The Grand Theft Auto series only really blew up when Rockstar made the change to a fully 3D world with an over-the-shoulder third-person-view with the third game of the series. But before that the first two games used a top-down view and that is what this game is doing. It’s basically a GTA clone using that top-down view using of course a modern engine and graphics. I myself have never played those versions of GTA so I thought I’d give this a shot.
A very rushed through prologue establishes the main character as Will Riley, a man who is convicted of murdering his own father and imprisoned for it. Then Will receives a tip-off from a family friend about some shady people hanging around who were also present when his father was killed. So Will breaks out of prison and is determined to clear his name and pursue this clue and as everyone should expect this leads to a big conspiracy and powerful people. On the run and short of resources, Will has to convince various criminals, crooked police and corrupt politicians to help him put the pieces together and this invariably involves earning their favor by performing crimes for them. In the process, Will carries out far worse crimes than the one he was convicted of and is endlessly tricked and betrayed, but by God, he will do whatever it takes to get to the truth.
As you can this, this story is profoundly dumb as well as being completely generic. There is not one single memorable character in here and every one is an archetype that you have seen elsewhere. The worst by far is Will Riley as the player is given no reason whatsoever to sympathize with him. It’s good that other characters point how ridiculous it is that Will has committed any number of heinous crimes in the process of exonerating himself but does that matter to Will himself? Not in the least, and yet he is easily the stupidest character in the story, being cheated and betrayed by people over and over again. Everyone else is seemingly aware of the truth all along and everyone conspires to string Will along with lies while using him to advance their own agendas which mostly consists of assigning him to perform an endless string of menial errands.
The game does have its good points however. I like the art style and while the town the game is set in is quite small, it is rather rich and detailed. There are all kinds of shops and vehicles around and even a train running a circuit through the town. Every house in the game is individually named and while the game doesn’t show the interiors of buildings in 3D, there is an interface for going room to room to steal things from them. The game implements some basic physics so driving around does require some skill and your car can knock things down and drag them along under your wheels. You can even attach your tow truck to all kinds of things to pull them, including people and ATM machines. There are other kinds of interactions with the NPCs too. Breaking into a parked car requires tools in this game and will set off the car alarm and NPCs who hear that will call the cops on you. In fact they will even call the cops if you notice you hanging around suspiciously outside their houses. Combat is okay I suppose and not too challenging once you’re upgraded your character somewhat. Yes, you can earn upgrade points and spend them to boost your health, give regeneration, make the cars you drive tougher and so on.
As usual there are the optional activities in addition to the main story and these are kind of okay but there aren’t that many of them. I enjoyed the racing challenges but found the combat ones kind of irritating. In theory it ought to be fun to be a given a tank to wreck mayhem in but the tank is unable to drive over other vehicles and so quickly gets stuck when police ram against you. Strangely enough I did have fun uncovering the hidden stashes all over the map. Many of these are hidden inside safes or bunkers to which you need a code and you can get these codes by collecting clues and deciphering them. These little clues, notes about birthdays and favorite restaurants and so on, give little hints about the people who live in the town and I consider that to be better storytelling than the main story.
On the whole however this is unfortunately not a good game. It feels like they set up a decent engine and came up with some okay mechanics, but then when it came to filling the map with content, they just sort of phoned it in. The main story is just that bad and it keeps sending you off to do utterly stupid things and Will just goes and does it. There isn’t even any connection between the main story and the optional activities. Suddenly a guy pops up offering you a minigun and bazooka to blast soldiers with as a challenge but you never meet him in the main game. Some characters in the main story simply disappear at certain points and things feel unresolved. It really feels like they didn’t quite have the time to finish all of the content that they wanted and rushed things. With a better story and more interesting things to do on the map, this might have been a solid game but as it is I can’t recommend it.