Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City

I haven’t got all the way through GTAIII yet, but already Vice City is looking enormously appealing. And apparently the rest of the British game-buying public thinks so, too: 300,000 units shifted in Britain alone when it was released last weekend. Amazing.

David Weinberger has some interesting things to say about the game, and the morally dubious world it allows you to enter:

“Why is it that I find the computer game BlackHawk Down reprehensible but I’m ok with Grand Theft Auto 3 (GTA3)? In BlackHawk Down, you’re a righteous American soldier fighting local warlords who are starving their own people. In GTA3, you’re a hoodlum who succeeds by randomly killing innocent pedestrians and taking their money. Also, you hijack cars, kill policemen, and blow stuff up. Why do I have my moral polarity reversed when it comes to these two games?”