GTA V: Impressions

[IamLEAM1983]

Haven't actually played this, only watched ten Let's Play episodes. Hence why this isn't called Review.

I am.. definitely not getting the heaps of praise, here. Yeah, three-man missions are novel and yes, San Andreas and Blaine County make for a fairly huge sandbox. Think Skyrim with cars and mildly offensive portrayals of American culture on the whole. There's tons of stuff to do and the scenery is gorgeous, but I'm really getting the sense that Rockstar is getting full of itself.

See, DMA Design's original GTA and GTA2 were recklessly violent and wholly geared towards letting you explore the violent and instantly gratifying ends of the criminal lifestyle. You were a nobody running errands for a bunch of syndicates, said errands sometimes involving oddly disconnected acts of manslaughter. "Kill 20 Pedestrians and Get Paid" literally was one possible objective. You were a mindlessly violent motherfucker, and my sixteen year-old self loved it.

The third game kept the same basic premise but switched things to 3D, backing it up with some star power. By the time the fourth rolled around, however, Rockstar had already seated themselves as the kings of the Brown and Realistic Action Sandbox with an Aesop about America. Karl could give you a better overview of the fourth game's basic premise, but the gist of it involves you playing as Niko Bellic, an Eastern European expatriate who illegally makes it into Liberty City, the GTA-verse's exaggerated and wildly satirical stand-in for New York. Everyone's some variant of a hoodlum or a crook, everyone does the Dustin Hoffman impersonation and belts heartfelt variations of "I'm walkin', here!" when you bump into them and, well, you're basically supposed to care about Bellic's pursuit of something better than his war-torn past.

The thing is, once you learned to ignore the constant moral anvil drops à la Rockstar (such as the American Dream being fundamentally unattainable because life is gritty and rah rah rah), Niko came across as a somewhat likable sort. He'd do horrible shit under your influence, but largely always because he had a gun, literal or metaphorical, placed against his head. You could at least empathize with his growing disillusion and his sometimes Jacob's Ladder-esque despair at realizing he's falling right back down the same hole he tried to crawl out of, by emigrating to America. By the end of the game, you've hit full-on Scarface reference territory, with Bellic being a made man but having lost much of his morals in the process.

GTA V looks at all of that and goes "Fuck it. The three leads are all equally assholes. Let's just stop pretending."

The thing is, I can't relate to any of the three protagonists. Michael is a former heist runner who's hit it big and has become fat, complacent, unhappy and stuck in the deepest crannies of gross luxury. He hates his wife and his two nagging kids, and he also has the persistent impression that his sessions with the therapist aren't helping. Franklin is a kid from the 'hood with the worst case of Ebonics ever, and he's trying hard to stick to the straight-and-narrow amidst a family that seems to treat the thug life like it's another boring nine-to-five. Trevor's a trailer-park psycho who takes far too much pleasure in the mayhem and death he's so apt at spreading. The three of them come together in a Michael Mann-esque heist thriller setup that allows for a fun mechanic I'll call "fake multiplayer".

The gist of it is that you can switch between all three dudes at will and at any moment, once their group is formed. This allows you to coordinate missions on a moment-to-moment basis. Mike's a crack shot, Franklin is an ace behind the wheel and Trevor is especially suited for missions involving flight. All three characters level up in a mechanic reminiscent of Skyrim, and they all can be supplemented by NPC crewmembers that also level up over time.

Structurally, this makes for an intense and unpredictable experience. Say you're killing time on the sidewalk as Franklin and decide to switch to Trevor for shits and giggles. You might end up in the middle of an in-progress chase sequence with the cops on your tail, and realize that this chase sequence actually has narrative weight. This makes the story unfold in an asynchronous way that's really interesting. The thing is - I don't care about any of the three leads. They're all equally despicable. Why would I want to play as any one of them?

Saints Row IV's protagonist replies to Emperor Zinyak that he or she prefers to be considered a "puckish rogue". That fits, seeing as you ooze personality despite the fact that you're playing as someone who's racked up an unimaginable kill tally. You're a bleeping sociopath, through and through - but you're also a perennial self-aware jokerster who is absolutely convinced of their own coolness and somehow manages to make crazy-insane gambits à la Harry Dresden actually work. You're playing as someone who is, plainly and simply, awesome. Put that someone in charge of America and thrust them into the position of the actual hero of an actually heroic tale - and you get a hero and universe that manage to ooze charisma without packing a bleeding Aesop into the proceedings.

GTA V lets you play as three assholes in a beautiful sandbox - and they each never elevate themselves beyond that. Pure and simple assholes.

SRIV lets you play as a Magnificient Bastard in an entertaining sandbox - and said Bastard displays connections to the world and the characters therein, along with emotional relevance. Yes, even if it's shown through the use of jokes about being awkwardly naked in tense times or if the game's take on the Matrix forces the Boss to go nuts on a short and hilarious QTE strip-tease sequence.

Great graphics, expansive world, boat-loads of stuff to do? Don't care, Rockstar. You're too self-absorbed for my taste.

Oh, and while you're at it, fix the goddamned driving physics!

[IamLEAM1983]

...this is ridiculous.

As is typical of Rockstar, the DVD and Blu-Ray covers for the game feature what the medium tends to refer to as a "GTA Girl". That is, generally a scantily-clad woman striking a pose of some kind. In this case, it's fairly tasteful: your typical Fake Los Angeles resident who just so happens to be wearing a bikini at the beach, and who takes a Selfie while striking the Peace sign.

Unfortunately, in some cultures and in 2013, bikinis are still too indecent. The link I'll post below points to a Kotaku article. Long story short, girl likes GTA, girl's father finds game disc, girl's father assumes GTA Girl is indecent and asks his daughter to get rid of the game. How does girl react?

She Sharpies a niqab over GTA Girl. Problem solved - and a massive plus-one for the crusade against the religious holier-than-thou sorts of this world.

http://kotaku.com/gta-girl-shows-too-mu ... 1449709761

Oh, and before you ask, you can draw the shit out of the front covering of most optical discs; that's the side where ink gets deposited. As long as the side that's supposed to face downwards isn't altered, your game runs just fine.