VG Rants 02: Tens of Reasons I Won't be Booking a Trip to Liberty City

This week's rant is kind of a slow ball. I'm anticipating a little more agreement this week, especially compared with the Braid rant. That said, people were strangely immune to the true meaning of last week's rant, making it appear to not be a rant at all, but I won't have that advantage this week. There are no tricks this time around...

Week Three: Tens of Reasons I Won't be Booking a Trip to Liberty City

Rants need gimmicks nowadays, Kids are used to reading a friend's rant on a BBS and agreeing or disagreeing with him and posting mean words and laughing at all of our unfortunate mistakes. This is why, for this rant alone, I've employed a gimmick. I like it, but you may not. The thing is, I don't care.

So, now that the second introduction is out of the way, I can finally introduce my gimmick. I'll be quoting ten of the perfect reviews of GTA IV, and pointing and laughing at the exaggerated mess of praise that was awarded to this imperfect and fatally flawed game.

"Niko himself is sure to become a videogaming icon of our generation, an embittered ex-soldier with a murky past that marks itself in his weariness, yet also informs his hard-edged yet ultimately humanist perspective on the brave new world of Liberty City. It's no longer a rags-to-riches story, with the narrative more nuanced and all the more affecting for it."

I seriously doubt this will happen, since CJ didn't have much appeal, and I'd argue that he was a more nuanced character than our Eastern European friend Niko. I also take issue with the critic's assertion that Niko comes to "an ultimately humanist perspective on Liberty City." It might seem like this at first, but the deeper into the game you get, the more you realize that Niko is just a killing machine. If that isn't the picture of the stereotypical videogame character, I don't know what is.

"Roman, Niko's head-in-the-clouds cousin who lured him to America with promises of wealth and women, gives our hero an upgradeable cellphone early on. As you meet people, their contact info is added to your phone. Niko can ring them up to grab a bite, go bowling, shoot darts, get s***faced (good luck evading the fuzz while driving under the influence of the game's insane drunk-driving physics), or partake in any number of other activities. Stay on top of these relationships and they'll become friends with benefits. One nurse Niko dates, for instance, can heal him with over-the-phone medical advice."

The game is worse because of the relationship system, just like San Andreas was worse for the RPG elements. I can't stand when Roman calls me to go play darts for the umpteenth time, or when my girl calls me because she wants to go out. All this does is prevent me from efficiently tackling the very similar missions. I can't believe I had my phone set on the highest ring and vibrate after I first got it. That was a horrible idea!

"We're talking people cleaning windows, drinking coffee, jabbering on the phone. People who join in if you start a fight, then run away and call the police if you draw a gun. It doesn't feel like a static model filled with generic NPCs designed only to bounce off your bonnet, it feels like a proper city filled with real people with real reactions."

Play GTA IV, go to a park and crouch behind one of the girls. Nothing happens. Now try that in real life. Let me know how that works out for you. Steal someone's car, honk your horn and hold the note for several minutes. Nothing happens. Now try that in real life. Let me know how that works out for you. AI has to come a long way before it can produce "real people with real reactions." Try this as well. Find a police car, throw a policeman out of the car, punch him in the face and escape the cops that rush in in response to your trespasses. Once you get outside of the circle, nothing happens. I wouldn't recommend trying this in real life. It's ridiculous that your bad deeds don't ever add up, that there isn't greater risk the more and more Niko gets caught.

"There is no longer any wasted time."

Whatever you say, Mr. Critic. It's not like the save system is outdated or the run mechanic is ridiculous in our age of analog control sticks. It's not like the vehicles control like shit, or that there's a phone that exists in order to facilitate an interruption of the player's experience. It doesn't help that the nav system is cumbersome to use outside of the main missions. Or that the camera isn't unwieldy. No, these are are falsehoods. They do not negatively impact the quality of the game, or waste people's time. Thanks for the input, accurate or not, Mr. Critic.

"If you thought that the previous Grand Theft Auto titles offered an amazing level of freedom, you haven’t seen anything yet. In Grand Theft Auto IV, you really feel like you have ownership over the entire experience."

