Grand Theft Auto

Release Date: December 14, 1997

Does a game that features drugs, stealing anything that moves, rather fruity language and some of the most violent crimes known to humanity really have a place in a civilised society such as ours?

You are a small-time car thief with big ambitions. Your aim is to carve yourself a place at the top of the shadowy criminal underworld, gaining power, infamy, respect, and a whole load of cash across six levels split between three cities and to progress from one level to the next you have to amass a specific number of points. Complete all the levels, and you’ll have achieved your nefarious goals and assured yourself a place in the criminal Hall of Infamy. Welcome to the gloomy underworld of Grand Theft Auto.

The game itself is played from a top-down view of the city, centred on your current location, which scrolls as you move around, either on foot or in a vehicle of some kind. The faster you're moving, the more the viewpoint zooms out, allowing you to see further ahead. The controls are deceptively simple. You can turn left and right, accelerate forwards or backwards, use your current weapon, cycle through the weapons you have available, get in or out of a vehicle and brake or jump.

So far, so good, then. But what exactly do you do? Well, that's where GTA starts getting clever. Your only fixed goal in each level is to earn enough points to move to the next. How you go about getting them, though, is largely up to you. Each level does feature a wide variety of missions for you to complete. Some of these are easy to find – you simply follow a yellow arrow that points towards a row of pay phones. Answering a phone starts the mission. Your pager, on the other hand, can kick off a mission at any time.

FERRYING DRUGS OR MONEY, KIDNAPPING, BLOWING UP BUILDINGS, SMUGGLING... IT'S PROBABLY PART OF ONE MISSION OR ANOTHER.

The missions – there are over 200 in the game – range across just about every imaginable criminal endeavour, from ferrying drugs, money or people from one place to another, to assassinations, get-away driving, kidnapping, blowing up buildings, smuggling, under-age smoking... You name it, and if it's illegal, it's probably part of one mission or another. Nearly all of them are made up of multiple sections, some of which must be completed in a time limit, or with a specific vehicle. Completing a mission earns you points and increases your Score Multiplier, increasing the points you earn from further illegal acts.

As well as completing missions, though, you also earn points for a vast range of other actions. Basically, if it's immoral, illegal, or just plain nasty, you get rewarded for it. Stealing cars and selling them at the docks, running over pedestrians, mugging innocent bystanders, going on a killing spree with a machinegun, causing accidents – all these and more earn you points towards the total needed to progress. If you don't want to bother with the missions, you don't have to. If you just want to stick to stealing cars and selling them, fine. If you want to go on a mass killing spree and see how many murders you can commit, no problem. Simply put, GTA gives you an entire city to play in, and leaves you to do pretty much what you want.

Of course, you can't expect to charge around like a maniac for long before the city's police force starts to take notice. Whenever you perform an illegal act, there's a chance that a nearby policeman will spot you, or someone will report it. Once this happens, you start being pursued by the boys in blue. The worse your crimes, the more effort they put into catching you, as represented by a row of one to five police icons at the top of the screen. When you're on the run, police cars will start popping up all over the place and try to block your escape. If a copper gets next to you, either by just running up to you on foot or by reaching the driver's side door of the vehicle you're currently driving, you'll get arrested. This relieves you of all your weapons and equipment, and costs points to pay for your bail.

YOU CAN GIVE THE COPS A GOOD RUN FOR THEIR MONEY, DODGING THROUGH ALLEYS AND MAKING HANDBRAKE TURNS TO SHAKE OFF PURSUIT...

Of course, you can give the cops a good run for their money, dodging through alleys and making handbrake turns to shake off pursuit, smashing through roadblocks, and so on. You can also go on the offensive and shoot them if you like, though they will catch you unless you either complete a mission or pull into one of the map's single spray-and-paint shops, either of which clears your current 'wanted' status.

There's an awful lot to like about Grand Theft Auto. Each of the three cities is truly huge, and DMA has managed to create a real sense of them being living, breathing places. Pedestrians wander about, other people drive around, stopping at lights, overtaking slower drivers, and so on. Mayhem is short lived however, and an ambulance will appear shortly after to fix up/clean up your victim. Blow up a car and fire engines appear to control the blaze.

As all these tasks in tandem with GTA's essentially free-form nature – you can complete each level by whatever means you fancy. This very freedom, however, is something of a double-edged sword because early on, after a few missions, you realize that you're sometimes doing something in each zone, which can quickly become somewhat repetitive. No, to get the best out of GTA you have to experiment, explore, and try out new things. Unfortunately, this style of gaming isn't going to be to everyone's taste.

Another potential problem is the game's subject matter. Ways DMA went out of its way to make GTA as objectionable as possible, and it's succeeded admirably. This game caused a storm in the popular media, arriving at the best (old) debate about whether or not computer games are harmful or simply harmless fun. Beyond all the hype, though, the fact is that if you're easily offended, you're not going to enjoy this game, despite the tongue-in-cheek humour which runs throughout.

The graphics are handled via a top-down view, which is basic, and a bit detail-deficient. As you've probably noticed by now, it's far from the most visually stunning game to appear on the PlayStation. GTA may not be the worst-looking PlayStation game ever, but it's certainly in the running. On the positive side, everything is at least functional – the cars, streets, buildings, and so on are all recognizable for what they are, and the collision detection, for example, is spot on.

Aesthetically, however, GTA leaves a lot to be desired. Everything has a very dated look, betraying the game's Amiga ancestry. In many cases, it actually seems that the artists have deliberately gone for a 'retro' look, which is probably accurate for graphics but doesn't work for anyone else. Despite a few neat effects, the overall impression is poor in many areas, which should probably the jerky scrolling locks up.

Grand Theft Auto: London 1969

DMA has, however, produced a very impressive game that pushes the technical limits of the PlayStation not in terms of the graphics, but in the area of game structure and design. In treating its audience with maturity, DMA has also made quite a brave move, which should probably be applauded. Grand Theft Auto won't be for everyone, and it definitely requires a lot of effort from the player – the more you put into it, the more you get out. Provided you can live with its weakness, though, it's great fun, and truly huge in scope – no matter how long you play it for, there's always more to discover.