Let me just say for the record that for the most part, I get why people would think a certain way. I loved Half Life 2, and yet I see plenty of reasons why people would hate it. On the flip side, I have never gotten into Fallout 3, but I can see why anyone would enjoy it. That's my way of looking at just about every game I've ever played.
Except Grand Theft Auto 4.
I've read and watch countless reviews and accounts on how it changed video games, how it changed LIVES by being so amazing, and yet I still don't get it. Perhaps this means that I have no respect for other people's opinions, but I can honestly say that the extent to which this game is praised makes about as much sense to me as believing in Scientology. I mean, I can get why someone would LIKE this game, but for IGN to give it the first 10/10 since Ocarina of Time, a game which came up with countless innovative features which changed video games? A website of such high esteem would place Grand Theft Auto in that category?
No. I'm sorry, but there have been far more intricate, innovative, and brilliant games which have come out which deserved perfect scores far more than Grand Theft Auto 4. I simply can't believe or except that.
Let's start off with the often-praised storyline. I don't even know why I'm going over this, considering that if you haven't played this game you've probably been a gamer for about 10 minutes, but in GTA 4 you play as Niko Belic, a foreigner who travels to liberty city looking for a better life. Basically, he's exactly the same as every other character in the history of GTA.
Throughout the course of the storyline, Niko is sent to do multiple jobs for multiple people, just like every other Grand Theft Auto game, although this time around the majority of the time the people have something to say about "Justice", "Good and evil", and "Niko, you're smarter than you look" before they send him on their jolly way. Most of the missions involve chasing somebody or shooting large groups of people, and this gets to be a problem pretty quickly.
In typical GTA fashion, you can plow straight through the storyline, or you can explore the city. The problem is, there really is nothing to explore. There's very few minigames, and they all involve calling up a friend and then going to do something that you can do in real life, with your real life friends. The minigames are among the worst I've ever seen in a game, period. I can't recall a moment during this generation of gaming that I was even half as bored as my first and only match of bowling with my girlfriend.
But perhaps it isn't about the minigames themselves. Perhaps they were Rockstar's way of attempting to make you care more about the characters, get to know them more. In that case, mission failed miserably. Any time I attempted to hang out with my in-game friends, all they ever said were things that I already had a very clear understanding of; Roman Belic likes fake titties, the guy with the ridiculous accent is on all kinds of drugs, and the depressed black guy is a depressed black guy who got nowhere in life. In fact, I think that having to go on these missions made most of the characters more irritating, because if you don't hang out with them they all send you very whiny text messages.
The shooting has been changed up a bit to allow for a cover system. It works very well, and is actually nice to have; The problem is that Rockstar seemed to be so impressed with themselves for that one feature that they force you to use it constantly. Once you've gotten to a certain point in the game pretty much every shootout feels exactly the same. Grand Theft Auto's missions really are too repetitive, and it feels like a chore after a while to push your way through waves of thugs. I think this would be less of a problem if there were more variety in the weapons, but once you've gotten about halfway through the game you've pretty much bought every weapon that you're ever going to use.
The thing I did like was the driving. I know that many people said that the driving in GTA 4 is too realistic, but for me at least the driving often felt like the most immersive aspect of the game, as long as you took time to slow down before turns. Actually, the few chases which take place within the shootouts tended to be my favorite parts of the game, including one where I chased a car across other people's backyards and through fences, as well as one where I chased a car through busy streets while the car cased other civilians to crash and forced me to dodge them. These chases helped to occasionally break the monotony of the shootouts, but they still were few and far between and didn't have a huge impact on the overall feel of the game.
Another big problem with the missions which makes repeating them even more tedious is the fact that there's no checkpoint system. Look, I get that no GTA game before this one had checkpoints - Although I always am a bit taken aback when people say that as though it's a good thing. The GTA games should've added in checkpoints a LONG time ago, and by this point it's simply inexcusable, considering even the DRIVER games had mid-mission checkpoints. And regardless of the fact that I actually liked the driving in this game, the slower pace of it did make it even more tedious to have to drive the whole way back to my mission objective every time I restarted a mission from the very beginning. The other part was the city.
Ah, yes. The city. If I had a dime for every time someone told me how amazingly realistic Grand Theft Auto's city was, then I could've paid for this game's budget. Yes, it is impressive that pedestrians interact with each other even when you're doing nothing to affect anything. Simply walking down the street, you're surrounded by real people going about their day, and you can shoot them for hours on end without any consequence.
