I did a handful of more missions in GTA3 tonight, finally getting to the titular one and stealing some cars as a mission goal, not just for my own transportation. I also opened up a new weapons shop on the north end where I can now buy a rocket launcher, and did the vigilante mission to get a couple police bribe stars near my hideout. The vigilante mission is a piece of cake once you know a certain cheat-ish trick…

I should be getting close to the halfway point, according to the stats page.

I figured I’d try the GTA3 ambulance missions, since the rewards are useful (health and adrenaline pickups at the hideout, and infinite running stamina). However, after numerous attempts, screw that. The ambulance tips over way too easily, the entrance to the hospital to drop people off is really narrow, and gang members would pull me out of the ambulance, instantly ending the mission.

So, I wound up starting on the missions for the Yakuza on the new island instead, and opened up a bunch of other mission-givers. I’m sure something’s going to drive me away to the next part of the city, though…

I did more missions in GTA3, resulting in a gang war with the Triads, and finally got introduced to the big boss of the Portland area. He had a bunch of missions as well, but they ended with getting betrayed by him, and I fled to the next area on Staunton Island.

So, it was time to hunt the hidden packages again, and now I have shotgun, body armour, and molotov pickups outside my hideout. The body armour one will be particularly handy, since I know where a couple other ones are, but they’re annoying to get to.

There’s also a new side mission to steal certain car models and park them at the docks, and I already collected most of them, mainly because I kept seeing them as I was driving away from the drop-off spot. There are some that are much rarer though, or won’t show up until later. Overall, I’m at 27% completion now.

I did a handful of more missions in GTA3 tonight, and in one particularly amusing one, I grabbed three other guys and we did a bank heist and get away from the police in a run-down SUV with the hood constantly flapping up. It took several tries to complete that mission though, since the cars can’t take much damage and the police are constantly ramming you and spinning you out while you’re trying to get to the pay-n-spray.

Another amusing-but-frustrating mission was when I had to drive around and collect stolen pornography in a trail that snaked pretty much all over the city. At a few points it wasn’t clear which way to turn though, so if you acted too quickly and got it wrong (I forgot about the look-left and look-right keys) you pretty much had to start over as you’d lose too much time.

I’ve exhausted the missions given out by three of the guys now (Luigi, Joey, and the porn star over the phone), so there’s just this ‘T’ marker left right now. Hopefully the next part of the city will open up soon. (I’m 1/5th of the way through all of the missions, though only 11% complete, according to the stats.)

Instead of doing more missions in GTA3 tonight, I ran around and collected as many of the hidden packages as I could. I know I’m not going for 100% completion, but the end result is really useful as it spawns more and more weapons at your hideout as you collect more of them (currently only the pistol, Uzi, and grenades).

There are two in the Portland area I couldn’t get though, since I have to open up other areas of the city first.

With Xbox Live down for maintenance today I turned back to the DS, but only got a couple of adventures completed in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon before the battery indicator came on. So, it’s back to the PC tonight, and I figured I should finally get back to a series I’ve been meaning to play for a long time now: Grand Theft Auto. I played SA for a bit on the PS2, but never got around to finishing it.

I bought the entire series as part of a Rockstar Collection on Steam a while back, but I think I’m going to skip the first two entries. I fooled around with them for a while, but just couldn’t get into them; the 2D perspective just felt too limiting and I was constantly crashing into things (and not intentionally) and getting lost. So, I’m going to kick it off with GTA3, and then Vice City and San Andreas. I doubt I’ll go for 100% completion, since I’d like to finish these within a reasonable amount of time not too far away from when the PC version of GTA4 comes out, and that’s pretty close now.

So far it’s your typical gangster story, starting out at the bottom and getting in good with the mob, and the missions so far have been fairly typical: bump off some guys, steal an armoured car, escort a hooker, etc. There are all sorts of side missions and collections to do, but I haven’t started on any of those yet.

I miss the overall map from San Andreas, but the area is small enough that it hopefully won’t take too long to learn it well.