Something's been bothering me for a great while fellow Escapists. In short, it's the treatment that GTAIV has gotten from certain quarters of the gaming community, and even on here.
GTAIV was a game that had great multiplayer, compelling characters and story lines that got to the heart of the American Dream, while simultaneously deconstructing it. It was a game that was unafraid to show the consequences of your actions while you could still have fun plowing through pedestrians.
It was a game that drew you into the world by presenting NPC interaction outside of the cut scene dynamic in order for you to feel attached to the characters and their stories.
But some people feel that GTAIV is not deserving of the lofty praise it received, citing the lack of 'zany antics' as a deal-breaker. They said the NPC interactions were boring, when though the conversations with them on the ride to venues gave the player juicy background on the characters.
The story of Dwayne Forge comes to mind, as your relationship with him slowly builds he starts to reveal his troubled childhood from an abusive family. When you think you can't take any more of the stark realities the man went through, along comes Niko to put it all into perspective.
"When I grew up, for 12 years we didn't have any clean water or electricity".
It's a poignant moment of a supposedly pointless excursion. Still though, people want their 'zany antics'. They can keep them as far as I'm concerned, as GTAIV is something of a ground breaker in the medium.
It's a blockbuster with brains, and should be what game developers should be looking at as a blueprint for years to come.
Yet, after the initial praise it received a couple of dissenting voices came to the fore. They would say things like "This is totally ghey, why do I have to take them on trips?" and "Where's my jet-pack?".
It's a sad day for us all when gamers will start to pass up an intelligent and poignant experience for a jet-pack. As time wore on, the voices started to grow louder but with no fresh arguments to back it up.
The forums were littered with comments like "I was dissapointed with GTAIV" or "GTAIV sux!" without offering any thorough or additional evidence to back up their erstwhile claims. So why did these comments persist?
Could it be that people just wanted to be rebels, spurned on by Yahtzee who is paid to tear games apart while making dick jokes? Could it be, that people wanted to against the universal praise just to stand out? Did they want to be the black sheep to draw attention, using Yahtzee as some sort of enabler?
I'm not saying for one damned second that GTAIV had no drawbacks. But a sane, rational and thorough examination of the game will give a heck of a lot more positives than negatives. I can not, for the life of me see how more negatives can be drawn than positives, but yet an element of dissenting voices persist on their attacks.
I don't want to sound like a fan boy, but this points to a disturbing wider trend within the gaming community.
There seems to be a trend where people will say they don't like something because everybody else does. They somehow seem to think that by offering up a thin counterpoint to the consensus that they are somehow elevated into a unique position of 'going upstream'.
Do they think they are somehow intelligent for ignoring the obvious and harping on about the obscure? These are the sort of people who will refuse a banana split because they don't like the colour of the dish.
The ironic thing is that these people will call the people who actually like the game "ignorant" for actually liking the game. Heaven forbid we should enjoy something! Are we ignorant for liking the smell of flowers? Are we ignorant for enjoying Dostoevsky?
I do not advocate simply 'going with the herd' for anything. You have to make a well informed and researched decision before you start to head off in any particular direction. If they'ew opposite from my direction, fine, all the power to you.
What really gets my goat though is people who will nitpick. The people who will pick one aspect that they don't like and ignore the weight of positives before coming to the conclusion that this 'simply isn't a good game' just for the sake of being different, perhaps noticed and if all the planets align validated as someone agrees with them and will discuss how ignorant the rest of us all are for having the gall to 'like' something.
It's like trying to paint broad strokes with a thimble of paint.
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The above criticism was me just trying to get my frustrations out in a somewhat constructive fashion. I apologise if I step on any toes but I feel it's something that needs to be said. I have not named any names, and if you feel you've been singled out I apologise.
If you respond to the post, please do so in a measured, well thought-out way that will not inflame, but inform (Yes, I realise my post smacked of exasperation). The Escapist is the centre of intelligent debate in the gaming community, let's keep it that way.
