Great Gameplay but Bad Sound

It turns out this is not a re-engineered port of the old Windows version to the Mac, but rather an exact copy of all the Windows files wrapped in a Cider package. Cider invisibly translates all the Windows stuff to Mac stuff on-the-fly as needed, and it does a pretty good job. The game runs extremely well on my 2010 27" i7 iMac with 8GB ram at full 2560x1440 resolution on OS 10.7 Lion.

The most glaring problem Ive noticed is that the sound quality is horribly compressed. It just sounds awful compared to the original CD version from 2001. The same is true with the other GTA titles on the Mac App Store. Clearly, this compression was intended to make the game download from the Store as small and quick as possible. Im not sure that was a good decision, though, considering people are fine with downloading other games on the Store which are several gigabytes in size, whereas GTA 3 is only three quarters of a gigabyte — most people would not have a problem sparing an extra half hour or so downloading to have a decent sound experience. I hope the developers update these GTA games with the original sound files in the future.

There was also an issue Ive been having with the gun target in the center of the screen. Except for the rocket launcher and sniper rifle, which use their own targeting systems, it seems all the other guns shoot above and to the right of the target marker. Perhaps the target marker needs to be moved up and to the right. Either way, its something that should be fixed.

Other than these points, the game is exactly as I remember it from years ago and its still very fun to re-play, especially considering how much the GTA series has changed since.

Dr. Funko about Grand Theft Auto 3, v1.0