This is where Three Leaf Clover goes full Heat. Outside, sirens wail as the full might of the LCPD descends on the bank. Niko rushes down to the vault and fills black gym bags with stacks of money. Here in Liberty City, the moment that alarm goes off, the mission suddenly spirals out of control. The heists in Grand Theft Auto 5 capture some of this feeling-but the fact you're part of a team of mostly professionals, in jobs carefully planned and mapped out by an expert, means it's a more controlled kind of chaos. Three Leaf Clover is a masterclass in escalating chaos. Then the C4 on the vault door suddenly explodes, activating an alarm and triggering an instant 5-star wanted level. Between this and the brothers accidentally revealing identifying information about themselves to the hostages, the heist is already off to a disastrous, amateurish start. "My friend, the world was built on bad ideas," he says, revealing a concealed pistol and killing Saint Michael-before being gunned down himself by a furious Derrick and Packie. Luis tells him, wisely, that this is a bad idea. He's lying on the floor next to fellow hostage Eugene Reaper, who foolishly decides to take matters into his own hands. As Niko you can actually shoot and kill him after the police have arrived, although he appears in later missions, and is seen walking away from the scene of robbery in the Gay Tony expansion, so it's decidedly non-canon. This is Luis Lopez, protagonist of The Ballad of Gay Tony. One of the bank's customers, who obediently drops to the floor when the crew bursts in, is a guy in a black and white letterman jacket. "I think we might be okay." The crew parks up outside the bank then storms through the front door, guns primed, faces obscured by balaclavas. "If you guys can stop arguing for a few minutes," he says, running out of patience. Niko must be feeling pretty tense too as the childish, coke-fuelled bickering from earlier continues in the car. It's a long, tense drive over the bridge to Algonquin-which is even worse if you've played the game before, because you know you're about to take on one of the toughest missions in the entire GTA series. Compared to Lester Crest's meticulously planned heists in Grand Theft Auto 5, it all feels a bit amateur and slapdash. "You put them down hard." Then, once the people in the bank are under control, Derrick will blow the vault door. Him and Saint Michael are gonna handle the civilians Niko and his brother Derrick will take care of the employees. Niko drives the crew to the South Algonquin branch of the Bank of Liberty in a black Feroci sedan. Packie and his idiotic brothers argue between bottles of beer and lines of coke, which is your first clue that this job ain't gonna go smoothly. Niko, who by this point in the game has a bit of extra cash to throw around, drops a grand on a tailored black suit and some shiny new Oxford brogues, then meets the gang at Packie's house to plan the heist.
Niko receives a text from Packie McReary saying he's planning a big job, and asks him to hit up boutique clothing store Perseus to buy a suit-because if you're gonna rob a bank, you gotta look sharp. Related: Grand Theft Auto 4 Was At The Cutting Edge Of Modern Culture, Now It's A Nostalgic Window Into The Past It's a lot simpler than the multi-stage missions in those games, but the bungled heist and ensuing Heat-inspired firefight on the streets of Liberty City is still hugely entertaining. It proved so popular, in fact, that Rockstar made bank heists a major feature of both Grand Theft Auto 5 and its online component, GTA Online.
GTA 4 MISSIONS SERIES
It's a mission people still talk about today, and is frequently held up as an example of the series at its best. Three Leaf Clover is bold, thrilling, and masterfully choreographed-and about as exciting as GTA games get. I completed it today and can confirm: it still whips. Over the years it's earned a reputation for being challenging, which can overshadow the fact that it's just really, really good. This downtown heist is 25 nerve-racking minutes of confusion and mayhem, as Niko Bellic and a crew of coked-up idiots attempt to rip off the biggest bank in Liberty City. Ask them what the hardest is and you might get the same answer.
Ask a GTA fan what their favourite mission is and there's a good chance they'll say Three Leaf Clover from Grand Theft Auto 4.