Open World

Russ Pitts

The Boss of You
May 1, 2006
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Open World

I like open world games - in principle. Granted, the worlds are never really open; most max at around small-town size. But compared to the games in which you're stuck on a single stretch of road, where the colors change occasionally to signify you've moved to a new area, games like Grand Theft Auto feel like vast universes.

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Cousin_IT

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Feb 6, 2008
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Im so glad im not old :-D

That said I still find being able to drive recklessly & inconsequentially in games like GTA & Driver fun. Probably because In reality I cant legally drive & frankly find doing so in British roads boring at the best of times, but in the game I can, like you say, burn rubber & tear up the world without a care in the world. After all, ill just respawn at the hospital if it all goes Pete Tong :)
 

slyder35

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Jan 16, 2008
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Interesting read, I get the feeling however that this article is more a lament about getting old than open game worlds. To be honest, when playing a game like Oblivion or Stalker, in a big open game world, I never once thought/felt like a teenager. I feel more like a teenager in CounterStrike or COD4 where I mercilessly run around blowing people heads off whilst cackling maniacly.

If you are saying Russ that getting old equates to a feeling of restriction (ie linear game), I tend to disagree, as the mere money factor of getting older means you can do alot more than when you were on a $50/week budget as a kid.
 

L.B. Jeffries

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Nov 29, 2007
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Okay...so I'm definitely going to regret not building a meaningful relationship and just wandering along casually month to month, girl to girl?

Damn.
 

tendo82

Uncanny Valley Cave Dweller
Nov 30, 2007
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I really liked this piece. I'm not sure how old you are, but as an elegy for youth it certainly rings true to me. While I'm still young at 26 years of age, in a city where nobody gets married until their mid thirties, I find myself waxing nostalgic for 21 and 22 and wondering if I should have modeled my life after those paragons of American youth I watch in The Hills and Gossip Girl.

But hindsight is twenty twenty, and the shimmering phosphorescent Los Angeles depicted in The Hills is no more real than my gilded memories of all the parties I should have gone to. What I do know is that at the time none of the beauty of youth was apparent to me, and a good deal of it probably still isn't. The freedom of rocketing down a mountainside on a snowboard with no regard for injury wasn't anything I yearned for because at the time I was only frustrated that I didn't have the stones to go down the even narrower avalanche chute. The grass was always greener and I think that's a lot of youth, going, to quote Daft Punk, harder, faster, better, stronger. And that's why getting old isn't all bad, because I like to think that the compulsion that blinds appreciation and reflection lessens and provides us with a little more peace.

This brings me to the reason I am looking forward to GTA IV. This isn't a game about a super human robot, or a young teenager with special abilities, but rather about a man on the precipice of middle age. A veteran in fact, of one of the more brutal wars in recent memory. This is a protagonist that, even though I have not played the game, already attracts me in a way that the superheroes I loved in adolesence no longer can. With this game comes my expectation that videogames have finally gotten their own Popeye Doyle and Michael Corleone - a truly adult protagonist. And I for one, am ready to move forward with the business of being an adult.
 

kinoku

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Apr 29, 2008
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Having writers block at the moment? Sorry mate but that was a ramble... I kept waiting for the article to start and then - it ended.
 

Nordstrom

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Aug 24, 2006
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Don't listen to them Russ. This piece is one of my favorites of yours and captures a lot of what I feel about games.

tendo82 said:
This brings me to the reason I am looking forward to GTA IV. This isn't a game about a super human robot, or a young teenager with special abilities, but rather about a man on the precipice of middle age. A veteran in fact, of one of the more brutal wars in recent memory. This is a protagonist that, even though I have not played the game, already attracts me in a way that the superheroes I loved in adolesence no longer can. With this game comes my expectation that videogames have finally gotten their own Popeye Doyle and Michael Corleone - a truly adult protagonist.
Hear, hear.
 

smileyboybob

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Nov 14, 2007
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oh god, just reading this makes me dread my future. Well, better start living it up while i have the time and energy (i dont have the money, but thats nothing a little bank robbin' won't fix)
 

slyder35

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Jan 16, 2008
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Also, if what Russ is saying is true, it explains why the average age of a gamer keeps going up, I think its something like 28 or 29 now. It's all these oldies re-living their glory days. The irony in all this is that those energetic and gorgeous teens they are fantasizing about ARE ALL SITTING ON THEIR FAT ARSES PLAYING THE SAME VIDEO GAMES YOU ARE!
 

Ian Dorsch

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Jul 11, 2006
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GET OFF MY LAWN YOU PUNKS

Seriously, though, nice piece, Russ. My driving history sounds eerily similar to yours.
 

stompy

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Jan 21, 2008
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A well written article Russ. It seems you have a great many insights into the adult world for me, and many others. I would've made a new sig (kinda like '- A procrastinator'), but, with the 'no sig' rule and all...

To sum up: Great work, again.
 

Fire Daemon

Quoth the Daemon
Dec 18, 2007
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This was good. It didn't have as much about GTAIV as I would have liked, more like Grand Theft Age: Russ Pit's story.

Keep up the good work (as if you wont).