[Off-Topic] GTA3 PC

I'm guilty of a heinous sin against Doom. I payed almost no attention to the E3 Doom presentation tonight. The reason? The PC version of Grand Theft Auto 3 came out today.

I managed to talk my parents into reserving a copy for my birthday. It's cool that they did it, considering the $55 price tag, and that they still did it once they found out what "GTA3" stood for. (My mom's a bit of an alarmist. :)

The one nice thing about console ports is that most of the bugs and issues were worked out before the console release. I haven't run into any crashes or bugs in the out-of-the-box version of the game. Installation was simple and damn fast, only taking about three minutes to dump 700 megs of crap on my HD. (Compared to C&C Renegade, which took nearly a half-hour for that same amount.) (You notice a lot more games recently have one install CD and one play CD? The last four games I bought are like that.)

If you've had the opportunity to play the PS2 version, you know how damn fun the game is. The PC version is an essentially perfect translation of the PS2 version, not a speck of the experience lost. The game was running kinda slow on my comp (a 700MHz Athlon w/ 128MB RAM, the "recommended" [aka realistic minimum] system), but I had the GFX settings kinda high; I'm sure if I turned off the fuzzy effects I'd get better framerates. That's another nice thing, all the graphical goodies on the PS2 version are available and tweakable on the PC, and it's all done within the game; there is zero adjusting that needs to be done before the game loads up.

The controls are pretty good. I've got a mid-level SideWinder gamepad on top of my mouse/keyboard combo, and while it ain't nearly the PS2 paddle, I'm getting used to it. There are two control types available: the "classic" version is the same one from the PS2 game, where the character moves Mario 64-style and you have to lock on to targets before you shoot. The "standard" setting is Quake-style, where the mouse freelooks and aims your gun and the directional keys strafe. The controls are totally customizable, and each game function can be mapped to three different keys at the same time. On-foot and in-vehicle controls can be mapped seperately, and functions that used the same buttons on the console are automatically bound to the same key (ex. firing handguns, firing vehicle turrets, and arming car bombs will always be the same key[s]). I just wish there was a hotkey that'll let me swap between the control settings, so I can easily use "classic" style when running around and "standard" style for the heavier firefights.

Call me stupid, but one of my favorite parts of GTA3 was the 'live' radio stations. All seven of them present and intact in the PC version. There's also a nice little 'mp3' directory in the game directory that you can drop your own pirated music into and play it in-game.

The player model is also skinnable, and skins are simple 256x256 bitmaps that can just be dumped into the 'skins' directory and loaded in-game. No fuss, no muss. I have yet to check out any multiplayer capability. Already rumors abound online of custom maps and vehicles and game mods in the works. (Too bad my school PC is off the 'Net for the summer, and my family's comp isn't enoughto run the game.)

The long and short of it is: The game is everything I hoped for it to be. I'm having fun.

Yes. GTA3 rules.

And I did my school work experience with DMA Design during its development :D

IMJack said:

I'm guilty of a heinous sin against Doom. I payed almost no attention to the E3 Doom presentation tonight. The reason? The PC version of Grand Theft Auto 3 came out today.

Heh, I've been ignoring until an hour or so ago, reason: just started my first Secret of Mana game and was too busy leveling up my characters to care.

That game's kinda silly but it's fun at the same time, I like anything where I can level up characters as much as I want before moving onto the next scene =)

Gets boring after like 6 hours though :P

They actually presented it on the web?

IMJack: REPENT, FOR YOU HAVE SINNED AGAINST THE HOLY WORD OF DOOM III!!!!!! REPENT BEFORE THE ALMIGHTY GODS CARMACK AND LINGUICA CONDEMN YOUR SOUL TO GAMING WORLD OF NEWDOOM!!!!!!

Weedster said:

IMJack: REPENT, FOR YOU HAVE SINNED AGAINST THE HOLY WORD OF DOOM III!!!!!! REPENT BEFORE THE ALMIGHTY GODS CARMACK AND LINGUICA CONDEMN YOUR SOUL TO GAMING WORLD OF NEWDOOM!!!!!!

