Grand Theft Auto III

365 Games To Play Before You Die

Previous 5 Games

• #47: Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes
• #48: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords
• #49: Call of Duty 2
• #50: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
• #51: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Full List

#52: X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse

#53: Grand Theft Auto III

#54: Civilistation III

#55: Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

#56: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

#57: Duke Nukem 3D

#58: Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec

#59: Hitman: Contracts

#60: Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos

#61: Thief: Deadly Shadows

#62: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

My first experience with this was during Grand Theft Auto 3, it was the first truly open world game that I had ever played and collecting the hidden packages was actually kind of fun. The reward of being able to pick up free weapons and power ups from outside of your house was greatly appealing and really helped to make the end of the game pretty easy.

I’m not sure if this was the first game to include such an idea, but as with most things in Grand Theft Auto 3 it was certainly one of the things that caught on in a big way, not just in future Grand Theft Auto games, but also in other sand box games and eventually it even spread into more traditional games.

 Stop chasing me a second guys, I need to go collect that package!

As the generational shift of games consoles happened this became more apparent than ever, and now with trophies and achievements it’s gone from being something optional for in game benefits to something that is usually required to complete if you want to truly finish a game to 1000 gamer points, or to unlock that platinum trophy. This in turn has made it incredibly frustrating, why does every single sandbox game need these? Why do they have to be so obscure? And why do I always have to always have one missing by the end?

This problem has come into effect for me in a massive way recently, and when I say recently I mean within the last 24 hours. Don’t get me wrong I’ve had a problem with these damn things since Crackdown but within the last 24 hours I have collected all 179 treasures on Tomb Raider Underworld (twice, as one of them glitched towards the end of my first play through) all 350 Blast Shards in Infamous and all of the 1001 light seeds from the Prince of Persia.

Hey, screw Ahriman I want to collect LIGHT SEEDS...YAY!

Other than for purely extending the play time of their games, I can’t understand why developers continue to include them in their products. I personally believe they can actually ruin the game by making you very aware you are playing a game. That first moment when you find number 1 of however many is a moment I dread as I then have to make the decision. Do I collect them all as I see them, and hope they are in an easy enough place that I can collect them all by the end of the game, without missing any? Or do I avoid them like all holy hell so that when I do finish the game I can use the only method I find to be truly effective and to systematically check every single location using some kind of map, checking off each location as I find it.

In my experience I haven’t found a single person who doesn’t dread the “hidden package experience” as I call it, so why do they keep this stuff in games? As games shift and change into the modern versions we see today, how is it that this incredibly archaic way of doing things has managed to survive so long?

I have full respect for which ever open world game takes the plunge, and is the first to omit this dark side of gaming forever.

Thanks for reading.

It's been quite a while since my last real blog, so I think it's about time for another one. You know, just to prove that I am still alive and playing games. :)

I'll start by listing the games I've bought since my last update. I'm only listing games I bought at retail. I also purchased a bunch of games from Steam, but those are not listed here.

• Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica (PS2 / new)
• Dinotopia: The Sunstone Odyssey (GameCube / used)
• Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard (DS / new)
• Eternal Poison (PS2 / new)
• Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (DS / new)
• Izuna 2: The Unemployed Ninja Returns (DS / new)
• Lost Kingdoms (GameCube / used)
• Master of the Monster Lair (DS / new)
• The Orange Box (PC / new)
• Princess Debut (DS / new)
• Retro Game Challenge (DS / new)
• Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (PS2 / new / includes Amazon-exclusive goodies)

I think that covers all my retail purchases. I hope I'm not missing any.

Since I had bought the Rockstar Collection off Steam, I played through and beat both of the Max Payne games. This means my PS2 copy of Max Payne will probably never be played. I've also found myself playing Grand Theft Auto III quite a bit, but I've only beaten a few missions.

At some point I also opened up The Orange Box and installed Portal. It was fun, it was funny, and yeah, it was short. But that just gives me more motivation to replay it, and that's fine with me.

I'm currently at the Secret Lab in Persona 4, with three Social Links maxed. It's really fun so far and has been taking up most of my gaming time.

But another game that's been taking up time recently was Retro Game Challenge, which I recently beat. It's quite enjoyable, but the challenge structure can be a bit annoying at times. Still a really good game though. The Haggle Man games are more fun than they ought to be, and I plan on playing through Guadia Quest soon.

Now there's another game that I've played that I think is worth a mention. Yes, you all know what I'm talking about. The greatest game ever made:

Princess Debut!

This all started on the Giant Bomb forums. Axersia made a page for this game I had never heard of, but the concept sounded incredible. So I created a topic pointing out the awesomeness of this game that none of us actually knew anything about. The game soon became popular, even appearing on the front page as the most popular game of the month. Someone created a topic suggesting we send a copy to the Giant Bomb guys to review. So Axersia actually called up Natsume's Vice President of Operations, and Natsume sent off a copy to the Giant Bomb offices.

