I think I'm gonna replay this classic. I was going through boxes and found the trilogy for PC. I also have it on steam, so I thought, why not make a thread?
It's amazing how this one title reshaped the gaming scene. Third person 2.5D was not a particularly new convention, but the freedom to truly go nuts was like little else before it. Even now some sandboxers get called GTA clones, and some competitors have gone down in flames trying to keep up. It's no surprise one of your missions includes killing a DRIVER named tanner.
I kinda hate what SA did to the silent protaganist, previously known as fido. Catalina went from being a black widow who betrayed him in a heist to a straight up nutbar.
I also think shoreside vale, the third island, really got short shrift. There are a couple missions around the airport, the pulse pounding finale chase, and then you're just left to sandbox it.
And the mods, holy poo were the mods awesome. golly the hot coffee controversy, and the lockdown that followed it.
I remember screwing with the cfg files by hand, nerfing some cars, making others indestructible speed demons.
And the lithjoe trainer was truly something else. Point to point teleportation, the garage editor, stoping those bless'ed countdown timers, it made the player the god of the sandbox. I remember things went sour around the SA days, there was a forced mod manager, accusations of spyware, crap like that.
But back in the GTA III days? Land of milk and honey. Or drugs and whores, as the parlance goes.