GTA4
Yeah. I took a couple months off again. Stuff was going on.
Not that I have scads of time to write this, since stuff is still going on. But, it's cool stuff; so we could talk about it for a minute.
Quick backstory.
I don't like Microsoft. I never have. I don't really dislike them, as such; I kinda tolerate them. Largely because the world does. For example, having moved from Apple to Commodore to Mac to Amiga in the twentieth century, I ultimately wound up with Wintel, primarily because that's where all the software is.
For most of this century, I've stuck to Nintendo and PlayStation for the same reason: the XBox has existed for a while; but, generally, any game available on the XBox was either nonexclusive, boring, or both. The first game made exclusively for the XBox which even caught my eye was DeadRising; and I otherwise ignored that for a couple years based on reports that it was pointless, uninteresting, and annoying. One of those adjectives was correct.
So I got an XBox360Elite the other day. If I'm gonna get one of these travesties, I'm gonna get the best one they make. That way, if it sucks, there won't be the excuse that I neglected to spend five hundred bucks for the good one. Also, I got DeadRising.
So let's start there. It's annoying. Not in the way You Are Empty is annoying; more in the way BrainDead13 is annoying: it's largely unwinnable. Though I've beat BrainDead13, and will probably beat DeadRising; but each is a bitch. Also, to date, DeadRising is among the most amazing and entertaining games I've ever played, on any system: AtariVCS, Intellivision, Wintel, NES, Sega Genesis, SNES, AtariJaguar, AmigaCD32, SonyPSX, N64, DreamCast, SonyPS2, GameCube, SonyPSP, DSLite, or whatever. Though the PSP's Sims2 could still be in the running for Funnest Game Ever. As difficult as DeadRising is, when you give up on getting through the missions in seventy-two hours and just exterminate the endless supply of zombies, it proves to be the coolest timekiller since pointing and laughing at creatards.
But, that being not a newish game, I'm probably not telling anyone anything. Except that, technically, it's worth buying not only the game itself, but the $500 XBox360Elite to play it on. So, let's move on....
GrandTheftAutoIV came out a few days ago. It came out for the PS3 too; but, since I've been holding off on getting either a PS3 or a 360 until I knew whether Sony were gonna figure out what the PS3 was supposed to be in time to have one I'd buy when GTA4 was released, I got the XBox instead. Which might work out, since it's got DeadRising and will have Res5 if that comes out in time to exist on the PS3 and 360, instead of the PS4 and...whatever the next XBox would be. The one thing I'd kinda like, which would require a PS3, is GranTurismo5; but that's not a priority. Anyway: I got GTA4.
It's a game; it's fun; graphics good; blah, blah, blah. There are a few things to be said about it, I suppose. A lot of things from all three GTA3 games have been retained, and a lot have been dropped. You can swim, but not dive underwater. Eating restores health, but doesn't lead to fat or muscle. Dying doesn't deplete your weapons anymore, and cops can [usually] be evaded at the last minute by thumping X to resist arrest and run away from them. Autotargeting has changed a bit: if you're standing next to a target, holding a gun on him, you'll punch him fecklessly while he shoots you with an MP5 from the same damned distance. There don't seem to be flyable planes anymore, which sucks a bit. And, on the XBox, the controls are different enough that I keep hitting stupid buttons while doing things; like, the accelerator is now the lower shoulderbutton, and X is actually the handbrake; little things like that, which get me all killed and stuff. Overall, it's worth having and the size and detail of Manhattan suggests that RockStar have been working on this since about the instant that GTA3 was released, only making GTA:VC and GTA:SA to remind people that they existed until they were ready to release the new engine.
All of which is meaningless. Because it's only a game. Out in the real world, the new version is sadly similar, if slightly worse overall.
Jack Thompson, by nature, had to whimper about this thing with no idea what this thing was. Though, since he's currently on trial pending disbarment, largely for EMailing gayporn to a judge and calling it a motion, he hasn't done much more than to EMail a jpeg to GamePolitics.com of himself holding a copy of GTA4 on the day it was released, with the subjectline of 'evidence', which we assume means that he'd got a kid to sting WalMart and buy the game before he'd turned seventeen. Meaning that Jack Thompson, disbaree, might not fully understand that WalMart's ability to sell things to kids, ESRB ratings notwithstanding, isn't actually illegal, any more than it's technically illegal for AMC to let a kid in to see a film rated NC17 by the MPAA; it's uncommon, and it begs the question of the importance of selfimportant, unimportant ratings systems, but it's not illegal, by law.
