We all have Christmas gaming stories.  Many have two or three, some maybe more.  Me, I have several, but the one that's been rolling around my noodle as of late happened back in good old 2001.  Remember it?  How about you and me sit for a bit, and we can exchange Christmas gaming stories, okay?  Great.



Late 2001 was a great time to own a PlayStation 2.  The quality of games both in the stores and on the horizon finally made that $335 USD price point ($300 for the system plus $35 for memory card) easier to swallow.  I skipped out on the PS2 for the first year, opting instead for splitting my time between my PC and my new Sega Dreamcast. During this time, I enjoyed plowing through the awesome (and often heavily discounted) Dreamcast library and online content on the PC, all the while passively watching the PS2 for signs of life.  Despite the previews and promises, it wasn't until early September of 2001 and the impending release of Silent Hill 2 and Metal Gear Solid 2 that I finally bit the bullet and bought a PS2.  I played Silent Hill 2 from the release date at the end of September, until Metal Gear Solid 2 hit store shelves during the second week of November.  MGS2 lived in my PS2 just a hair over a month, leading almost right up to Christmas week, during which I decided to give my newest console a little break, and put a couple dozen hours into Ultima Online. 


Oh, Ultima Online.  I know the game is still available for purchase (and looks mostly the same as it did in 2001), but it just isn't the same.  Once upon a time even leaving the boundaries of a town was dangerous, almost guaranteeing a shellacking by some random PK (player-killer).  Now, in this time of newbie areas and PvE-only servers this may have seemed archaic, but at the time, this behavior was often the height of hilarity, mostly due to the sheer amount of people attempting to live a "PK" gaming style.  I remember getting chased around the town, out of the town, and all the way up to Britain (maybe a five minute run) shortly after starting a new character in Trinsic, by another new character who was determined to kill me with his bow and arrows. By the time I ran into Britain, I had managed to type "GUARDS" (the word to call support from guards, as they didn't help on their own) who immediately appeared and slaughtered the offending character.  I stood over him for a moment, berating his ghost before looting his corpse for a fishing pole and some gold. In the heat of the moment, I didn't notice that my character went "gray", (meaning that I was now open season for anyone to kill, in or out of town),  and was subsequently slaughtered by another character a few moments later as I attempted to catch fish with my ill-begotten fishing pole.  Good times.

Christmas morning, 2001.  My wife of only 1.5 years and I had a ball exchanging presents at the foot of the tree in our modest little apartment.  I'm pretty sure I got her the treadmill she had been wanting, but for the life of me, I'm not sure how I got it into the apartment.  It's so strange to think about this and compare it to now, with two children and a noticeable lack of sanity and dignity. Anyway, for my final present my wife handed me a fat bundle which looked like a double-size DVD, and I handed her a small box that I deftly pulled out from behind the cable box.  It was a bracelet that I braved the mean streets of Metro Detroit on Black Friday to get, and she loved it.  I opened my present and was genuinely surprised to see two games: Ico and Grand Theft Auto 3.

"Now I know you didn't ask for the 'Auto' game, but the game-guy at Target said it was fun and also being banned.  That was the last copy," my wife told me excitedly.

I was happy and thanked her, but truth be told, I was not a fan of the other GTA titles I had played.  While my best friend loved them, I always found the first few GTA games claustrophobic, as if I was trapped on a tiny little screen while everyone else in the world was free to roam.  I never felt that sense of freedom that my friend expressed, which left only the gratuitous violence, which I could care less about.  I was sure GTA3 was the same, but I would play it anyway, for the sake of my wife if anything.  But first, Ico.

Now we've all talked extensively about Ico before, so no need to go on too much about it.  Remember the modern playthrough we did a while back?  Awesome, right?  When I first played Ico back on Christmas night, 2001, it was as if I was in the game itself, leading Yorda around while I quickly tried to solve puzzles, always aware that the shadow men could pop up at any time to steal her away.  It was an amazing experience, and one that I will cherish forever.  But it was a very short experience.....like, a done-the-next-morning experience.  In my excited and euphoric state, I had marathoned Ico overnight!  My wife was not happy to say the least, but I still had one more game she had bought, and I put it into the PS2 the day after Christmas as a sort of peace offering.  I hadn't read anything on GTA3 and didn't have a clue what to expect.  I didn't even open the instruction manual as I powered on my PS2.


