Grand Theft Auto

The Good
Where to begin, where to begin... Well, it is amazingly playable for a console game (as the gameplay is exactly the same as on the PC) - even I, a guy who shivers at the thought of having to play a game on anything except my trusty old '87 IBM keyboard, can spend hour upon hour in front of the TV playing this masterpiece. I read Tomer Gabels infavourable review of the PC version, and I must say that the problems he describes are exactly the reason I bought a video game console in the first place, and GTA runs just perfectly on a PlayStation - no getting stuck in walls, no jerky graphics, no problems whatsoever.

In addition to being perfectly programmed, GTA really has excellent presentation. The first game disc I've ever popped into my CD player, GTA has brilliant sound. Every time you step into a vehicle, a "radio" soundtrack starts playing, and even though it isn't always the sort of music I'd tune in to, it perfectly suits the gameplay, and I found myself hijacking pick-up trucks just to hear the country track with the part that goes "menfolk found their women scary, 'cause they were so big and hairy". And it ain't 'arf bad effect-wise, either!

Nice sound doesn't make a good game, but GTA has well designed levels, enough hidden surprizes, and a concept original enough to keep me hooked until I've finished it.

(And the graphics are great for a 97 PS game - nothing fancy, but functional.)

The Bad
Frankly, I will never be able to understand games (I understand the reason, I just don't understand why that reason should matter) where you cannot save at any given point. In the contemporary console style, GTA only lets you save in between levels (city maps, that is), and it's pretty darn frustrating to botch the one last mission you need to finish a city by, say, driving off the pier or being cornered by police without your handy SMG.

The Bottom Line
I would hate to think that anyone who owns a PlayStation hasn't played this game, as it's the most rewarding single-player console game I've ever played. The bad-ass atmosphere and great presentation just grip you from the start and keep you hooked 'til your fingers drop off (not an unlikely conclusion for a person with normal-sized hands, when playing with the PS controllers).

The Good
+ Three cities to explore
+ Full-fledged exploration of each city
+ Decent soundtrack
+ Great variety of cars
+ The "special" button


The Bad
- Questionable control scheme
- Some clunky game mechanics
- Modest graphics and unstable framerate
- Punishing save system
- Clunky camera


The Bottom Line
Presentation: 50/100
The game does not provide an introduction, or a real story, just you being a newbie criminal, climbing up the crime ladder.

Graphics: 70/100
The graphics aren't exactly the greatest looking. The buildings are in 3D and the characters and cars are 2D sprites, and when the camera gets close, these little guys are obviously not meant to be up close. The framerate is okay, but it drops when there are at least 5 cars on screen, and when the camera zoom out, the framerate is a chugging mess. The camera isn't exactly the greatest either. The camera does not always respond as quick as it should; such as when you are making a sharp turn, the camera would end up going too far to where you're turning, which can lead to a top of a building getting in the way of the view.

Audio: 80/100
The sound effects are adequate, and the soundtrack is decent, depending on preference. The radio stations are not very lengthy and a station will be set for each car; for example, a pick-up truck will play country music, while a sports car will play rock music.

Controls: 67/100
The controls are playable at best. X and Triangle moves your character forward and back, Square jack a car, and Circle fires your weapon. L1 and L2 cycles weapons, R2 is special and R1 is the brakes. Driving is a bit clunky to control, because the car physics aren't exactly as fully-fledged, such as the car might not stop completely, it just inches towards where it's facing, and pressing Triangle does not apply the brakes, R1 does. The controls will feel strange at first, but they will probably become second nature as you get into the game. The worst offender for the controls is aiming your gun, especially the pistol. It seems that the hit detection is not as fully-fledged, meaning you have to be pinpoint precise with your shots; if you're one pixel off and your bullets aren't going to hit anyone. If you want to know why I like that "special" button, try it out yourself. You'll laugh. Out loud.

Difficulty: Mostly challenging not by the challenge
Grand Theft Auto is overall a challenging game. Sometimes, the challenge isn't even by the challenge, the odd controls make driving weird. The lack of a health bar also adds to the challenge, meaning that you will die in one bullet, and there's a lives counter, so the amount of times you can die is fairly limited. The lack of a health bar and dying in one hit, can be inconvenient at first, but you'll learn how to dodge bullets. In each level, you have to collect a set amount of points to pass a level.

