Developer: DMA Design
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Platform: Playstation 2 (Versions forthcoming for XBox, PC, and Game Boy Advance)
ESRB Rating: M (Blood, Violence, Strong Language) (and man, do we mean it!)

Every so often, a game comes along that pushes the edges of what was believed possible in a game. Sometimes, it's technical achievement. Other times, it's great gameplay innovation. This time, with Grand Theft Auto III, it's how far over the "Rated M" line you can go without getting your game hammered by the ESRB. To clear the air right up front, the game rocks. Hard. GTA3 has racked up more awards and five-star ratings from game sites around the web than any other title in recent memory. But even with all the hype and the #1 Amazon sales rank, it's hard to appreciate how cool this game is without actually sitting down for a few hours and raising mayhem.

The story of the game is simple: you, while serving time for a bank robbery, are being transported along with two other prisoners through the den of vice and corruption that is Liberty City. One of your fellow inmates is apparently very important, and his people stage a daring snatch-n-grab operation to spring him, and as a side effect, you find yourself a free man. Grabbing a nearby car, you and the other remaining prisoner (8-Ball) high-tail it to a nearby hideout to grab new duds, and 8-Ball tells you to come see him later, because he might know someone who has work for you.

Thus begins your legacy of crime. Chauffering hookers, drug dealers, mobsters, you name it, you work your way up the ladder of organized crime in Liberty City as a free-lancer, taking whatever jobs are offered. Some are simple chauffeur gigs or pick-ups, some are getaway drives, some are straight-forward enforcer stuff, and all are highly illegal. But zipping through the main storyline is barely scratching the surface of the game. There are all sorts of ways to supplement your income. There's a garage at the harbor with a Gone in 60 Seconds-style wish list of cars they need stolen. Deliver them, and get paid. Steal a taxi and you can run fares around town. Steal a squad car and play vigilante. Steal a firetruck and put out vehicle fires. Or steal an ambulance and race people to the hospital.

On top of all these possible occupations, you can pretty much steal any car you want from the streets of Liberty City, and do pretty much anything you want in between carjackings. Did that pedestrian call you a punk? Go Buford Pusser style and whack him with a bat. Don't like the Triad gangs in Chinatown? Pull a driveby with your Uzi and watch the sidewalks run red or just take your ride on the sidewalk and run 'em down. All this stealing and killing got you worn down? Pick up a hooker and take her somewhere quiet for a little R&R. All this stuff will attract the law's attention (and the more mayhem you cause, the more serious the chase gets, eventually involving the FBI and the National Guard). In short, the game takes any notion of morals and ethics and encourages you to huck them violently out the window. Other than perhaps the fires and ambulance missions, nothing you do in the game is likely to give you warm fuzzies for being a good citizen.

Gameplay for GTA3 is absurdly deep. The city is huge, and you can explore it at your leisure on foot or by car (there are more than 50 different choices, ranging from Shelby-esque speedsters to flatbed trucks). There are 73 missions in the main story, 20 unique jumps to find and complete (taking a squad car up and over the elevated train tracks is a blast), 100 hidden packages to be found, and untold legions of gang members, mobsters, yakuza, law enforcement, and civilians to waste. And if your health meter bottoms out? You appear outside the nearest hospital, minus a cool grand and all the weapons you had accumulated. But run back to the gunshop, and you're in business again. Let a cop catch you, and you'll appear outside the precinct house, again sans weapons and a healthy bribe.

The graphics are pretty good stuff, but in order to manage a constant stream of pedestrians and street traffic, they're not the tightest in the business. There are a few problems with little things like border detection in some places, as I occasionally pushed dumpsters and random set decoration through walls or fences, but with regards to the characters and the cars, no such problem exists. Framerate stays consistently high, regardless of the number of cops currently chasing you, and the cut-away cinematic cameras used when you hit a nice long jump are very cool.

The sound is very impressive. The developers called in some real Hollywood talent to do voice work for major characters, including Michael Rappaport, Joe Pantoliano, Michael Madsen, and Kyle McLachlan. And while in a car, you've got your choice of nine different radio stations, each with their own programming style and song selection (and some hilarious advertisements that skewer everything from e-business to corporate radio as a whole). While the song selection can get repetitive, most of the music is pretty unobtrusive, and you can always cut the radio off. Listening to the cops yell for you to stop or pedestrians critiquing your driving when you jump the curb is also pretty cool, and you can use the sound to help determine how far ahead of your pursuit you are, when chancing a look backwards is too risky.

After a few hours, you'll be hooked, unless you're the squeamish type. Once the game's got you, you could by tied up for dozens of hours, as even the most straight-forward approach (crashing directly through the main storyline) looks to be a fairly long and drawn-out process. But then you'd miss out on the fun of doing drive-by shootings in an ice cream truck, or ramming people off the road while driving a bus.

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