Grand Theft Auto III
Intense overall intensityWhat's in it
The plot centers on a street drug called SPANK, with dealers, addicts, and drug-running missions the player carries out.
The player is a career criminal who is paid and rewarded for carjacking, contract killings, and gang hits, and can freely attack civilians and police.
The player can pick up a prostitute who enters the car for an off-screen paid encounter that restores health.
Frequent strong profanity throughout scripted dialogue and radio content.
Realistic third-person gunfights, beatdowns, and running down pedestrians with vehicles produce blood pools but no dismemberment or gore.
A bleak criminal-underworld story of betrayal, revenge, and murder-for-hire.
Sex with a street prostitute is implied off-screen (the car rocks) to restore health; content is suggestive rather than shown.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Grand Theft Auto III is a single-player open-world crime game set in the fictional Liberty City, where you play a silent criminal who works his way up through rival gangs after a botched robbery. You roam a large city freely, stealing cars, driving, and shooting your way through missions for mob bosses, drug dealers, and other underworld figures. Gameplay includes realistic gunfights and melee combat against human enemies with blood, running over pedestrians, and evading police. The story revolves around a street drug called SPANK and is told with frequent strong profanity and dark, satirical humor. The player can pick up a prostitute for an off-screen health boost, and, as with any bystander, is free to attack civilians for money, though this is not required by the missions.
How it's framed
The game frames organized crime through a darkly comic, satirical lens: the player is a hired criminal who profits from theft, killing, and gang warfare, and the open world lets that violence extend to civilians without in-game moral consequence beyond a police response. Missions reward loyalty and ruthlessness, and the tone treats the criminal underworld as both brutal and tongue-in-cheek rather than cautionary.
Details
- Developer
- Rockstar Games
- Publisher
- Rockstar Games
- Released
- Jan 4, 2008
Similar games
We built this because we needed it
Balanced Play pools your kids' game time into one budget across Steam, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and more. We're taking 100 founding families — free for life.
Claim a founding spot →Free for life for the first 100. No card, no spam.