sucked in for potentially hundreds of hours, as when you feel like you're actually playing your part in a virtual world, your role in it becomes that much more compelling.

Gameplay in GTA3 is typical of other open world crime games, which would make sense since Rockstar essentially wrote the book on the subject. Your time in Liberty City will be spent doing whatever is asked of you by various gangsters, drug lords, and other unsavories. Often times you'll be doing jobs for multiple people, and between missions will have the choice of which story line you want to continue, and which you'll revisit later.

Alternatively, you can immediately abandon the storyline of the game and instead focus on side missions (such as stealing a taxi and ferrying passengers around the city), looking for secret (and some not so secret) ramps to get ridiculous amount of air off of, or really, anything else you feel like doing. I've always been partial for stocking up on weapons, and seeing just how long I can survive from the police.

I think I've provided a sufficient recap of what GTA3 is for the half a dozen people out there who somehow haven't played it, so the real question is, how does it translate to iOS devices?

I'm happy to say that the game plays surprisingly well. I've found myself preferring the large screen of the iPad 2, but GTA3 is just as much fun on the iPhone. If you think back to actually playing the game on the PS2 (or other console ports), you'll remember that nearly every button on the controller did something. Sadly, the only way GTA3 can work on iOS devices is by replicating all of these functions as virtual buttons.

This results in buttons galore. On foot you'll have a virtual joystick for running around, along with individual virtual buttons for running, jumping, attacking, stealing cars, changing the camera angle, and pausing. Inside of a car, the virtual joystick changes to a set of buttons to steer, along with buttons for the gas, brakes, hand brake, shooting, honking the horn, starting secondary missions (such as the previously mentioned taxi missions), and getting out of the car. Moving the camera involves dragging your finger around in the middle, and viewing the minimap as well as changing weapons involve hitting the top corners of the screen.

These controls are workable, and are easy enough to manage while doing simple missions or just tooling around Liberty City. Unfortunately, things get crazy as soon as you get involved in actual combat. GTA3 uses a zany lock on system for shooting, and it seems like more often than not when you get into an actual firefight you're fighting the camera, the lock on system, and your character's diminishing health supply more than you're fighting the enemies themselves. Things get better as you get more accustomed to the virtual controls, but it never feels like you have the same precision as you would with an actual controller.

Still, it's Grand Theft Auto III on your iPhone (or iPad), and given both the overall quality and depth of the actual gameplay content of GTA3, it's really easy to get over the clunky controls. The performance is great on recent iOS devices, although pop-in on the game's horizon can be pretty noticeable if you let it get to you-- Looking at videos from the PS2 version of the game, it seems like this pop-in was mostly hidden by the relative low-resolution of the game. The retina display, however, makes it really clear.

Picking up GTA3 seems like a no-brainer, especially at the launch price of $4.99. Regardless of the less than ideal control scheme, you'll get five dollars worth of entertainment out of this game, even if all you do is drive around Liberty City listening to the fantastic in-game radio stations. (My favorite is the talk station.) As you become more accustomed with the splattering of virtual buttons all over the screen, you'll find hours upon hours of content to plow through.

Having played GTA3 to completion many times in the past, I'm incredibly happy to be able to take it anywhere with me on my phone of all things.

Why Was Grand Theft Auto III's Star Silent?

After celebrating Grand Theft Auto III's 10-year anniversary with the release of an iOS and Android port, Rockstar is now answering a variety of questions fans have about the game. Among those are the obligatory questions about its protagonist, Claude, and the rationale behind him never uttering a word.

Every Grand Theft Auto game since 3 -- the first to bring the series into 3D -- has featured a star who could speak. Why was Claude made to do a crowbar-free Gordon Freeman impression?

"It may now seem obvious that people should all talk in games, but this was not necessarily the case in 2001, certainly not in an open world game," reads an answer on Rockstar's website. "We were making up a lot of procedures as we went along, and we decided that the NPCs (Non Playable Characters) should talk and we would have to figure out how to make them talk (using motion captured cutscenes, something that had never really been done before, at least not on the scale we were doing it).

