Over the next few months, I’m going to be taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we’ll be putting together won’t be traditional re-reviews, and they won’t come with any new IGN score, but they will re-examine what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release. By the end of the project, using GTA’s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly rank in my long-term love for this series.

Today, we go back to the game that changed this series forever: Grand Theft Auto III.

Playing Grand Theft Auto III in 2026 is a little like watching a home movie of Usain Bolt learning to walk. It’s a little wobbly, and it hasn’t quite got the whole process worked out yet, but through a modern lens it comes with a fascinating awareness you’re seeing the first steps of a field-defining juggernaut. In the late ’90s, GTA games had found success showing us the unique brand of freedom they offered within their sandbox-style cities – but the old school, top-down approach was a dated aesthetic in contrast to the fully 3D worlds that were first beginning to emerge during this era. In 2001, GTA III arrived as a completely different proposition, instantly reinventing the series as the new cutting edge of open-world action games.

It’s true that its already annoying targeting system is doubly frustrating by modern standards, and its time-consuming mission restarts do feel particularly punitive 25 years on.

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