I will... as soon as I get the cops and these goddamn Triads off my tail. Persistant little bastards... :)

No multiplayer :(

Nuno Correia said:

No multiplayer :(

Well damn.

Never know, tho... maybe they'll add it in a patch. [/wishfull thinking]

GAT or whatever it's called sucks. What's the point of non-futuristic racism I mean racing.

Fredrik said:

GAT or whatever it's called sucks. What's the point of non-futuristic racism I mean racing.

What's the point of not using punctuation? ;)

GTA2 Deathmatch is great fun. Pity they've left it out of GTA3 then.
Planning to get GTA3 at the weekend :)

I'd get it but my system would just laugh in my face trying to run it, if what Jack says is true.

Sadly, Doom is about the only thing I get decent framerates with, so that's pretty much all I play. Of course there's the odd bit of other stuff, but that and PSX games are all there is to me.

As for the video, I'm 15% through the horrendously huge 92MB download. This had better be worth it. I keep having to pause DAP so I can have any hope of loading pages like this one in less than 30 minutes.

On a side note I think I've found the 1337357 coff33 ever. Wogans of Bristol do an Arabian which makes you happy just sniffing it. I've got some in a mug here without water... just breathing it in.

Yeah! Its finaly out! Its like the only good console game in the last 5 years. Now I don't have to get a PS2! W00t!

Zarcy, you lucky bastard... DMA design rock.

I was working with the wife of one of DMA's head artists... I thought that if I sucked some dick I might be able to get my foot in the door of an accual games company.

No chance... inconsiderate bitch just dumped the guy, thus ruining my chances.

Heh.

Y'know what's kinda fun? Parking your car on the sidewalk in Bedford point and reading the news tickers on the side of the building. Funny shit. :)

meh multiplayer would be great, i want to snipe people in GTA3 heh

Multiplayer? The single player is so boring that the only way to add some lnogevity is multiplayer.

As for GTA 3, GTA and GTA 2 were rubbish and I don't expect anything different in GTA 3.

Secret of Mana > all > GTA

Erik said:

Secret of Mana > all

Yeah, maybe, except for it's insanely cheap bosses.

"Fire breath"
"Fire breath"
"Fire breath"
"Fire breath"
Uh, yeah, can I get a chance to move?
"Fire breath"
Hey, uh, you're not really being fair here, y'know?
"Fire breath"
Uh, you gotta at least give me a chance to life-up here before I die without having been able to make a single move.
"Fire breath"

I don't care for games where you have to spend 8 hours going back and forth between rooms killing the same monsters over and over again in order to pass the next boss.

Other than that, I guess it's pretty entertaining. Except for how your character has to walk right at the edge of the screen to move around, you can't avoid walking into traps or even straight into enemies like that.

EarthBound > Secret of Mana

Anything > RPGs :P

Weedster said:

Anything > RPGs :P

Pff.

Weedster said:

Anything > RPGs :P

Many of the RPG's. Not all.

Well, "anything" is probably wrong. There are horrible games of all genres.

I DID have GTA 3,until my brothers friend scratched the DVD to fuck..bastard! (i got it on lauch day too!)

Hmm,when i first read the topic title i thought it was someone wanting to port GTA 3 into doom...well it could be done in EDGE,Using some very huge DDF files,a very efficient reject map and a lot of praying...XD

(but you could actually walk inside the strip joints!!.and see some badly ripped off duke nukem strippers! 33137!!!!!!!!!1)

...or you could download GTA3 off the internet and not bother.

the bosses are not much fun im SoM no.. but not because they are cheesy, but because they can be slain in no time with some attack magic (you did use that earthslide 657 times on that mushroom guy outside the inn to get it to lvl 8 right? ;P). The regular monsters are fun and challenging though, and multiplayer rocks!