Gameplay: 80/100
Grand Theft Auto is a top-down action game, meaning that the action will be seen in helicopter view. The driving is okay, but could've been better. There are three cities in the game with two levels in each city. In each city, you are given a set score that you must achieve. Such as in the first level, you must garner at least 1,000,000 points to beat the level. In the later levels, the numbers increase, which wouldn't be a problem if the game allowed you to save during a level. You cannot save during a level, you can only save when you are not on a level, which can be a major issue, especially on the PlayStation. On the PC, you couldn't save either, but you could Alt + Tab out of the game and get back to it later. The punishing save system is the biggest offender here, especially considering that the later levels usually take an hour or more to complete. The camera is also sluggish in this game. Generally, the camera does not respond as quickly when you are driving in something like a fast car. The cars also have weird physics, such as how they cannot survive falls. If your car is falling, it will explode in the air. Also, you can only enter and exit from a car at the driver's seat; if your car is parked with its left side against a wall, your car is technically stuck unless if you push it with another car. Despite these flaws, the gameplay is great. The cities are for you to explore and there are no barricaders to block your path. The golden part of Grand Theft Auto itself is to cause destruction to the environment and make the cops go haywire about you. There are hundreds of missions in the game and these missions usually have two tasks; for instance, you must drive an explosive-rigged truck to a police station to blow it up, then when you're done with that, you must get to the guy who will pay you. The guy warns you that a rival gang leader's lawyer is going somewhere, you must follow him, which leads you to a large gang of men with guns. Obviously, your objective here is to kill all of them. While there are decently designed missions, there are missions that are either poorly-designed or borderline difficult.

Overall: 80/100
The game has quite a few flaws, but the game will last if you can overlook these. Grand Theft Auto 1 in general is a mixed bag in the ranks, some people like it, some people hate it. While it was a start of one of the most famous video game franchises, the not-so-fully-fledged driving physics and punishing save system would pop in some questions. The game is still overall great, with full exploration of each city without borders. If the game allowed you to save within a level, GTA would be even more recommended.

Score: 80/100

The Good
The best part of this game had to have been the free-form helter-skelter. How could someone not find the random violence entertaining? Unlike the later GTA games, this one actually included multiplayer so you could cause havoc and kill your best friends at the same time!

The Bad
There were two downsides to this game, one made the other worse. The biggest problem was shooting those guns. You had one option...a straight line...if you didn't hit, you were screwed when the cops busted you. The second problem which wasn't helped by the first was that the missions became really long and drawn out without the ability to save the game. You had to aquire up to 5 million points without dying or even failing missions because then you lose potential multiplier. These factors could have been touched up for a more enjoyable game

The Bottom Line
You absolutely have to try this game at least once in your life to understand where the gaming industry went! Violence Violence Violence! Not too shabby!

The Good
The games of the Grand Theft Auto series have been called many things: from a despicable, filthy videogame that glorifies crime and violence, to a masterpiece of a young art form. I have been a firm proponent of the latter view ever since I first laid hands on the demo version of Grand Theft Auto in 1997.

While one must assume that its theme of urban crime and gang warfare has been a major reason for the commercial success of the series, and no doubt the high production quality of the titles has had a large impact as well, I am convinced that its real strengths lie deeper, and they are evident even in this very first installment. The reasons why Grand Theft Auto has become one of the longest-running and best-selling videogame franchises ever are to be found beneath the surface. In a time when game concepts and genres seemed to have been explored almost fully, its very mechanics established a new form of gameplay. Something that worked so well that it spawned not only a genre, but a new way of putting players into a game. And something that the players responded to so positively that the games’ elements have been often copied, but rarely matched – maybe because numerous imitators mistakenly assumed GTA’s success to stem from superficial aspects such as the violence, the obscenity, the grittiness, rather than its deeper qualities, thus coming up with a whole slew of mediocre “gangster” games instead of new, detailed, and open game worlds.

