Probably all of you knwo that Grand Theft Auto series is one of the most popular franchises. Many of us grew up with this game, went through two episodes with birds-eye view, to reach the third-person, had it installed from friends, later on some decent computers and now on the mobile platform from Apple, with return to origins, birds-eye view and a little isometric flavor.
The game does not differ greatly from the original, the one on PSP and Nintendo DS. The appearance approaches the game played on PSP using a single screen and the control seems like the one on DS, with virtual stick and buttons for various actions.
The story itself is simple: Huang Lee, son of a deceased and wealthy man, arrives in Liberty City, looking for revenge and for his uncle, who can help him. Lee brings with him a sword, but since it is part of a not-so-friendly reception, it is stolen, so from now on, the game boils down to searching for the killer and the sword, with missions more or less varied.
After the reunification of the family, it begins to become interesting. You are trapped in fighting between Triads, working for several “heads” who claim that can help you for later to turn their back on you. The missions often have nothing to do with the main objective, but create new contacts, which also claim that they can help in any way.
Aming the tasks assigned, enter objectives very different from tracking a person to killing another, from the recovery of drugs to the destruction of the evidence, from a car theft and sale of drugs to a motorcycle race and skijet shooters. Equally varied are the mini-games, so we bomb, search through the garbage, disable alarms cars, break padlocks, mount rifles, fill a few bottles with Molotov cocktails and more. The content provided is simply amazing through its diversity, but when you think you’ve found everything, smash, you start searching boxes on the seabed using a sonar.
The very short time between missions can be prolongued however you want, so you can solve your personal problem meanwhile. Some extra money, a hot dog, some cardboard for scratching, the purchase of a new car or a new apartment, and also drug trafficking are all prominently. Moreover, the city is filled with diverse missions that can be activated after a discussion with a person or after climbing into a vehicle.
It is also possible to play the good guy. In other words, you can always steal a taxi, an ambulance or police car. Regarding taxis, you have to take clients and take them to their destination in a relatively short time. As a cop, you must go rapidly to the place where it was declared a robbery and as an ambulance driver to take someone from the scene of an accident to the hospital, taking care to revive him or her on the road and if his or her heart leaves in a vacation.
In a city as big as Liberty City without GPS you will be completely unproductive. So the producers decreed the rule “and we shall have a GPS”. And there is a GPS alright, even though most of the times the displayed route leads to loss of time, for the toy shows the shortest way legally speaking. It is a little odd to see that only the legal roads can be followed on GPS, but it is alright in this way. No GPS in the world will redirect you to drive between buildings or through parks if there is no road there. Or to jump with your car from a tall building in order to catch the bad guy. Or at least, I am not aware of such devices.
The unlawful deeds are not seen by the authorities and you do not have to watch out too much, because they don’t give a damn on it. You can scratch a police car, you can go on red, or even hit someone in front of them. If instead, you crashed them with all the hatred, the sirens begin to sing and you must get rid of them. For each stage of “Wanted” is displayed a car, which must be scrapped to reduce the number to zero. In other words, if your level is four “cars”, you will need to damage four cars, then three, two, and after last one to keep your eye on the law.
The police can escape you also if you enter a mission or a building to start a mission, which is equally good and bad. It is odd that the police does not say anything if we go down the street with a gun at sight, but if we start to shoot like crazy, the police intervenes rapidly from nowhere. And we remain with our weapons and drugs seized, and we have to give a little “attention” in money.
In addition to GPS, we also have a PDA from where we can read our e-mails, can access various statistics and options, contact list, check out the Website Ammu-Nation (supplier of weapons) and more.
Moving on to the next stop, Liberty City. The city is enormous, as I said above, but the movement is questionable. The good parts like the enormous difference between the cars and how they behave surprise, but they are overshadowed by very small bumps such as the change of the viewing distance when driving. Basically, what is in front of you is quite difficult to avoid, even after changing the settings (the car will not be in the center of the screen, but at the bottom). The map does not have a small zoom out, so that the excessive speed may cause you to miss an intersection, which gets annoying at some point.
There are five stations with different music genres, even if the number of tracks has been reduced. There is also a sixth radio station, that is your music. All you have to do is a playlist with the name GTA, and you will have new music.
Overall, the game is excellent and I can’t wait to play it again.