And that's my problem with the realistic interactions - Their only purpose, other than to impress the most shallow of video gamers, is to make the game more immersive. Look, argue all you want - If you've ever found Grand Theft Auto 4 immersive, either you were standing there doing absolutely nothing, or you're very thick. Grand Theft Auto is a game where you can steal a pedestrian's car without them calling the police to report a stolen vehicle. It's a game where you can take three bullets to the head and keep on running down the street. It's a game where even when you finally DO die, often in a car wreck which ended with the car completely exploding, you're ready to be released from the hospital without a scratch on you within hours.
Grand Theft Auto is not a realistic game. It never has been a realistic game. It is a game, and it simply never stops reminding you of that. I have never been immersed in Liberty City except for when I wasn't actually playing the game, and frankly, I bought the game so that I could play it. If we're heading towards a generation where you have to stop participating in the gameplay for a game to suck you in, then gaming really is doomed.
On the other hand, maybe I've never gotten immersed in GTA 4 because it's so goddamn gray. In real life, I'm the type of person who likes to admire the natural beauty of the world around us. In GTA 4, there is no natural beauty. There's just a big city and the fat fucks who inhabit it, except they're all really hard to see.
In a way, I see a lot of wasted potential in GTA 4. While the entire franchise has always had a knack for satiring the deterioration of American culture, GTA 4 takes it to another level by having a foreign character come to America looking to find the American dream.
GTA isn't a terrible game. But I simply don't get why people consider it to be the best game of this generation. There's nothing here that actually makes this game a great deal more fun than most games. Any glimpse of brilliance is shattered by Rockstar's ham-fisted handle on things, and in the end you have a sloppy game, one which can stand proudly as the single most overrated video game of all time.
Except Grand Theft Auto 4.
I've read and watch countless reviews and accounts on how it changed video games, how it changed LIVES by being so amazing, and yet I still don't get it. Perhaps this means that I have no respect for other people's opinions, but I can honestly say that the extent to which this game is praised makes about as much sense to me as believing in Scientology. I mean, I can get why someone would LIKE this game, but for IGN to give it the first 10/10 since Ocarina of Time, a game which came up with countless innovative features which changed video games? A website of such high esteem would place Grand Theft Auto in that category?
No. I'm sorry, but there have been far more intricate, innovative, and brilliant games which have come out which deserved perfect scores far more than Grand Theft Auto 4. I simply can't believe or except that.
Let's start off with the often-praised storyline. I don't even know why I'm going over this, considering that if you haven't played this game you've probably been a gamer for about 10 minutes, but in GTA 4 you play as Niko Belic, a foreigner who travels to liberty city looking for a better life. Basically, he's exactly the same as every other character in the history of GTA.
What makes this story better than the other GTA games? Most every character seems to be a more modern version of another character from an older GTA game. I think the main reason critics are so quick to call this "The Godfather of gaming" is the grit. Everybody is told with far less humor this time around. The problem with the grit is that it's all recycled from other movies and games, giving the storyline a very generic feel. I mean, seriously, Niko Belic is a character who did some "Terrible things" in the war and came to "Tie a few loose ends". No self-respecting critic would let slip the fact that the same could be said about pretty much every character in any movie ever. I mean, this backstory is so generic that Rockstar used extremely similar ones for their next two characters as well (John Marston and Cole Phelps). I suppose the dialogue is well written, but most of it is ridiculously melodramatic and again, trying far too hard to appear gritty. Seriously, if Niko tells one more story about how terrible war is I'm going to walk him off a very high building.
Actually, I really didn't like Niko at all after the end, where he proves himself to be a complete hypocrite within the context of the single most deluded moral choice that I've ever seen in a video game. Basically, Niko is told that he must do a job with a man named Dimitri who once betrayed him and attempted to get him killed. What irritated me about this was the fact that you're told that if you do the job, you'll get enough money that you might be able to go on vacation to another popular GTA city (Which in itself may be the single most maddening tease in the history of video games). So everyone acts like you're incredibly greedy if you take up this job. And yet, the ONLY alternative the game offers is that instead of doing the job with Dimitri, you go on a rampage and kill him. And THAT'S considered the good option? Are you serious?
This is so stupid that I simply don't know where to begin. Look, I realize that Jesus or somebody said that "Money is the root of all evil", but if pressed on whether to accept that money or murder the money giver in cold blood, I feel like Jesus would probably suggest taking the damn money. Or, perhaps, don't do either - Why can't I choose NOT to do the job, and also choose NOT to kill Dimitri? I suppose it's because Niko is a fucking psychopath, and we're supposed to take him seriously.
