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Grand Theft Fun

I promise this’ll be my last post about Grand Theft Auto IV. Ever. And, by the way, the title doesn’t refer to a sudden change of heart after initially bashing it. I know explaining defeats the purpose of a joke, but it must be stated: Rockstar stole pretty much every element from their formerly fun games that made them worth playing.

I’ve about given up playing it. I don’t know how far along I am in terms of story (the game says I’m 60% complete; I’m guessing that refers to just the missions since I’ve barely done any of the side games), but I’m just not having fun. Just when the story’s drawing me in, it pushes me away with Bernie, the lamest character in the history of GTA’s extensive pantheon of stereotypes. Just when I’m willing to forgive the gameplay, I run into stuff that’s so poorly implemented, it’s almost unplayable (did anyone actually enjoy the missions that force you to use a motorcycle?). I guess they took the game’s limitations into account, because every time I stress that I’m going to lose a mission because I’m on a motorcycle and hit something that knocks me off, and I have to wait 400 years for Niko to get back on the bike, I’ve never failed (as I would have in previous GTA games). Getting frustrated doesn’t make it more fun, though. Neither does sapping the challenge because you know the gameplay itself is half-assed.

But the thing that’s really driving me nuts has more to do with the “realism.” Ordinarily, I wouldn’t give a shit about GTA and realism. The game’s are not, and never have been, realistic. It’s only the jackasses at Rockstar running around to the press saying it’s realistic, and reviewers somehow believing this, that drive me crazy. Because they strive for realism but, like everything else, come up half-assed.

The two things that are really bugging me now are the prevalence of Britishisms and the shitty A.I. I’ve bitched about both before, but they’ve reached levels of obnoxiousness that, when combined with the dreadful story, cardboard characters, and stilted gameplay…just kinda make me want to stop. I haven’t officially stopped yet, because I want to get to the end of the story so I can mock it properly, but more of this might just drive me crazy.

So I’m just going to leave you with a few illustrations of the bad A.I. and Britishisms I’ve noticed since my last post about GTA.

Bad A.I.

• I got bored with the game, so I shot this one dude on the street in cold blood. A policeman was standing on the corner, staring at me as I did this, and just…kept standing there. No police warning, no gun drawn.
• When you want to ride in a cab, if you find one that already has a passenger or two, you yank them out as you would when jacking the car. Rather than giving Niko new dialogue for this completely different action, he continues to say things like “I need this. Buy a new one” or “I’m stealing your car,” which make no sense considering what he’s doing.
• On the subject of cabs, the funniest/stupidest moment I’ve experienced in the game so far goes like this: I jacked a cab because they’re the only cars in the game that handle well enough to not irritate me, but there was a bit of a jam so I couldn’t get away from the driver before he pulled me out of the car to steal his own car back. That’s nice, and I like the randomness that some people do that while others run away. Fine. So I enter the same cab as a passenger, and there’s no reference to the fact that I jacked it not 30 seconds before. Maybe this doesn’t qualify as bad A.I., but it does seem sloppy that Rockstar — with the development time and budget — didn’t think of these contingencies and program/write accordingly.
• The enemies in shoot-and-cover missions — the only ones I’ve liked until now — have finally reached a point of predictability where they’re no longer fun. The shoot-‘em-up villains in previous games were equally predictable, but there weren’t nearly as many of them (or as many missions of that type).
• I accidentally nudged a parked car, which I intended to steal, with my (about-to-explode) car. A cop in a car was just sitting there, like, whatever, although in previous games they’d come after you for the car alarm going. He did literally nothing until Niko smashed the window, at which point I got the ol’ one-star.

Britishisms

• On a calendar in the office where you get missions from Phil, the word HOLIDAY is scrawled across an entire week’s worth of days. Since I’m unfamiliar with any week long holiday breaks for American companies, I assume this is the British use of the word (synonymous with a general vacation, not a special day of celebration), which is very infrequently used in the U.S., and highly unlikely to be used on the calendar in a grimy warehouse run by a shady mobster. I guess I could buy this in the office of an eastern European character because there’s at least a chance that they learned British English before arriving in the U.S.
• Playing darts with Kate: “You’re rubbish, Niko.”
• Now I’m annoyed, because I’m sure I noticed more, but I can’t think of them. I’ll edit this if I remember or spot them again.

This isn’t quite a Britishism, but it does further my annoyance with the subpar voice acting. In one of the McCreary missions, you stage a sham prison break by taking out a convoy under the “Booth Tunnel.” About five seconds of deep thinking makes you realize that it’s a “subtle” allusion to John Wilkes Booth (i.e., Lincoln Tunnel in NYC = Booth Tunnel in LC, har har har!). Yet, everyone in the dialogue stresses the name in a weird way, to make it sound like the prominent feature of this tunnel is that it contains some kind of gargantuan booth. It’s just shoddy as ever. The recording engineers or directors couldn’t coach more natural readings out of these people?

Posted by Stan on May 13, 2008 5:29 PM  | Permalink | Reviews | Digg It