Starting out as a simple technology demo showing a zooming and scrolling top-down view of a 3-dimensional urban environment, the developers at DMA Design saw the possibility of using it to simulate a complete living city, and use it for a new game concept. Tentatively titled Race ‘n’ Chase, the idea was for players to take the role of a police officer hunting down criminals. As we all know, things didn’t quite work out that way. The developers figured that as a police officer, players would be bound to a lot of rules. For example, they would have to be punished for cutting a corner across the sidewalk, because it endangers innocent bystanders. This would have collided with the film-inspired, action-packed chase gameplay the developers were aiming for. Hence the decision was made to reverse the roles, and let players control a gangster outrunning the police force. Mob missions were added later as a means of giving the game events some structure and background, which would prove to become an increasingly central aspect for later parts of the series.

Thus from the get-go, the centre of the GTA concept was the living, detailed, simulated city environment. Vehicles rolling through the streets and obeying traffic rules, pedestrians walking the sidewalks, a working public transport system, and emergency services that would respond to the events in the city – this was always at the core of Grand Theft Auto. It is why most players report that they spend more time experimenting with the game world than actually completing missions. The conscious decision to use a realistic city scenario instead of something more fantastic or futuristic, as with most other games of the genre, was very important as well. Most players were familiar with the theme, they knew what driving a car in a city should feel like, and how the environment should react to extraordinary events. Some of the ideas were still a tad too ambitious for the time, but no other game before Grand Theft Auto had ever come as close to a realistic, open, densely detailed and simulated game world.

Apart from the two central ingredients of the open game world and the reactive simulation, the designers’ love for detail was another main aspect for GTA’s success. These supposedly unimportant elements mean a lot of effort on the developer’s side, but in the end it is a main reason for its longevity, and why players spend so much time in the game world. Instead of taking players by the leash and leading them through the game’s storyline, liberal exploration of every nook and cranny of the game world is rewarded with little extras or jokes. In this regard, Grand Theft Auto pales in comparison with its own sequels, but within its possibilities, the levels are diverse and interesting to move around in. Power-ups, nice backyards, hidden areas and secret missions keep the cities from getting boring all too quickly.

Finally, the concept of freedom of choice has been consistently implemented in the game’s actual storyline missions as well. Should players choose to accept a predefined mission, and there is no obligation to, they are given instructions on what needs to be done, not how to accomplish it. Thus, players can really take advantage of the open world, and all the possibilities it gives them. Players are free, even encouraged, to think outside the box and find their own solutions. Again, this means a lot of additional effort for the developers because of the huge number of situations they have to consider, but it pays off in terms of player enjoyment. Each GTA player can find their own way of completing certain missions, and develop their own strategies, hence ending up playing a quite individual game of GTA.

On to some more technical aspects, many players criticised the game's graphics on perspective. This might be a valid point on the Game Boy or even the PlayStation versions, as the low resolution and colour depth really do not fit a game of this scope that well. However, the true-colour and high-resolution PC version is a joy to look at. Although the city can look a little bit too blocky at times, the textures are nice to look at and the cities all have their own style and personality. The top-down view is a wonderful thing and suits the frantic chase gameplay well. Of course, I can also only praise the 60-minute original soundtrack.

The Bad
The camera movements could have profited from a little more tweaking. Too often, the car disappears behind a high building, or the zoom-out does not take place quickly enough, leading to unnecessary crashes because one cannot see far enough ahead.

The collision detection can be quite annoying. Unrealistic rebounds after crashing into buildings, the sometimes sudden and almost unpreventable explosions, and cars getting stuck in between buildings – these problems just happen far too often, and can lead to extreme frustration.

And finally, the lacking save system that has been so often criticised. I appreciate the fact that it makes the game more challenging. Too often, the "quick-save and quick-load" of newer games removes all the challenge, I for one can often not resist the temptation of this cheap strategy, even though it means I'll probably enjoy the game a little less. But given that a GTA level can take well over an hour to complete, the lack of a save feature is just impractical. I do not always have the time for a non-stop 2-hour gaming session, which often leads to me not booting up the game because I don't want to invest that kind of time. Make the player pay for saving the game, make it hurt, like in GTA2 where you have to spend quite some in-game money for activating the save feature. But don't just prevent players from interrupting their session. It's not nice.

