Grand Theft Auto III

I bought Grand Theft Auto III on Android during their sale a few days ago.... it sounded familiar, I thought, "Don't I have this for my (original) Xbox?"... checking my collection, indeed-- I did buy it years ago, as part of the Grand Theft Auto III/Grand Theft Auto:Vice City Xbox 2-pack. But I don't think I ever even played it! It still looked pristine when I popped it into my Xbox.

Playing the Android version, at first it's really fun, the touchscreen controls seem fairly smooth... until you actually have to do anything at all that requires the slightest bit of finesse.

But the Xbox version, well that uses a physical dual stick controller, so that HAS to be better, right? Nope. The Xbox version is pretty much UNPLAYABLE. I have NO IDEA how Rockstar Games messed this game up. I assume it's a port from a PS2 version, but  this version should never have been pressed to disc, let alone sold to the public. It just looks so muddy and blurry. But the worst, the absolute worst thing is there's no right analogue stick control. The right stick is only used for this crappy first-person camera look around that only works when the player is standing completely still. It's utter unusable garbage. It's bizarre that the Android touchscreen-only version has better camera control than a version on a dual stick console.... not that the Android version has great camera either. It's also unplayable when having to do anything on-foot, like combat.

Why was Rockstar so clueless about 2nd analogue stick camera control? I thnk this game was released in 2002, so Xbox & PS 2 were out for a little while before the game was released.... but I'm wondering if it wasn't developed for the previous generation of consoles? I don't know... either that or developers like Rockstar Games were truly clueless as to how to make games during that time.

Also adding to the brokenness of the GTA III Xbox version is that there's NO fullscreen map. Why in their right mind did they not assign a button to display a fullscreen map? Especially considering how big the play area is. Thankfully the Android version has a fullscreen map.

Another great little thing about the Android version is that some of the controls work with my SGH-i927r Samsung Galaxy S Glide's slide-out hardware keyboard! I didn't expect there to be support for it, and it's only really directional controls wasd & the direction keys on the right. Still not sure if it's better than the onscreen touch controls, but it's nice to have the options.

I paid 0.99¢ for Grand Theft Auto III: 10th Anniversary mobile Android version and I'm sure I paid waaaay more than that for the Xbox bundle back in 2004-2005? Hopefully not 50 times more..... but I can't remember, so.... oh well.

I was griping about how Driver Renegade isn't enough like Driver '76, but instead of playing a GTA knock-off like Driver '76, I guess I'm going to the source material with GTA III on my phone, so I'm getting that fix I was denied with the 3DS version of Driver.


later
don