Cops and Robbers

Have you ever watched a mob movie and wondered what it was like to serve as a runner? The guy who performs the hits, or drives the getaway car for the bank robber? If you have, then check out Grand Theft Auto in which you are this person. You perform jobs ranging from Driving a truck filled with Explosives to a site to perform a hit or returning stolen goods to your mob boss. There are a wide range of vehicles (all have the ability to be stolen by you) that have different characteristics of speed, handling, and how much damage they can take. There are a multitude of weapons to choose ranging from your fists for real mans fighting, all the way up to rocket launchers and flame throwers. There are even a few instances where you can drive a tank that fires.

The first time I put this game on my P233 computer system it ran smooth and installed even smoother. The controls were easy to learn and the story is simple to follow. You have to acquire a certain amount of money to get out of each level. Making money is easy, all you have to do is ram a car, hit a pedestrian or even kill a police officers. The hard part of making money this way is that you only make maybe 10 - 1000 for a hit and you have to get at the lowest 1,000,000 to complete the first level. The main way to allocate money is by running jobs for the cities organized crime operations. You et these jobs either by getting in a car that they have told you about on your pager or by answering the phones at a pre-defined destination.

The only area I have found that could use improvement is the save game feature. More specifically it doesn't have one. This can make beating the game very complicated as many people do not have 1 - 2 hours at a time to play this in order to complete a level. Once you complete a level though, you will start at the beginning of that level each time you restart the game.

You play this game from an overhead view of the city where you are the center. You drive around town, killing pedestrians, hitting cars and commiting crimes at your discretion. The jobs can be interesting and fun to do the first few times but the real fun and replayability in this game is by commiting crimes and running from the police. As soon as I acquired one most wanted (which is the lowest you can have and the police start to come after you) I would drive, run, or walk through the city evading the police at all costs. There have been times where multiple cars were right on my tail and forced me into an accident and in order to escape I had to exit my vehicle and shoot my way to freedom. I wound up jumping in my seat as I dodged bullets and hopped over vehicles finally killing two of the officers and stealing one of their beat up cars. Playing the game this way usually can last an hour to an hour and a half but there is no loss in quitting early. You won't beat any missions this way but you'll definitely end up laughing for most of the time.

As if this isn't enough fun for one person to handle, wait until you play network. I brought a friend over when I first got this game (it includes the ability to play network only without cd in drive - Thumbs up to the production team) and we spent about two hours having car chases through the city attacking eachother with everything we could. I would drive around a corner to find my friend waiting for me with rocket launcher poised and ready to fire at me. Needless to say I rarely lived too much longer. We had a few shootouts where we ended up running out of ammo so we would jump in to a car and try to run the other person over. At one point I missed him and hit a building, he ran up and car jacked me! I almost fell from my seat laughing.

Bottom Line: I have had this game for four months now and I still play it everytime I get a chance. It's a great way to unwind after an 8 hour day at work followed by an hour in thick traffic. I bought this on a recommendation and I have recommended it to everyone who's asked me for a fun game that would take them a while to get bored of. They have all done the same to their friends.