Oh, and on that subject - If Niko kills Dimitri, then the guy who attempted to make Niko do the job kills Niko's girlfriend, and the game heavily implies that we ought to feel bad for Niko, and that the guy who killed her is totally in the wrong. Anyone out there reading - Find a high level gangster in your area, and shoot his business partner for no fucking reason. See if it turns out peachy. And then there's the fact that Niko has spent the entire game killing people without being given any sort of context on why he ought to do that, often for men who have shockingly bad tempers who often order men killed for no reason whatsoever, and then he gets mad at someone who did the same thing, except he actually had a VERY good reason to get mad.
Actually, I really didn't like Niko at all after the end, where he proves himself to be a complete hypocrite within the context of the single most deluded moral choice that I've ever seen in a video game. Basically, Niko is told that he must do a job with a man named Dimitri who once betrayed him and attempted to get him killed. What irritated me about this was the fact that you're told that if you do the job, you'll get enough money that you might be able to go on vacation to another popular GTA city (Which in itself may be the single most maddening tease in the history of video games). So everyone acts like you're incredibly greedy if you take up this job. And yet, the ONLY alternative the game offers is that instead of doing the job with Dimitri, you go on a rampage and kill him. And THAT'S considered the good option? Are you serious?
This is so stupid that I simply don't know where to begin. Look, I realize that Jesus or somebody said that "Money is the root of all evil", but if pressed on whether to accept that money or murder the money giver in cold blood, I feel like Jesus would probably suggest taking the damn money. Or, perhaps, don't do either - Why can't I choose NOT to do the job, and also choose NOT to kill Dimitri? I suppose it's because Niko is a fucking psychopath, and we're supposed to take him seriously.
Oh, and on that subject - If Niko kills Dimitri, then the guy who attempted to make Niko do the job kills Niko's girlfriend, and the game heavily implies that we ought to feel bad for Niko, and that the guy who killed her is totally in the wrong. Anyone out there reading - Find a high level gangster in your area, and shoot his business partner for no fucking reason. See if it turns out peachy. And then there's the fact that Niko has spent the entire game killing people without being given any sort of context on why he ought to do that, often for men who have shockingly bad tempers who often order men killed for no reason whatsoever, and then he gets mad at someone who did the same thing, except he actually had a VERY good reason to get mad.
Throughout the course of the storyline, Niko is sent to do multiple jobs for multiple people, just like every other Grand Theft Auto game, although this time around the majority of the time the people have something to say about "Justice", "Good and evil", and "Niko, you're smarter than you look" before they send him on their jolly way. Most of the missions involve chasing somebody or shooting large groups of people, and this gets to be a problem pretty quickly.
In typical GTA fashion, you can plow straight through the storyline, or you can explore the city. The problem is, there really is nothing to explore. There's very few minigames, and they all involve calling up a friend and then going to do something that you can do in real life, with your real life friends. The minigames are among the worst I've ever seen in a game, period. I can't recall a moment during this generation of gaming that I was even half as bored as my first and only match of bowling with my girlfriend.
But perhaps it isn't about the minigames themselves. Perhaps they were Rockstar's way of attempting to make you care more about the characters, get to know them more. In that case, mission failed miserably. Any time I attempted to hang out with my in-game friends, all they ever said were things that I already had a very clear understanding of; Roman Belic likes fake titties, the guy with the ridiculous accent is on all kinds of drugs, and the depressed black guy is a depressed black guy who got nowhere in life. In fact, I think that having to go on these missions made most of the characters more irritating, because if you don't hang out with them they all send you very whiny text messages.
The shooting has been changed up a bit to allow for a cover system. It works very well, and is actually nice to have; The problem is that Rockstar seemed to be so impressed with themselves for that one feature that they force you to use it constantly. Once you've gotten to a certain point in the game pretty much every shootout feels exactly the same. Grand Theft Auto's missions really are too repetitive, and it feels like a chore after a while to push your way through waves of thugs. I think this would be less of a problem if there were more variety in the weapons, but once you've gotten about halfway through the game you've pretty much bought every weapon that you're ever going to use.