The Bottom Line
I have spent a lot of time in Grand Theft Auto. I probably know the streets of Liberty City as well as those of my hometown. The game is technically "tidy", although arguably unspectacular. But like the good old days of videogames so many of us fondly remember, it is the gameplay that just won't let you go. After 12 years, I still regularly feel like revisiting this wonderfully designed and simulated city, and just drive around in it a little. It appeals to the primitive fascination that made me play with my Matchbox cars when I was a little younger. It appeals to my love of old Hollywood gangster movies and chase scenes. It has memorable characters and nasty, challenging missions. And it allows me to play the game the way I want to play it.

Finally, I would also like to assess the GTA concept from a very, very distant bird's eye view. Personally, I see two main directions future videogames will have to explore and help develop. On one hand, new ways of telling immersive and emotional stories – with the media no longer in its infancy, it is time to find ways of really appealing to people’s innermost feelings, of making truly “mature” games. It has happened with movies, and it will have to happen with interactive entertainment. It is important to keep an eye on experimental developments in this area – projects such as Heavy Rain come to mind. On the other hand, there is the mechanics of game world simulation. Game worlds have to be believable, and to be believable they must feel alive. Giving players freedom of choice and simulating a world that reacts according to their actions is central to the interactive element which sets games apart from other forms of entertainment. After decades of largely linear games, it is hard to imagine where this could take us. But one thing is for sure: wherever tomorrow’s non-linear games will take us, they will owe much of their heritage to that little development studio in Scotland, who in the mid-1990s re-defined what a game world can be.

The Good
Grand Theft Auto is difficult to write about now, given its reception and more importantly its legacy to the gaming world. These factors overshadow the original game, its instant notoriety when first released helped to propel an otherwise simple and slightly behind the times game into the big league and secure room for the developers to capitalise and make vast improvements for the sequels, to become possibly the biggest gaming franchise ever.

The first game takes an interesting premise, and really it's all there is to it, you have a map much like the road play mats for children, and on this map cars and people move around with limited independence. You as a player have the freedom to walk anywhere and steal any car you like and drive around this map, running people over or shooting them, and smashing up the cars. On top of this premise a game has been grafted, with various phone booths around the city offering 'jobs' which try to extract the most from the game play premise, such as stealing certain cars, killing certain people, stopping certain people from being killed etc. That's it. All very fun and entertaining for the first half hour of play, but after that it becomes pretty mundane, and as with most action games the only way to secure interest is to make everything harder. I remember playing this for hours on end as a teenage, but as an adult it all seems too thin, variety is added in the various cities visited and cars but that's all. The game is shot through with dark humour, and is a relief that it doesn't take itself too seriously, down to the infamous running over of Hare Krishnas, surely the controversy that made the series name.

Technically the game looks older than what it is, though it can still be impressive that so large a world was programmed to function so smoothly that there's never lag as you speed across each city. The free-form aspect of play can cause some bugs to occur and several times I had to restart a level as it became impossible to complete.

The Bad
I found the top down view to be incredibly frustrating as it creates a claustrophobic feel after a while of playing, though I see this is a technical limitation not solved until the advent of GTA3 and compared to other 3D worlds around at the time, it's probably best they stuck to this, allowing for a detailed hand drawn world. The missions try to get every last drop from the game engine, and never really step outside of the bounds of it for the sake of story, and quickly become insipid runs that test the patience of the player rather than provide any motivation to continue the game.

The game does commit one my pet hates of computer games, probably as a legacy of being developed for the Playstation as well as PC, in that you cannot save during a level, it took me several evenings to complete a level, often due to technical bugs.

The Bottom Line
Freely available from the developer's website, Grand Theft Auto is really little more now than an historical curio of what would late develop into one of the idiosyncratic game series.

The later games are much more worthy of attention and this provides a view of how it all became. The much vaunted free-form play and mature humour which made it so regarded and scandalous on release has now been copied and brought into the common game experience so much that the original game seems limited by comparison and empty, and instead seems the spark of idea that would lead to the much fuller sequels.