I often try and remember exactly what my first impression of GTA3 was, but always to no avail.  It wasn't love at first sight, I know that much, but at some point, I remember discovering a pickup truck that had spawned on a beach.  I got in and drove away, eventually coming back and discovering that another truck spawned in.  Many hours later, I had a large pile of crashed trucks on the beach, attempting to find out just how many the game handle before they started to disappear.  Thus began my lifelong love of 3-D, open world games.  Now I don't really have an idea just how long I played the game in terms of hours, but I can tell you this:  I didn't play any other game on my PS2 until Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released nearly eleven months later.  No joke.  I put other things in the PS2, but they were either DVD movies or PSX games that my wife liked to play (like Bubble Bobble, Mr. Driller, or King of Fighters '96).

Now you know, just as well as I, that the main body of GTA3 isn't much longer than Ico, permitting that you power through the main story, ignoring all the collectibles and side missions.  Take into account all those extra missions and extras, all done in a meandering fashion, the game isn't more than your average Elder Scrolls game (according to howlongtobeat.com).  So the new question becomes, just how could one squeeze nearly eleven months out of a single player, sixty-hour game? 

Simply put, Grand Theft Auto III somehow managed to hit every soft spot for games that I possessed at the time.  It features a unique and snarky view of American culture without resorting to direct insults, as well as enough freedom due to loose design where one can finish missions using varied and often very creative measures. My favorite example is from the "Sayonara Salvatore" mission, where I can think of three different ways to finish the mission, with one being a ridiculous to watch terrain and vehicle exploit.  I really don't think this isn't totally by design, and I think that is what made Grand Theft Auto III so special for me.  Sure, it features some great gameplay, but much of it is buggy and fun to play with.  Discovering that exited cars disappear less when the driver-side door is left open was pretty cool, but paled when I discovered I could cram multiple cars into a single garage.  Figuring out how to hijack a spawned tank was my favorite accomplishment, I think.  I remember it took about three or four hours to come up with a workable plan and location, then half-dozen more hours to perfect it. 

Gosh.  I'd forgotten just how much free time I used to have (and with more than five hours of sleep as well!).

Another great "feature" is the often strange AI behavior of vehicles.  Minivans, for example, will retaliate viciously against any violent behavior directed at them.  Another is that most vehicles, when sprayed lightly with with any weapon (the best being in drive-by mode inside a vehicle), will flee at top speed, plowing through any vehicle in its path.  Pedestrians react strangely to if you swerve while driving towards them, often causing them to jump directly into traffic.  Each one also has few lines of dialogue, which are sometimes so strange and surprising in their delivery that one cannot help but laugh.  Running through an alleyway to get away from an angry group of Mafia to suddenly hear a hearty, "In the navy!" from your right is cause for a chortle, in my opinion.

Of course the music is also worth mentioning.  There were a total of eight music stations,  each providing roughly twenty minutes of content before looping.  It was through this that I discovered Scientist, which culminated into a love of roots-style Dub music (Prince Jammy, King Tubby, etc.).  The lone talk station, Chatterbox, also introduced several characters to the series, some that remain in GTA games to this day (Lazlo and Fernando) and some that would become "in jokes" that occasionally surfaced throughout the next few games (the English guy who likes spanking and the bee-lady).  And the more I played GTA3, the more I discovered.  It seemed that there wasn't a week that went by where I didn't pick up a new nuance or little snippet of meaning from those scant four hours of recordings. 


You know, I think I might play the game again soon.  I'll give the classic RPG genre a rest for a few weeks and play me some Grand Theft Auto III.  I own more copies of it than any other game (PS2, Xbox, Steam, PC small box, and iOS), and it might be fun to rediscover the differences between the platforms again. And nothing silly, such as 100% game or the daunting all-cinematic driving playthrough.  Just beginning to end.

And you know what else?  I'm really glad you are here with me today, jawing about memories long past.  Maybe next year I'll talk about the Christmas of 1989, when Santa delivered my first Nintendo Entertainment System.  But enough about this.  It's your turn, friend.  Tell me about one of your Christmas gaming stories.

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