The thing I did like was the driving. I know that many people said that the driving in GTA 4 is too realistic, but for me at least the driving often felt like the most immersive aspect of the game, as long as you took time to slow down before turns. Actually, the few chases which take place within the shootouts tended to be my favorite parts of the game, including one where I chased a car across other people's backyards and through fences, as well as one where I chased a car through busy streets while the car cased other civilians to crash and forced me to dodge them. These chases helped to occasionally break the monotony of the shootouts, but they still were few and far between and didn't have a huge impact on the overall feel of the game.
Another big problem with the missions which makes repeating them even more tedious is the fact that there's no checkpoint system. Look, I get that no GTA game before this one had checkpoints - Although I always am a bit taken aback when people say that as though it's a good thing. The GTA games should've added in checkpoints a LONG time ago, and by this point it's simply inexcusable, considering even the DRIVER games had mid-mission checkpoints. And regardless of the fact that I actually liked the driving in this game, the slower pace of it did make it even more tedious to have to drive the whole way back to my mission objective every time I restarted a mission from the very beginning. The other part was the city.
Ah, yes. The city. If I had a dime for every time someone told me how amazingly realistic Grand Theft Auto's city was, then I could've paid for this game's budget. Yes, it is impressive that pedestrians interact with each other even when you're doing nothing to affect anything. Simply walking down the street, you're surrounded by real people going about their day, and you can shoot them for hours on end without any consequence.
And that's my problem with the realistic interactions - Their only purpose, other than to impress the most shallow of video gamers, is to make the game more immersive. Look, argue all you want - If you've ever found Grand Theft Auto 4 immersive, either you were standing there doing absolutely nothing, or you're very thick. Grand Theft Auto is a game where you can steal a pedestrian's car without them calling the police to report a stolen vehicle. It's a game where you can take three bullets to the head and keep on running down the street. It's a game where even when you finally DO die, often in a car wreck which ended with the car completely exploding, you're ready to be released from the hospital without a scratch on you within hours.
Grand Theft Auto is not a realistic game. It never has been a realistic game. It is a game, and it simply never stops reminding you of that. I have never been immersed in Liberty City except for when I wasn't actually playing the game, and frankly, I bought the game so that I could play it. If we're heading towards a generation where you have to stop participating in the gameplay for a game to suck you in, then gaming really is doomed.
On the other hand, maybe I've never gotten immersed in GTA 4 because it's so goddamn gray. In real life, I'm the type of person who likes to admire the natural beauty of the world around us. In GTA 4, there is no natural beauty. There's just a big city and the fat fucks who inhabit it, except they're all really hard to see.
In a way, I see a lot of wasted potential in GTA 4. While the entire franchise has always had a knack for satiring the deterioration of American culture, GTA 4 takes it to another level by having a foreign character come to America looking to find the American dream.
No matter what you choose in the idiotic moral choice portion, Niko Belic will still end up completely fucking miserable at the end of the game, so basically he's found that the American dream is bullshit. And honestly, there was a lot of potential for subtle symbolism in this aspect. Unfortunately, Rockstar simply isn't good at symbolism, and they weren't confident enough to assume that people would be smart enough to get that if it wasn't shoved down our throats every five or so minutes.
Niko never misses an opportunity to bring up the fact that ever since he's come to America he's faced nothing but hardship, and how it's a dog-eat-dog world, blah, blah, blah. These are actually brilliant ideas, but they lose a great deal of value because of the way that they're spoon-fed into the mouths of all the 13-year-olds who SHOULDN'T BE PLAYING THE GAME. Symbolism isn't about standing up and saying "Hey everybody, this is what I'm symbolising! Got it? Good, because we wouldn't want you to think, now, would we?" Symbolism is about saying something in a way that's open to interpretation, and not blatantly clear and obvious.
Niko never misses an opportunity to bring up the fact that ever since he's come to America he's faced nothing but hardship, and how it's a dog-eat-dog world, blah, blah, blah. These are actually brilliant ideas, but they lose a great deal of value because of the way that they're spoon-fed into the mouths of all the 13-year-olds who SHOULDN'T BE PLAYING THE GAME. Symbolism isn't about standing up and saying "Hey everybody, this is what I'm symbolising! Got it? Good, because we wouldn't want you to think, now, would we?" Symbolism is about saying something in a way that's open to interpretation, and not blatantly clear and obvious.
GTA isn't a terrible game. But I simply don't get why people consider it to be the best game of this generation. There's nothing here that actually makes this game a great deal more fun than most games. Any glimpse of brilliance is shattered by Rockstar's ham-fisted handle on things, and in the end you have a sloppy game, one which can stand proudly as the single most overrated video game of all time.