"So we decided that the game's protagonist would not talk, partly to aid people identifying with him, but mostly because we had so many other problems to solve and this did not seem like a major issue. We started to discuss introducing a talking lead character when working on Vice City, but it was a lot of work. While the structure of GTA3 may seem obvious or natural now, and the use of cutscenes made in the game's engine that look and feel like the game may seem simple and easy, it really was not the case back in 2001 when we had to figure out all of these things for the first time. Oh and in San Andreas, CJ calls Claude a mute because he does not talk and CJ finds this unnerving."

Several people submitted questions regarding an old trailer, embedded above, showing Claude demand, "Get out of the car!" while hijacking someone's vehicle. This is not a sign that Claude was, once upon a time, intended to speak; it turns out this isn't real. Rockstar suspects "the voices were added at a later date by someone online as at no point did we plan for Claude to have a voice or even design how a speaking protagonist would be implemented until Vice City."

As for the way he was designed, there was not any single character or person who served as the inspiration for him. "We just liked the idea of a strong, silent killer, who would be juxtaposed with all of these neurotic and verbose mobsters in an amusing way," another answer reads. "He seems stronger and in control, while they seem weaker and frantic."

Rockstar wasn't willing to share any information on his background beyond what we know (he's "a bank robber with a noisy and psychotic girlfriend"), but it was noted he isn't dead and his "surname may or may not be Speed." Claude Speed is the name of Grand Theft Auto 2's protagonist, whom some believe to be the same character as GTA III's Claude.

Rockstar also shared some concept art revealing earlier versions of the design for Claude, which can be seen on the next page.

As for Darkel, a character never seen in the game but referred to in its manual and seen on Rockstar's website, he was described simply as "a crazy bum who gave you some crazy missions." These missions were slowly cut out "because they just weren't as good as the rest of the game, and tonally they were a little odd." Rumors of one of these missions involving blowing up a school bus full of children aren't true ("although that is a funny rumor!"). Series fans eager to eventually see these Darkel missions released aren't likely to ever get their hands on them as Rockstar North is busy working on new stuff.

Rockstar plans to answer more questions next week, so if there's anything you've been dying to know for a decade, submit a question and maybe you'll get an answer. If it's GTA2 that intrigues you, the design documents released earlier this year might be right up your alley.

The iOS and Android versions of Grand Theft Auto III are now available for $5. Only a select number of devices are capable of running the game; you can see which ones here. Those that can run it are unfortunately saddled with touchscreen controls which you may or may not find acceptable, though the novelty of having GTA 3 on your phone or tablet may be enough to justify looking past the imperfect controls.

Grand Theft Auto III Heading to iOS, Android Devices

In the 10 years since the debut of "Grand Theft Auto III," several video games have upped the ante in the naughty category - including some other "Grand Theft Auto" games.

But the original open-world gangster-action game is doing a second drive-by with the December 15 release of "Grand Theft Auto 3: 10 Year Anniversary Edition."

The game will be available for download on Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch and on Android tablets and smartphones. It will cost $4.99.

Publisher Rockstar Games sells "Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars" in Apple's App Store, but this is the first game in the series to be released on Google's Android platform. The Apple version works on all iPads, the latest iPod Touch and the iPhone 4 and 4S. Rockstar has posted a list of supported Android devices as well.

From the first batch of screen shots released by the publisher, the game looks similar on the two mobile platforms. Instead of using a controller like on the original PlayStation 2 game, players will tap on-screen buttons to switch between weapons.

Rockstar plans to release more details and a trailer video to coincide with the game's release next week, the company said. A spokesman didn't immediately respond to a question about whether the anniversary game would have different missions from the original.

The "Grand Theft Auto" series has sold more than 114 million copies worldwide since it debuted in 1997. In November, Rockstar released a trailer for "Grand Theft Auto 5," which is in development.

The holiday season has been active with anniversary games. Microsoft released "Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary," Sega put out "Sonic Generations" and Konami had "Metal Gear Solid HD Collection."