GTA III

Minimum System Requirements:





* Pentium III 450MHZ


* 64MB RAM


* 16MB Direct3D Graphics Card


* Directx Compatable Sound Card
* 8X CDRO
* 500MB Free Hard Drive Space
* Win 98/ME/NT/2000/XP
* Directx 8.1 or newer

Gamespot Review
Rate: 9.3/10 Spectacular

The basic appeal of GTAIII is the ageless fascination with using
firecrackers to blow up model cars, staging horrific toy-train wrecks,
and lighting plastic army men on fire. It sets you down in the middle
of a detailed clockwork world, presents you with a physics model and a
wide variety of interesting objects to interact with, and then gives
you the freedom to smash them into each other and enjoy the resulting
mayhem. Within this metasandbox mode, you're also presented with a
series of missions, which tell the ongoing story of your life of crime
among the game's cast of unsavory characters.

While these 73 missions provide a proper plot and a beginning,
middle, and end to the game, you can attempt them at your leisure. In
between the missions, you're free to do whatever you want, either on
foot or in any number of vehicles, most of which you can relinquish
from their owners at the touch of a button. Other than the always
satisfying manufacture of general chaos, there are plenty of
more-structured tasks to undertake. For instance, if you steal a cab,
you can begin accepting fares in what amounts to a nearly complete
re-creation of Crazy Taxi. Police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances
also each have timed subgames associated with them. In addition, there
are 20 mass-destruction challenges (called "rampages"), 100 hidden
packages to find, and 20 cinematic superjumps hidden throughout the
city. Completing these side tasks grants you various bonuses, ranging
from access to extra weapons to cash bonuses.

The real star of the game, however, is the environment itself--a
corrupt municipality called Liberty City. Scotland-based developer DMA
Design (recently renamed Rockstar North) has done an amazing job of
creating a living city dense with detail. The streets are busy with
both pedestrian and vehicle traffic. Time passes, the sun rises and
sets, and different weather patterns move in and out. And unlike in
most games, you can actually drive to the skyscrapers on the horizon
several miles away. What's more amazing is that the huge city is
presented as a virtually seamless world. There is a short
one-to-two-second loading time (down from the PlayStation 2's five to
seven seconds) between the city's three districts, but otherwise the
only breaks for loading occur momentarily before mission cutscenes.

The PC version permits you to play the game in resolutions as high
as 1600x1200, a huge leap over the relatively low-res PlayStation 2
version. In addition, the textures have been reworked and are now much
sharper. Details, like some store signs, that were blurry on the PS2
are now clear enough to read easily. The polygon counts, on the other
hand, are unchanged. The higher resolution makes the simple geometry
stand out, especially on the character models. However, the impressive
view distance and general amount of activity on the screen counter the
somewhat chunky models. Pop-up is a more serious problem. The "bubble"
in which active objects in the world exist ends long before the horizon
does. On a long stretch of straight road, vehicles and people simply
materialize in the distance. On the low-res, fuzzier PS2 version, this
effect was much less noticeable. It would have been nice if the object
draw distance had been made adjustable, but it's more of a minor visual
distraction than something that actively interferes with gameplay.

It's worth noting that the enhanced graphics come at a price. We
tested the game on the "recommended" system--a 700Mhz CPU with 128MB of
RAM and a 32MB graphics card--and were required to turn every detail to
its lowest setting to make the game playable. And even then, it
stuttered enough that the PS2 version seemed like the better
alternative. It's hard to imagine that Grand Theft Auto III would run
at all on the so-called minimum specs. Fortunately, when we tested the
game on a higher-end system, with a newer graphics card and a faster
processor, we experienced significantly better results.

Sound remains excellent. For character voices, Rockstar managed to
recruit some well-known actors, including Joe Pantoliano, Michael
Madsen, Kyle McLachlan, and Robert Loggia. The nine radio stations from
the original (which you'll hear playing when you hop inside a vehicle)
are all intact. They feature a mix of music, from rap to classical, and
even include a legitimately funny talk radio station. An option has
been added to program a 10th station with your own MP3s.

The open-ended play style of Grand Theft Auto III creates a lot of
amazing, unscripted moments. The lack of any instant-replay feature to
capture these scenes was one of the only major missteps of the PS2
version. Fortunately, a replay option has been added to the PC port.
Unfortunately, it's not very good. Pressing F1 at any time starts a
replay of the last 30 seconds of gameplay. However, no camera
controls-- other than a free look around your position--are available
during the replay, nor are there any video controls, such as fast
forward, rewind, pause, or frame advance. What's more, the replays are
often more of a close approximation of what happened rather than a
strict re-creation. For instance, the timing of events, like a car
bursting into flames and exploding, may differ from the actual incident
to the replay. You can save a replay by hitting F2, but you can save
only one replay at a time, because each save simply overwrites the last
one. You can Alt-Tab out of the game and make a backup of the file, but
that's not exactly an elegant implementation. The replay system is so
absurdly bare-boned that it feels like more of a hastily thrown
together afterthought than a significant additional feature.

However, one excellent new feature of the PC port makes up for the
botched replay system: mouselook. The ability to freely look around
improves every aspect on the on-foot controls. General exploration is
easier, and aiming is no longer a chore. The PS2 version implemented an
auto-target lock-on system to compensate for the lack of fine mouse
control. On the PC, enabling mouselook disables the auto-target system.
But even though this means you can no longer run in one direction while
firing back over your shoulder, it's no great loss when compared with
the benefits of mouselook. If you can't live without the lock-on
feature, you still have the option to switch the control scheme back to
"classic" mode, which reenables it. No support of steering-wheel
controllers is included, though it's hard to imagine switching between
the steering wheel and the keyboard as often as would be required while
playing that way.

Judged solely as an enhanced port, Grand Theft Auto III is a little
lacking. Other than the addition of mouselook--whose beneficial impact
on gameplay cannot be understated--nothing much has been added. There's
no new content, the replay feature is pretty bad, and by improving just
some of the graphical elements, the overall visual effect has arguably
gotten worse. But--and this is a big "but"--GTAIII is a faithful port
of a truly exceptional game. As long as you have a PC an order of
magnitude greater than publisher's recommended specs, then you'll find
in Grand Theft Auto III one of the most inventive and satisfying action
games of all time.

http://rapidshare.com/files/117518713/GTA3.part1.rar


http://rapidshare.com/files/117519983/GTA3.part2.rar