Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done - and here in the second round, that means narrowing our laser focus to one game per week (at least). Be sure to check out the Case File Repository for more details and a full list of games/links!

I selected Grand Theft Auto III for further review not because I figured it had any shot for the shelf - that's almost certainly going to come down to Vice City or San Andreas - but because of just how important the game is for establishing a certain popular variant of the 3D open-world genre as we know it. There had been plenty of 3D games with an open-ended nature - the early Elder Scrolls games, for instance - but with GTA 3, Rockstar North (still DMA Design at the time) established the paradigm of an enormous city that the player could freely enjoy however they wished either by following the critical path via missions given by various sources or by simply going out and making your fortune through side-gigs like taxi driving mini-games or thoroughly tracking down collectibles like the hidden packages and ramp jumps. This set the formula for the Grand Theft Auto games to follow, as well as a huge number of similarly metropolitan-centric crime and superhero games. That we're still getting games that follow the blueprint of urban exploration and combat - last year alone saw the likes of Mafia 3, Watch Dogs 2 and Mirror's Edge Catalyst - is a testament to GTA 3's staying power. Or, at least, the staying power of its concept.

Turns out, the actual GTA 3 hasn't aged too well. In some respects, this makes it even more compelling as a historical relic. As with Super Mario 64, there are a mix of innovative ideas that would become the pillars of the genre it pioneered and design issues that would be immediately seized upon and ironed out this selfsame new generation of ever-evolving inspirations. For one, GTA 3 does not have a map feature. The game was released with a physical paper map, which is delightfully old-school in and of itself, and there's a mini-map radar in-game that gives you some idea of where the mission targets and mission-dispensing NPCs are located, but beyond that you need to be fairly familiar with the lay of the land before you can hope to get too far. An early mission suggests that you'll need to find "a piece" behind the local guns and ammunition store by the subway. There's no indication of where that is though, and because it's not an essential part of the mission - it's possible you already have a gun at this point, since there are other missions available - there's no map marker for it. You simply have to know the location they're talking about.

The game also has inverted camera controls with no option to change it (an unfortunate recurring bugbear in older 3D games that Giant Bomb East recently encountered with their Super Mario Sunshine revisit), cars take damage and explode far too easily, and there's no real way to effectively fight crowds as the game doesn't have a strafe function or an accurate way to target individual enemies that might be pursuing you. Despite all this, however, it is absolutely identifiably the same game that would be later retooled with welcome design tweaks for later GTAs, complete with running statistics on the mayhem you're causing and some indication of the number of available missions left to complete in the game. You jack cars, drive to where you're needed while switching the radio back to your preferred station (I always head straight to the EDM or 80s stations, but then I'm a nerd), get out and kill whomever it is that needs killing or escorting whomever it is that needs escorting, then get a sizeable mission reward and then drive towards a letter on the map that represents who you're working for next. (To digress a moment: I generally stick to the same person until all their missions are exhausted before moving on, but if there's ever an intended order I'm never clear on what it is.)

Because GTA 3 was still testing the waters, it doesn't have much of a personality of its own. The generic thuggish hero, Claude, never speaks, and most of the people he works for tend to range from generic mafioso to generic yakuza to random heavies who have "work" for Claude if they're interested. Some of these recruiters are story-critical NPCs who have whole arcs that play out gradually in the cutscenes that introduce each mission, while others are simply side-characters who have one or two missions of little narrative importance in an overarching sense but help fill out the world in other ways. It's all vaguely organized crime related, but it doesn't have a hook the way the later games do: Vice City had its Miami Vice, San Andreas had its 90s hip-hop, IV had its parable about new immigrants realizing the American dream, V had something to do with bank heists and knowing who your true friends are (I guess? I lost all interest in GTA after Saints Row ate its gangsta crime parody lunch). GTA3 still has that Rockstar feel of "we get all our research from movies", but feels slightly more like a standard video game than those that follow due to this lack of a strong "time and place" aesthetic. Whether that's better or not comes down to how married you are to the various settings of the later games - I'm definitely looking forward to the pastel shirts and half-sleeved jackets of Vice City.