The Good
GTA is bizarre. Given my computer programming background I can't help but gawk at how bad its engine is, but on the other hand it's just hours of pure fun.

To summarize:

• Decent graphics. Nothing to write home about, but they do the job, and they do it well.
• Good controls, unlike the extremely crappy Carmageddon. The controls here are fairly smooth and efficient and won't outright frustrate you.
• Decent level and mission design; the missions are dull at worst, and hillarious at best ("My brother's found out I'm f***ing his wife. F*** the f***er before he f*** me"), but I can't help the feeling that they were an afterthought - some of them are practically impossible to do, while others require that you race around the city to deliver all sorts of crud to all sorts of places you normally wouldn't bother with.
• The freedom in this game is a great deal more obvious than in other games; if you get bored with the default missions, why not just run around town and wreak havoc? Personally I like the police chases best, and if things get too sticky you can always "autospray" your car and move on.
• Decent music. Not great, not bad. Just enough.

The Bad
But then we have the ludicrously bad engine. I don't see how Martin should think that it runs well on a slow PC, because it doesn't. On my P166 it was completely unplayable on anything higher than the lowest, 320x200 resolution. Adding a Voodoo2 helped a lot, but even then the game wasn't actually smooth because of a horrendous timing mechanism; it seems that the programmers chose to simply limit the framerate (F8 is enable/disable framerate limiter) instead of produce a functional timing loop. This results in jerky motion even with my Voodoo2 - not unplayable, but not smooth either. Disabling the framerate limiter (the afformentioned F8) would result in completely smooth gameplay - but absolutely no timing, so the game basically runs impossibly fast ("Ludicrous speed! GO!") and is completely unplayable.

Furthermore the physics engine is an absolute joke. OK, so they didn't implement actual collisions, rather plain momentum conservation, so your car doesn't actually get damaged by, say, running into a wall at over 70 MPH. Furthermore, what physics laws actually governed have a great deal of bugs, but since it makes the game even funnier I guess I could let that pass. But I will NOT forgive the stupid pixel-perfect collision bug, which happens when you graze a wall when you're directly parallel to it; often times this would result in your getting stuck to the wall, not being able to move your car and even occasionally not being able to get out of the car. When it happens it's absolutely frustrating and unacceptable.

Basically, the software engine is SLOW. I don't understand it; it doesn't do that much besides scroll-zoom-putsprite. I would expect seasoned programmers - especially ones from a company that produced the amazing Amiga game Blood Money - to be able to write a better engine. Maybe I'm being too critical, but I don't think so. There were plenty of games that came out years before, did more and did it better too.

The Bottom Line
If you ignore the obvious technical faults of this game, what you have is basically an extremely fun little slaughterfest.

The Good
There is one part of GTA, which I think, is really great: The audio. This game has a great soundtrack, with all sorts of music (70's funk, 80's hard rock, gangsta rap etc.) and weird samples all mixed into one great musical melting pot. Each type of music has it's own radio station. By default different cars have their radios tuned into different stations. You'll hear techno music in a sports car and country music in a pick-up. You can switch channels while you are driving. I recommend you listen to the CD in your audio player at least once, so you can hear all those funny samples that have been mixed in between the songs. The sound effects are not bad either, the developers paid a lot of attention to tiny details (police scanner, things people say when you walk around with a gun, the little beeps you'll hear when you put a truck in reverse). Too bad there's so little speech in the game, cause the accents are great.

You have a lot of freedom in this game, you can play the missions or just mess around and do some very, very bad things. You can almost wreak havoc without limitations: slam your car into a police barricade, participate in high-speed car chases with the police, hijack, steal and assassinate.

Some of the missions are really cool (like using radio-controlled cars to assassinate somebody), others seem to be included into the game for the single purpose of making you race from one end of the map to the other. Once you reach San Francisco and Miami the missions become rather difficult and some of them are pretty annoying. Before the real meat of the mission starts you'll first have to make a couple of phone calls... great stuff when you have about 30 seconds to reach a public phone on the other side of the map in order to make the call :-<. Somehow I got the impression that the missions were a bit of an afterthought to the open ended crime simulator idea. Hmm, seems like I'm talking about the bad stuff already.

