Grand Theft Auto III: Now In Your Pocket!

In October of 2001, Rockstar Games revolutionized the gaming world in the form of Grand Theft Auto III, shifting their flagship 2D series into a 3D world, and introducing an enormous chunk of the population to the concept of massive sandbox games.



Shoot forward 10 years, and GTA3 is back. As of 15/12/2011, it’s available for iOS and Android, the same awesome game, same violence, same over-the-top action -- but in now it's your pocket.

Considering the game is probably older than both your smartphone and TV combined, GTA III is still as entertaining to play as it was all those years ago, it's the same game you all remember, but with a few little perks ported in from modern GTA games, like instant retries on failed missions, but as it was reviewed a million times a decade ago, I'll focus on the port and transition to mobile.

The obvious change is the controls, their now touchscreen, and it works surprisingly well, not Dead Space perfect, but pretty good. Looks wise, whilst it's no Infinity Blade II, it still looks good (not gorgeous, but still perfectly acceptable). The audio is also still brilliant, with loads of dialog, sound, radio chatter, and music crammed into the 500 MB package. If anything, it's a testament of how far technology has come; what once required a state of the art gaming console just a decade ago now runs effortlessly on an single battery-powered slab of glass with no controller.

Well, not effortlessly, Rockstar claims support for all of the more recent iOS devices, including the iPhone 4, iPad 1, iPhone 4S, and iPad 2. On the 4S and iPad 2 it runs like water, no hiccups, whilst the iPad 1 and iPhone 4 did encounter a few hiccups -- nothing major, but not quite as smooth. We're yet to test it on our Galaxy S II, but we imagine it'll handle the job.

Controlling our muted anti-hero is an OK affair, whilst the screen does seem cluttered, it's surprisingly good to navigate (and you can arrange/re-size the buttons in the settings), but only walking/driving -- shooting isn't quite as good. The game has an autolock system which, even after fair amount of playtime, never seems to work the way it should be intended, but whilst it’s not so bad as to make the game impossible (just quite frustrating at times), it's still adequate.

Overall


Grand Theft Auto III was a revoltionary game, and if you missed out (for shame) all those years ago, I can't stress enough to buy it, but you'd be better off with the PS2 version. Those that have played it will probably still purchase it just to re-ignite that flame, but still, for £2.99 (£3.21 on the Android Market), you're getting a game that changed the gaming world, and for that you can't really complain.

Buy it now: iOS App Store, Android Market