GTAIV was a game that had great multiplayer, compelling characters and story lines that got to the heart of the American Dream, while simultaneously deconstructing it. It was a game that was unafraid to show the consequences of your actions while you could still have fun plowing through pedestrians.
It was a game that drew you into the world by presenting NPC interaction outside of the cut scene dynamic in order for you to feel attached to the characters and their stories.
But some people feel that GTAIV is not deserving of the lofty praise it received, citing the lack of 'zany antics' as a deal-breaker. They said the NPC interactions were boring, when though the conversations with them on the ride to venues gave the player juicy background on the characters.
The story of Dwayne Forge comes to mind, as your relationship with him slowly builds he starts to reveal his troubled childhood from an abusive family. When you think you can't take any more of the stark realities the man went through, along comes Niko to put it all into perspective.
"When I grew up, for 12 years we didn't have any clean water or electricity".
It's a poignant moment of a supposedly pointless excursion. Still though, people want their 'zany antics'. They can keep them as far as I'm concerned, as GTAIV is something of a ground breaker in the medium.
It's a blockbuster with brains, and should be what game developers should be looking at as a blueprint for years to come.
Yet, after the initial praise it received a couple of dissenting voices came to the fore. They would say things like "This is totally ghey, why do I have to take them on trips?" and "Where's my jet-pack?".
It's a sad day for us all when gamers will start to pass up an intelligent and poignant experience for a jet-pack. As time wore on, the voices started to grow louder but with no fresh arguments to back it up.
The forums were littered with comments like "I was dissapointed with GTAIV" or "GTAIV sux!" without offering any thorough or additional evidence to back up their erstwhile claims. So why did these comments persist?
Could it be that people just wanted to be rebels, spurned on by Yahtzee who is paid to tear games apart while making dick jokes? Could it be, that people wanted to against the universal praise just to stand out? Did they want to be the black sheep to draw attention, using Yahtzee as some sort of enabler?
I'm not saying for one damned second that GTAIV had no drawbacks. But a sane, rational and thorough examination of the game will give a heck of a lot more positives than negatives. I can not, for the life of me see how more negatives can be drawn than positives, but yet an element of dissenting voices persist on their attacks.
I don't want to sound like a fan boy, but this points to a disturbing wider trend within the gaming community.
There seems to be a trend where people will say they don't like something because everybody else does. They somehow seem to think that by offering up a thin counterpoint to the consensus that they are somehow elevated into a unique position of 'going upstream'.
Do they think they are somehow intelligent for ignoring the obvious and harping on about the obscure? These are the sort of people who will refuse a banana split because they don't like the colour of the dish.
The ironic thing is that these people will call the people who actually like the game "ignorant" for actually liking the game. Heaven forbid we should enjoy something! Are we ignorant for liking the smell of flowers? Are we ignorant for enjoying Dostoevsky?
I do not advocate simply 'going with the herd' for anything. You have to make a well informed and researched decision before you start to head off in any particular direction. If they'ew opposite from my direction, fine, all the power to you.
What really gets my goat though is people who will nitpick. The people who will pick one aspect that they don't like and ignore the weight of positives before coming to the conclusion that this 'simply isn't a good game' just for the sake of being different, perhaps noticed and if all the planets align validated as someone agrees with them and will discuss how ignorant the rest of us all are for having the gall to 'like' something.
It's like trying to paint broad strokes with a thimble of paint.
============================================================================================
The above criticism was me just trying to get my frustrations out in a somewhat constructive fashion. I apologise if I step on any toes but I feel it's something that needs to be said. I have not named any names, and if you feel you've been singled out I apologise.
If you respond to the post, please do so in a measured, well thought-out way that will not inflame, but inform (Yes, I realise my post smacked of exasperation). The Escapist is the centre of intelligent debate in the gaming community, let's keep it that way.