The Bad
Well, like Tomer says, the graphics are really bad. Of course great graphics are nice but I don't consider GTA's lack of graphic polish as a major problem. However there are some other things that took some of fun away from playing this game. I think I would have really enjoyed this game if:

• You could save your game. I think you should have been able to save your game after completing, for example, three missions. It can take you a couple of hours to reach the multi million score you need to progress. Moreover, sometimes you have to complete a pair of missions (up to 5 or 6 missions) before some other missions become available. It's frustrating to play those first five missions over and over again, but you'll have to, if you want to see what the other missions are like.
• There was a background story. Games like Star Control 2 offer a lot of freedom to the gamer, but you have the feeling something big is going on in the background. GTA has no background story. Consequently there is no build up of suspense, no "working towards a higher goal". You're just playing for the sake of collecting points. The levels and missions don't really seem to be tied together. I think it would be a great idea to add some RPG aspects to the game and let the player rise to the top of a crime syndicate (I've always liked big, over-ambitious games). But hey, Rockstar fixed that with the release of Vice City.

**The Bottom Line**
A highly explosive piece of software with more f***s per minute than a Tarantino movie. The use of cheat codes doesn't spoil the satisfaction you'll get from this game and saves you from a lot of frustration. It's the open-ended nature of the game that makes it great, not the missions.

The Good
Near the end of my high school years, an old friend of mine installed a computer game that was all the rage at the time. It was known as Grand Theft Auto, and when he started a new game to show me how it worked, he moved his character around for a bit before deciding that it wasn't the game for him. The thing is, he didn't get very far into the game before reaching his decision, as the game's blocky graphics put him off despite his system meeting the requirements.

This year, playing the original game from 1997/98 is my first foray into the GTA world. The game is spread across three fictional cities (based on New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami, respectively) with two levels each. The game involves you doing anything you like in three fictional cities based on the real-life US counterparts. You can, for example, walk around the three cities in the game, steal a car and drive around, go on a killing spree, and other stuff (with all your actions likely attracting the police). However, the highlight of this game is taking on a set of missions, most of them involving stealing cars, killing or following gang members, bombing their hideouts, and other stuff. You don't have to successfully complete each and every mission, just enough to reach your target score and advance through the game.

A huge variety of cars are on offer, ranging from the useless-as-shit Beetle to the super-fast Beast GTS. You can steal any car you like, but a faster car is recommended if you are on missions with strict time limits. Then, you can drive like a hoon, risking people's lives and smashing up the car you are driving to the point where it is about to explode, in which case you can steal another one. I like the Beast GTS as it helps me get to destinations quicker, while smashing into heaps of cars and mowing down a few pedestrians. Steal too many cars, and the police will be onto you.

Grand Theft Auto uses CD audio tracks but doesn't play them constantly throughout the entire game. Instead, they play only when you get in your car and start driving around. You see, each car is tuned into its own radio station, with only two of the worth listening to. The radio stations pause as soon as you get out of the car (unless you change the music mode to "constant") and continue when you get back in. The tracks can be accessed outside the game, meaning that if you enjoyed listening to a particular station, you can load up the track and start listening it as many times as you like without any interference.

Scattered through each city are crates, containing something that will help you get through the missions, and it is either a weapon or a power-up. There are four weapons to choose from, with the most effective ones being the rocket launcher and the flame-thrower. I found the power-ups quite useful as well.

There are a couple of things that I found amusing, if you are on foot. One is encountering the monks with their orange robes and getting in their way on purpose. They follow you no matter where you go, even when you cross the road. Another is deliberately bumping into people so that they curse at you.

You are supplied with three maps - one for each city - which have to be used to make your way around the city, to find out the best route to your target destination. All of the maps are clear and show the complexity of each city. They point out the number of bomb shops and respray shops that you need to go into every now and then. In my opinion, Grand Theft Auto taught me how to read maps properly.

