After Ten years GTA 3 returns.
iOS gaming has always fascinated me. A double edged sword, if you will. On the one hand you have ever improving systems and the arguably best touch screen technology in the iPad and iPhone (and as extension, Touch) but on the other hand you have, especially in recent years an overflow of sub standard games that fail to use the controls to their full potential and instead try to recreate console experiences. (something which I think threatens the app store in its entirety). This is especially true with first person shooters; even console stalwarts like Battlefield are incredibly frustrating experiences on touch screen. So i was both excited and worried when earlier in the year Rockstar announced they were to bring their free roaming, genre defining game, Grand Theft Auto 3 to the app store. Could they ever put such a big game on such a small device and do it justice?
GTA 3 will always hold a special place in my life. It came at that time before I had a ps2 and had to leech onto a friend who did and after playing for the first time i tell you that boy was my best friend. I still remember unwrapping the ps2 for my birthday and receiving GTA 3 from my mum, that game never left that disc tray and it was how unique the game was; it wasn’t the violence or over the top swearing that kept me in Liberty City but instead the simple things, driving in a taxi and picking up passengers, switching over to chatterbox to hear Lazlo or driving down a main road in the pouring rain and seeing the lights and city come to life in the reflections of the puddles. Essentially it was the freedom; I could do what i wanted the way I wanted to and I loved it. It was revolutionary then and it still is now.
Roll on ten years later and we’ve all succumb to age, I’m 22 and GTA 3 has been superseded by countless free roaming games so the question becomes can and does it hold up on a handheld after all these years? the short answer is yes.
It’s almost impossible to believe how small the file size for this game is. Coming in at under a gig of storage just perplexes me. The game features every single thing that the ps2 version had boasting improved visuals and textures on the hd iPad screen and it shows, as soon as you take to the streets of Liberty City you feel like your back in a familiar place and simply put it’s never looked better, cars are shinier and facial animation is more detailed (although perhaps it looks even more strange than before)
The classic mission structure of GTA seems almost ideal for handheld with the first bulk of the game being essentially tutorial missions and you really appreciate those more than ever because there is a learning curve with the game that we perhaps take advantage of now being veterans of the genre.
As stated, the biggest worry doesn’t come from the visuals but the thing that plagues many games – the controls. With no actual buttons or thumb sticks and the kind of controllers we are accustomed to, especially for the complex controls for GTA and it has to be said that Rockstar are successful – for the most part in emulating that experience. The controls function for three different areas; on foot (navigation, running), driving and shooting. The different icons are fairly straight forward with the choice of either a digital thumb stick or analogue left and right for driving and limited to a thumb stick for moving around on foot found on the left hand of the screen and on the right there is buttons for punching, entering vehicles, jumping etc and it is all placed neatly and is very easy to use, on iPad. However the iPhones version can sometimes be very close to each other and it’s very to find yourself turning left instead of right or jumping instead of punching.
There is one area the controls can become quite frustrating and that is whilst trying to aim and shoot. I very often found myself in firefights aiming randomly at nice old ladies because she was perhaps closer than the man with the gun.
The controls are perhaps not as precise as they are on a controller but it’s a small price to pay for an otherwise great game that looks great, sounds great and for the most part plays great, and at a mere £3 it is almost too good to refuse and for those who enjoy playing the GTA clones on the iOS, remember GTA 3 fondly or have never played then I highly recommend getting this game – my first choice of system being iPad 2 for high definition, smooth frame rate and large visible screen.
Here’s to the iOS return of Vice City!