Incidentally, that's something to mention. A game rated M, for Mature, and a film rated NC17, for No Children under Seventeen, are really the same rating. Games haven't got a rating equivalent to R for Restricted: Children Must Be Accompanied by a Parent or Guardian, simply because games are played mostly at home, and kids under seventeen are not as a rule homeless. Thompson's assertion that M for No Children under Seventeen isn't strong enough for the pornography he hasn't seen in the game, so it should be classed closer to NC17 for No Children under Seventeen, tells us also how well this twerp can do math. Though I also disagree that the game should be rated M: from what I've seen thus far in playing the thing, if I were on the ESRB, and if I advocated ratings systems at all, I'd probably have voted to give it a rating of T for Teens; any kid under thirteen incapable of handling this game...Darwin says they should be abandoned anyway.
Mothers against Proper Acronyms felt like getting involved. See, because, if you make the conscious choice to drive drunk, having made the conscious choice to have drunk a lot, having made the conscious choice to have gone to the pub and drunk a lot, having made the conscious choice to have played a sidemission allowing you to have gone to the pub and drunk a lot, having made the conscious choice to have played GTA4 which includes a sidemission allowing you to have gone to the pub and drunk a lot, having made the conscious choice to have bought GTA4 which allows you to play the game which includes a sidemission allowing you to have gone to the pub and drunk a lot, you can experience a decent approximation of what it's like to actually drive drunk [yeah: I've done it; I'm GenerationX] but at the risk of killing priceless polygons from the hazardous environment of your sofa, preventing kids from getting tranqued and driving real cars out on the streets where they can kill more meaningless things, like Mad Mothers. Which is important to understand, because I've actually seen large machines, like cars, designed to approximate the dulled senses of being drunk at the wheel [which, incidentally, are less accurate than this game is about it] by delaying the effects of turning the wheel and hitting the brakes, but not, curiously, of hitting the accelerator; drunks can apparently go faster and more dangerous at the speed of light, only getting sluggish when attempting to save lives. Maybe the Mad Mothers hate those sims too; I dunno. More likely, they might hate them if they'd heard of them. That seems to be all it takes, since they'd merely heard of GTA4 and its drunkdriving sim in the weeks before it was released; merely hearing about a game is enough for Mad Mothers; actually playing it or even seeing it is overkill and wastes the time they could spend forcing their kids to play soccer.
To remind us that Hilarious Clinton is an idiot, whether you get drunk and drive back to her place or not, the chick you take on a date in the sidemission can be persuaded to invite you up for some hot coffee: an establishing shot of her building and its opaque windows, the folyed voiceover: 'Yes! Yes! You're the best! Yes! Talk louder! Yes! Tell me interesting things! Yes!' and, back on the street, the playable character musing She was a really good listener. Because, see, Hilarious Clinton is an idiot who should be president because the chick we want in charge of America is the only dizzy bitch on the planet who didn't know Bill was cheating on her.
Ahem.
Ever heard me mention that there's nothing wrong with the world? I support it with this sort of thing. That the world is perfect enough to allow activists to whimper about half a million years' of recorded climateshift being the fault of everyone alive since 1885, the audacity of teachers teaching science in schools, how meat is murder though murder is homicide while homicide is killing homosapiens, that there's fluoride in the water, and that GTA4 is the fall of western civilisation now that everyone's forgotten about Tipper Gore blaming it on Alice Cooper a couple decades ago, assures me that there's nothing wrong with the world; otherwise, these lunatics might whimper about ACTUAL problems.
Look. GTA4 is a game. Remember that word? It's the direct object following only a when it's not being replaced by theory. We could play other games; sure. We could play Monopoly: A great game in which you wander purposelessly through town, buying and developing properties until you get tired on someone else's land and have to rent a house or even an entire hotel for yourself because, even in the car, you can't just coast to a street you control. We could get some exercise playing Cops&Robbers or Cowboys&Indians: respectively arbitrating that anyone who isn't a cop is a criminal, judge and jury be damned, or that anyone not a cowboy is a criminal, judge and jury be damned. We could play Risk: take over the world a bit at a time, disregarding the enemies' largely pacificistic citisenry, its culture, its religious adherence, its ancestry, and any other ethical dilemma which is rendered meaningless when all you're trying to accomplish is to do better at conquering Russia than Hitler was. We could play chess: the impossibly polite form of warfare in which each side sacrifices all hirelings while attempting to assassinate the opposing king, who's doing the same thing back at you. We could play football: wearing bodyarmour to play rugby because rugby wasn't violent enough. We could play something abstract, like Twenty Questions: a sort of simplistic, dichotomous IQ test in which someone's always a complete idiot. Or we could play GTA4: wandering about stealing cars, killing enemies, and listening to the radio. Let's just not play Activism; that apparently is a game which never ends, and which you can't turn off after three seconds when it proves more boring than You Are Empty is.
It's a game. Only a game. To most people. Those who can tell the difference. To MADD and Jack Thompson, it must blur a line somewhere.
