You're the protagonist, a no-name lowly criminal, and you're robbing the bank with your girlfriend and best friend. On the way out of the bank your girlfriend shoots you and leaves you for dead. Now, after a long period of rehabilitation at the hospital, you're on your way to serve time in jail. When crossing the Callahan Bridge into Portland, a sudden explosion blows up the bridge and a gang attacks the police truck you are in to save their fellow gang members. Leaving just you and another convict, named 8-Ball, you hi-jack a car, and drive off to a mobster named Luigi. From there on, you work your way up doing various jobs for different gangs in order to get revenge against your ex-girlfriend and former best friend.
I remember playing the original GTA for Playstation way back then, and I remember how addicting the innovative gameplay and the unusual "pancake" graphics were. After playing GTA2, I was somewhat disappointed because it was practically the same as the first. About a year and a half after GTA2, Rockstar announced GTA3 for the wonderful black box, the PS2. I didn't really think too much of it until the screens started pouring out. Then the info on all the things you can do came out; I anxiously awaited the game. But with the anticipation of other great games such as Devil May Cry and Metal Gear Solid 2, GTA3 faded from my mind. Finally, GTA3 came out unexpectedly almost and naturally I still went out and picked it up. Only if I really knew how 'blissful' this game is, I would've put it as my number two most anticipated game (next to MGS2 of course). Read on...

The amount of different actions you can do in this game is enough to make your eyes fall out of their sockets. Pick fights with unexpected victims, hi-jack cars, go on killing sprees, run over people, or even try and out run the cops. Those are some of the minor things you can do, which are all fun themselves. But some of the most fun elements in the game are the ability to become a cop or even a taxi car driver to make some hard cash. If you hi-jack a taxicab, press R3 (by pushing in the right analog stick) and you can do Crazy Taxi-esque missions where you pick up people and bring them to their destinations. Want to be a cop? Hi-jack a cop car and you can do vigilante missions where your objective is to kill criminals. Or maybe you want to be a fire fighter. Go around the city in a firetruck and put out fires! And last but not least, get an ambulance and you can get injured people and bring them to the hospital! Doing those missions and going on killing sprees will definitely be taking up most of your time since they are very fun. But that's not all you do in the game...

To make your way through the game to get revenge on your ex-girlfriend, you'll have to accomplish over fifty missions for different mobsters and gangs. Missions will range from whacking someone, to delivering "goods", to even helping someone rob the bank. Practically every mission is different from one another and you choose who you want to work for at times. Some of the different gangsters and mobsters you'll be working for are Luigi Goterelli, Tony Cipriani, the Triads, and the Diablos. At some points in the game you'll have some gangs after you for doing their rivals missions, so if you are in their territory, they'll came out you full force. And if you constantly kill some of their members, they'll shoot you down as soon as they see you as punishment. After accomplishing a certain amount of missions, a new area of Liberty City will open for you. You start out in Portland, which is the 'run-down' area of Liberty City, then you move onto Staunton Island, which has many skyscrapers and sports cars, and lastly Shoreside Vale, which is like the factory area of Liberty City.

The controls in the game are just like every other GTA title, so hardcore fans of the series will be right at home. The only problem is that when driving you can just barely nudge something and the car will spin out of control or your hood will fly right off. Also, to keep the hardcore fans right at home, you can press select and change your view from four different third-person views and the "pancake" style view! Although the camera is too far away and it's hard to see things, the fans of the series will love it. The only other thing about the controls is that targeting guns by using R1 takes awhile to get used to. Surprisingly enough, there are no menus in the game at all, except for the pause menu. The game automatically loads your saved game file and you start playing right away!