The graphics are excellent, and there are a total of six FMV clips which you only get to see when you have completed a level. These clips have a character having a word with you, and this is the same character who gives you your missions. Some characters congratulate you, some insult you. My favorite is El Burro, the gay Mexican that you get to deal with when you reach San Andreas.

The Bad
Like many games of its time, your progress through the game gets saved. Unfortunately, you can't just go to the menu and choose the "Save Game" option (there is none). Instead, you have to wait until you complete the level. This is a major let-down of the game since levels take ages to complete.

Also, I didn't like the zooming effects as you drive around the city, smashing things up and doing other stuff.

The Bottom Line
I believe Grand Theft Auto is the first game that allows you to do anything. You can, for example, you go on a killing spree in the three cities or complete missions to earn money. The latter option is recommended as you earn more money by doing things that may or may not attract the police. To get around the city, you can steal cars and use the arrows to direct it to your destination, and listen to some great tunes along the way. As I just mentioned, maps of the three cities are supplied with the game, and I recommend that you use them as a reference. There are up to four weapons that you can use, with all of them become useful in certain situations.

GTA is possibly the best game that I have played so far. Right now, I am walking around Liberty City and blowing up police cars as I go along. But I would love to play all the missions again, especially the ones that I missed. I look forward to playing the sequels, especially the games where the view is presented in third-person.

There are several cheats for the game, but I found that some of them make certain missions unplayable. Enabling the "All Weapons" chat, for example, will cause the game to not let you pick up the flame-thrower you need to blow up a limo. The only way I could fix this is by not entering the cheat as one of my names and start the level again.

The Good
This is for me the most original game I ever have played. Everything runs smooth, even on a slow computer. The gameplay is more then excellent, the mission are great and fun to play several times. It is possible to drive a car and squash people or run and shoot at them. It fun to drive fast and avoid every other car and lose the cops. And every time you get in n other car, the music will change, just like a radio.

The Bad
What is good for the game, is also the bad side of the game it kept you playing for hours, what do I say, I ment for years. The fun will never stop.

The Bottom Line
The best part of the game is, you can decide how to play it. Or you do the missions or you driving around and make a big mess in town. Every gamer who respects himself must have played GTA.

The Good
Everything. Hijacking, murdering, hit-and-run, freedom to do whatever I feel like doing. I got the demo of this game and by the next day had placed my advanced order. The gameplay is such a unique platform. Nothing else like it.

The Bad
The Windows version's graphics sucked. They were plain out stupid.

The Bottom Line
Freeform, mission based game that simply is a necessity to any gamers collection. Simply put, get this game.

The Good
Hilarious! Great humour, lots of fun, cool missions, and great driving physics- better than some racing games!

The Bad
Pretty bad framerate considering the graphics, crude language could be hard on little kids ears.

The Bottom Line
One of the best games ever. As someone else said, "If you don't have a Playstation, get one so you can play this game". Well, he speaks the truth- you must play this game!!!

The Good
For one thing it's funny- however, some of the jokes are of an adult nature so kids under the age of 15 probably shouldn't play it (they wouldn't get the jokes anyhow...) The cars act more realistically in this game than they do in some racing games! The controls are right on and the gameplay is great. And the graphics, although bad, make the game that much funnier!

The Bad
The graphics are pretty bad.

The Bottom Line
Don't worry about the graphics. This game isn't for people with 2 Ghz computers and GeForce 3's. This game's emphasis is on good fun and good humour- and it succeeds at both very well! Some of the content is either offensive, innapropriate, or both, so youngins beware!!!

The Good
Concept of doing very bad things: stealing cars and killing cops and civilians. Audio fairly crisp.

The Bad
Horrendous game play due to the crappy controls.Graphics are terrible. I've seen better on 8 bit systems. When you answer the phone it sounds like you are talking to a chipmunk.

The Bottom Line
Back in the 90's this game was very popular with the die hard sony fanboys who were totally caught up in the concept that they were blinded by how terrible the game actually was . I found this game and it's sequel total rubbish. If you want a gta game steer clear of this dud and get gta3, gta vice city and san andreas for the ps2.