Although they didn't end up Princess Debut Luchadeer soon took a liking to the game, and it can now be seen in most videos where Luchadeer makes an appearence. It even appeared in Giant Bomb's Game of the Year awards, where it garnered 16 votes. Truly that is a testament to the GB community's influence on the site and our ability to ruin awards shows.

But seriously, it's actually a pretty good game. It's like Ouendan/EBA, but with princes and an anthropomorphic rabbit.

So Miyamoto was just named is the #1 game creator of all time, and I have to agree.  Miyamoto and Nintendo created some of most memorable characters from my childhood not to mention some of the best gaming franchises in history (Zelda, Mario, Metriod—not Miyamoto, but Nintendo none-the-less).  Then I started to wonder what the hell happened to Nintendo?  They still make great games (Mario Galaxy was fantastic), but it seems to me they are much less of an innovator recently.

Now, the Wii is a huge success and I love Wii Sports (my wife and I bowl all the damn time) and while I don’t think Wii fit is all that, you can’t argue that Nintendo is innovating for a broader audience.  But like most people that visit this site, we are not the broader audience.  And it seems to me that for the hardcore, die-hard Nintendo fans, Nintendo really hasn’t innovated in quite a long time.

During the NES and SNES days, every Nintendo release managed to set the bar higher for a particular genre (Mario-platform, Zelda-Adventure,  Metriod-action/adventure, F-Zero-racing, etc…).   During the N64 era, Nintendo showed the rest of the world how to do 3-D platforming with Mario 64, and 3-D adventure games with Zelda:  Ocarina of Time—hell they even came up with the target lock system.  But during the Gamecube era, I feel like they started to slip.

Now, platforming after Mario 64 basically stuck to the “enter a work and collect a bunch of crap to pass the level” paradigm and early in the PS2 lifecycle, we saw the same kind of stuff.  Jak and Daxter, while a great game, still stuck to the same formula developed by Nintendo.  By this time though, I was getting sick and tired of the collect-a-thons, and thought that I had to wait for Mario Sunshine to experience the next generation of 3-D platforming.  Instead of getting a game that redefined a genre, what I got was a game that seemed like a rehash of an old game and an old, tired formula.  Worse of all, the game seemed to lack a level of polish that I usually associated with Nintedo games.

While Nintendo stuck with the old Mario formula, other companies decided to take the reigns of the platform genre and advance it.  Jak 2 brought in more of an open world aspect as well as a more action heavy combat system.  Insomniac games gave us Ratchet and Clank and brought upgradable weapons to the 3-D platformer fold.  Now as much as I love Mario, I have to say that I think that the real innovation in the platform world during the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation came from Naughty Dog and Insomniac games.  Then of course came Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto III, which can be considered the evolution of the platform genre.

Well, so Nintendo didn’t innovate with the 3-D platformer, so what?  Didn’t mean necessarily the Big N’ had lost it—we still had the next Zelda to blow us away.  While I did like the Wind Waker and it’s art style, it seemed like a prettier version of Ocarina of Time.  The game mechanics were almost exactly the same. It had very similar special weapons, similar puzzles and dungeon themes—all that, and they tacked on a needless fetch quest at the end of the game.  Did Wind Waker innovate or was it more of the same?

Now lets look at Twilight Princess.  Other than some of the motion controls (which were tacked on to make it a Wii release), did this game to ANYTHING different any the 3 prior Zelda games before it?  During the entire time I was playing the game, I kept having this “I’ve done this before” feeling.  Now even bad Zelda is still good, I started wonder how many times can I use the Boomerang?  How many times have I used the Hookshot.   Let me see, I guess this sidequest will reward me with a heart container.  Twilight Princess was the first Zelda game that made me think that the Zelda formula was getting a bit stale.

So not only was Nintendo not innovating in the genres it dominated in the past, but it seemed like it was in a different era all together.  In this day of DVD/Blu-Ray storage, Nintendo still sticks with MIDI.  Nintendo’s FMV efforts are laughable.  And their reluctance against voice acting makes their games seem dated, not to mention their horrible on-line implementation.  Now were getting Wii-makes of old gamecube games with tacked motion controls.  Now I’m really looking forward to the new Punch-Out !!, but with the news that it will also utilize “classic” controls, I'm wondering how much innovation can possibly be in this game?  Animal Crossing:  City Folk didn’t have much change from a DS game, Smash Bros. Brawl really wasn’t that different from Melee.  What’s happening? 

Now I know Nintendo is making money hand-over-fist now, but that not the point.  As a long time Nintendo fan, Nintendo games used to mean the best production values, the best game design, and the most innovative products.  Now it seems like Nintendo makes fun games that could have been so much better with a bit more innovation and production budget. 

I don’t know.  I could be crazy.  I could be wrong.  Nintendo did make Metriod Prime, and Pikmen, but that was still last-gen.  What have they done for us recently?  Well, whatever they do, I’ll still probably buy it, but man, I really hope some of the future products manages to recapture that old magic (Zelda—I’m looking at you).