7 Best Missions in GTA 3

GTA 3 is still considered one of the best and most important entries in the series. While it may seem basic at first glance now, it helped the open-world genre to expand in a major way. Mainly when it comes to the game going to the 3D side of graphics. There are a lot of great missions you can enjoy throughout the series. There are even a few minutes of an animated Phil Collins concert in Vice City Stories. And while Vice City is known for some of its best missions, GTA 3 has some great experiences of its own. And for a game where the protagonist doesn’t say a word and Rockstar was testing the waters with GTA still, the missions can be great.

Bomb Da Base: Act II

One of the final missions in Portland revolves around destroying a cartel chip producing narcotics. Players can’t start it until they pay 8-Ball $100,000. But when you get the opportunity to do it, it’s full of action. Arriving at the Portland Docks, you need to use a sniper to protect 8-Ball as he works to plant a bomb to sink the ship. The mission is the first to test your sharpshooting skills.

Once you are successful, you are treated to an explosive cutscene of the ship sinking. Showcasing your hard work and money to stop Catalina and let her know you’re still alive. It’s one of the first times that players get to see the environment get changed due to your actions in a mission. And when the mission is over, you receive a $150,000 payday. Not only paying back for the mission, but also getting some extra for the chaos.

Espresso-2-Go!

This is considered one of the toughest missions in GTA 3, and that’s why it’s so great. Players need to find and destroy various espresso stalls around the map. While that may sound simple, there’s a twist. Only the first one is revealed when you start the mission. After that, you need to drive around the map and get near them for the vendors to be revealed. Plus, they are not just centered on one island. Instead, they are across Portland, Shoreside Vale, and Staunton Island.

And to top it all off, you only have eight minutes to complete the mission. If you don’t get all of the espresso stalls, you need to find them all again by restarting the mission. It’s a hard one to do at first, but it’s great to see one where there is this much pressure. Once you memorize the locations, it’s much easier. But it essentially leaves it up to the player to travel around the map and search out each one.

Kingdom Come

One of the phone missions for King Courtney on Staunton Island. The final one for him, in fact. It is constant craziness from start to finish. Players need to destroy some vans that are being driven by SPANKed-up NPCs. However, what makes it even more wacky is that you end up walking into a trap. And you have to survive and take out NPCs that charge at you and explode. The fight takes place in a small back-alley area, and it becomes a tense moment of trying to survive the mission. Not only do you have to have good accuracy to shoot the enemies, but you need to keep your head on a swivel. One wrong turn, and the NPCs will surround you and detonate, taking you down in one to two explosions.

Last Requests

Last Requests is a very underrated mission. There isn’t much action that happens in it overall. However, it’s the context of what happens and how the game handles it. Players are asked by Salvatore Leone to dump a car to become a made man. What makes this unique, though, is that you get paged by Maria that the car is a trap. So, if you go to the mission marker and enter the car, it will explode, and the mission fails. Therefore, it seems like you can’t beat the mission.

The unique part is that you need to read the pager message that Maria leaves you and meet her at the docks. That way, you can sail with her and her yakuza friend Asuka to Staunton Island. It was a twist of a way to change up the mission formula. By making the player keep focus on everything rather than get a mission and drive to the mission chevron, rinse and repeat. It’s also great because it sets the story off in a big way, further cementing the betrayal Claude encounters.

Marked Man

Marked Man is a hectic mission but a great one in GTA 3. Players need to take Ray Machowski from the park in Staunton Island to the airport in Shoreside Vale. So he can get out of dodge. However, the path to his freedom is filled with roadblocks and various agents that want him and you, in turn, dead. When you’re playing Marked Man, there is paranoia that enemies are going to try and ambush you. But when you go to cross into Shoreside Vale, a whole force of enemies are waiting with high-powered weapons.

Additionally, you have to worry about getting Ray to the airport before the flight leaves. So not only are you racing against time, but you are trying to survive all the same. After working for Ray and just seeing how dangerous a man with that many secrets can be, it makes you realize how deep you are in GTA 3.

The Exchange

In one explosive final mission, players need to rescue Maria and get their revenge on Catalina. Everything that’s been building up in the game finally pays off. Players leave her mansion and must head to the dam on Shoreside Vale. Barricaded and surrounded by cartel enemies, the area offers plenty of gunfights. You fight your way across the dam and use all sorts of weapons to take them down. Plus, you get the opportunity to get a rocket launcher and shoot Catalina down in a final fight against her helicopter. The GTA games have great climaxes when it comes to missions. But for the 3D games, it’s one heck of a way to start them off. Furthermore, there is a hilarious ending cutscene that takes place just after you finish the mission that ends the game with a bang.

Waka-Gashira Wipeout!

This mission is the epitome of betrayal. Now working for Donald Love (whom you may recognize from Vice City), you have to take down a gang member. However, it’s none other than Kenji, Asuka’s brother and your current employer. Love wants to start a gang war between the Cartel and Yakuza. And what better way to do that than take out a gang leader in the rival’s vehicle? It creates a chaotic mission, as you navigate to the top of a parking garage and must take Kenji down. Furthermore, the story implications it causes and how quickly betrayal happens in the game are astounding.

GTA 3 has some really great missions for players to enjoy. If you are just booting up the game for the first time, the ones above all vary in what you can expect from the game. However, they are the stepping stones to what is to come from Rockstar Games. Furthermore, with the latest game in the series releasing soon, it shows how far they’ve come. If you are getting hyped to play the GTA games, it may be best to start with GTA 3 as an entry point. Only then will you get to see just how great these seven missions can be.