I did not complete GTA 3, partly because it's an enormous game and partly because I still prefer its sequels with all their additional open-world game conveniences that I've long become accustomed to, but I won't say never. (I'm also running into a few more technical issues that I can temporarily fix - which is to say, buying a new third-party controller to replace the official one I have with the visible wires and spotty connection issues.) My intent with the second round was to actually complete some of these games, not keep running into roadblocks like damaged discs or my own apathy. Hopefully the next game will break that streak, and I'll have gone back to GTA 3 in the meantime to let it have a fair shake when it comes time to decide between VC and SA for the shelf.

Rating: Eliminated. (For now.)

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I wound up playing this to completion in 2013 IIRC, and even at that point the game felt creaky as hell. I wound up playing it as conservatively as possible. After every single mission I would cruise over to my safe house and save, because holy shit losing all of the weapons I had accumulated sucked. It's certainly possible to see the nucleus of so many contemporary urban setting open world games here, and I imagine the jump to GTA3 from its 2D predecessors was mind blowing. For me though, it was just the hot shit game to be playing in middle school. Now it's kind of a curio.

Also, the carefully placed sniper rifle behind a bush as you enter the last level sorta demonstrated to me that they realized the whole level was bullshit and the only way to realistically handle it for most people would be to cheese them a gun to clear out enemies at the dam. Seemed sloppy.

I think I got close enough to consider me done with that game. I remember running over a guy in a body cast for 20 minutes and ended it shortly after that. If all else fails, cheat. That's the point I'm at. Reviewing 35 games a year pushes so many things down the ladder.

I still get a kick out of playing this one. There's something about that simplicity and the "this is where it all started" feeling I find charming. Obviously rough around the edges in many respects, but some of the weird design decisions that they got rid for future games of are actually kind of fun and game-breaking in a weird way, like getting money for crashing into/blowing up cars or being able to spawn just about every vehicle in the game at those garages in Portland and Shoreside Vale. Bombing through the tunnels in a sports car listening to RISE FM or MSX is still an awful lot of fun. Missions are chaotic and often frustrating, but at least some of them have shortcuts. Too many time limits though.

And that funky diddy that plays when you complete a mission always puts a smile on my face.

I played through and reviewed the game recently. For the first time, even. It's very interesting as a piece of history, and there's still good times to be had. But everything it did more recent games have done much better.

I don't remember the GTA III itself as much as I remember bits and pieces of the game's ambience.

"My mother's my sister!"

"There's no need to feel down!"

PUSH IT TO THE LIMIT

And, of course, crashing the Banshee through that car dealership's showroom windowpane.

@inevpatoria: I have a brother who is not even remotely a gamer, but to this day he will occasionally pop off a "My mother's my sister!" while I'm in the room. It's an evergreen bit of dialog.

The best GTA intro so far! Also Ive told this story before on the forums but Ill briefly summarize it here. My brother and I just put all our Christmas best buy gift cards together to buy a ps2 but he didnt have enough to money to buy a game so we went to block buster on the way home. I was originally looking for Gran Turismo 3 and I didnt see it on the shelf. After asking an employee he suggested looking over at the counter with that had a few games waiting to be restocked. They had the generic block buster cover art so I had to look at the spines. Saw something like that looked like Gran and III and went "YEP THATS IT!" Went hope and told my dad I got Gran Turismo and to come check it out. My entire family ends up watching me play through the beginning of Grand Theft Auto III realizing I made a mistake. Thankfully my parents found the extreme tongue-in-cheek nature of the game to be funny and decided I was mature enough to actually play the game. Before then, I never even heard of GTA and this single random moment sparked a long love for what is probably my favorite game series.