Average Rating: 
Rating:  - great!
Now this is one addictive game. I recommend buying a strategy guide first. This is a game of many hidden pleasures. On the pc version, you can even create your own radio station by adding MP3's to a special file included on the disk. However, you need a FAST computer to play this - I have a Pentium 4 1.5 gigs with 640 megs of ram and a 64 meg Radeon card, and it still slows down, usually when multiple cops are chasing me. If you've ever dreamed of being a sociopath on the rampage, this is for you. You can steal cars, drive over or shoot innocent civilians, play one gang of off another and blast police helicopters from the sky. You don't even need to complete the boss missions, although they're a lot of run also. The police are relentless and aggressive and won't go away simply if you kill a lot of them. Also Liberty City itself is a wonder - an enormous New York/Chicago hybrid with recognizable, distinct neighborhoods and landmarks. For fun you can simply drive around for hours, running over civilians and avoiding cops. For the PC version, buy a joystick. You'll need it. Also the radio stations are great - you have a choice among rap, 80s pop, rave, reggae, classical, talk and modern pop, complete with annoying DJ's and commercials. If you get tired of the stations (there are about 3 hours of music here) you can create you own station with MP3s. I've never seen a game where the player can create his own soundtrack. Now there's no multiplayer, but that's not a huge drawback.
Rating: - Finally on the PC and i'm PO'D!!
God i wish i wasn't mad at this game right now. I picked my pc copy up yesterday after work and couldn't wait. After patching it to work with XP, I started off on my life of crime. To my surprise that game doesn't run well for some reason. I've got a 1.6 ghz pentium 3, 256 mb ram, geforce2 32mb, and defragged my hard drive and still can't get the game to run smooth over 640x480x16. i did all the speed recommendations and it's playable now most of the time. Hopefully they'll release a patch soon as the only problem i could think of would be something to do with windows xp. I still give it 4 stars because i've played it and love it but i'm just a little sore right now. But damn is this game fun. I saw a guy mug a "lady" while driving so i chased him down, did a driveby, took his money, and went back for a little R&R with my new lady friend. This game is gorgeous, deep, funny, inventive, and most importantly open. There's so much to do and so many places to go, by the time you get tired of this game, gta4 will be out and that ain't gonna be for a while. So pick it up, dish out some pain, and have a ball but please, pray for a patch, pray for me....
Rating: - Only minor glitches, great concept
You can pretty much sum the game up in one word: fun. Prepare to lose some sleep. There are few games that give you this much freedom to do pretty much whatever you want. Although the missions in the beginning are very very easy, as you progress in the game they will become much more difficult and interesting. I've read some of the other reviews, and there are a lot of complaints about performance. I have a 1.4 GHz Athlon, GeForce4 MX 440, and 512 MB of RAM on Windows 2000, a system that won't exactly knock your socks off with performance, but I had no problem with the game crashing and get excellent frame rates on 1024x768x32. If you have only 128 or 256 MB of memory, you should terminate all your background tasks, otherwise it'll be accessing the hard disk too much and that will slow you down a lot. Otherwise get DirectX 8.1 and download the latest drivers for your video card. If you're still using a Voodoo or a GeForce2 then it's obviously time to acquire some newer technology, so you may be out of luck.
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