Rockstar must have given some free psychoactive drugs along with all review copies of GTA IV, because our reviewer had to be high as a kite when he wrote this. Let's just say that an NPC handed me a bat in a cutscene, and I no longer have that bat, but I'm supposed to break down a window in some Chinese man's unassuming store. How is this supposed to be done? Oh, I'm supposed to follow the arrow on the HUD, my friend tells me. I said friend, but I'm actually talking about my sworn enemy, Jonathan Blow. However, he did tell me this. You're supposed to follow that arrow on your mini-map, pick up a brick and use that brick to break the window. However, I just punched the window with my bare hand, and nothing happened to Niko at all. That's how you break the forth wall Rockstar. Amzing job as always. GTA IV is a linear experience, but you can influence tiny little pieces of it. Almost insignificant little pieces. I wouldn't define that as ownership, but I'm not a professional reviewer.

"The writing makes a mark not only in quality but in quantity: missions have multiple dialogue options so that you don’t have to listen to the same lines on each replay, and even the GTA tradition of barking pedestrians throws up few repetitions."

This my seem innocuous at first, but, as I read it over and over again I realized one very important thing. A game in which the player knows that there are multiple dialog options to brighten up the unnecessary time spent in failed missions is a game I will never be able to complete. If you're failing the missions enough to realize this, it could either mean that the missions are not designed well or you suck at the game. And, since Track hasn't hurt my feelings in a while I'm going to go with the former.

"Grand Theft Auto IV is, simply, the latest way to flip the bird. And damn if such a simple gesture doesn't feel good."

At whom, sir, is the bird being flipped towards. Towards the fictional characters in a GTA game, which exist to be stereotypes or caricatures? Towards the reviewers who gave the game a perfect score? Towards the pigeons that I can't find? What, you mean it's just an expression of rebellion...that you aren't literally flipping the bird at all...Well, sorry about that, then. Luckily there are thousands of these prefect reviews to mock, or else I would really feel guilty.

"At one point, a hapless pedestrian was hit by a reckless driver (not us, we swear). A minute or two later, as traffic lined up behind the accident, an ambulance pulled up with its sirens blaring. A paramedic actually got out of the ambulance, and while he didn't seem to know what to do at that point and just stood around, it was still an impressive example of how the AI characters inhabit the city as more than just window dressing. "

It's like these guys don't have have any experience with the series or something. That could have a lot to do with the score they're giving the game, but this guy is extra-special. He thinks the ambulance was added just for GTA IV, and is all brand new and stuff. Well, it isn't, newbie reviewer dude, it was in GTA: San Andreas. Now go back to extolling the virtues of the game, like the "decent 'walking down stairs' animation" Niko has. Isn't that what immediately comes to mind when you think of GTA IV? Niko's super-cool walking animation? So do I. We should be friends.

"In short, Rockstar had the wolves snarling at their throats. And what does the company do under these adverse conditions? They go and develop a Grand Theft Auto title that not only trumps all the others but manages to overshadow nearly every other game released in this generation."

There you have it. GT IV beats every game released this generation. Well, let's just pack up our power bricks, 512 MB of internal flash memory and giant enemy crabs and look forward to the generation that will follow this generation, commonly called the "next gen" by hipsters worldwide. We should also ignore the word "nearly" in this review, because it's a lie. This guy wants us to pack our bags, and we damn well better. Is it the next-next-gen yet? Is it now?
"Rather than try to out-do the Crackdowns and the Saints Rows of the world with bigger land masses and more missions, Rockstar went the other way, and managed to craft an amazingly impactful story and weave it into an open-world game in an incredibly meaningful way--all without losing the heart and soul of what makes Grand Theft Auto so popular in the first place."

Heart and soul of Grand Theft Auto? Is that even possible? Grand Theft Auto IV doesn't have heart and soul, but it does have a wide variety of flat characters that annoy. If anything, a soulless or heartless Grand Theft Auto title would be a great improvement, because it seems that the core of the game made up of horrible controls, crazy difficulty spikes, realistic handling models for automobiles, and two-dimensional characters. I'm not sure why gamers continue to celebrate these things and support the companies financially who make the game possible.

"For the first time ever in a GTA game, combat is more fun than frustrating, and Rockstar seems to know it. Why else would they put so many big shootout levels in the game, far more than any other game in the GTA series."

Seriously, how do these guys get paid? Um, space cadet, maybe the boys at Rockstar rely so heavily on shootout missions because it would be far too tough to innovate paradigm. They didn't want to invest time in creating an experience that feels new and engaging, and it shows, cover system or not. The combat is not engaging, no matter how many bad dudes I'm fighting or where our brawl is taking place. And yet, this frustrating aspect takes up a great percentage of all story missions. It's really sad. Still, the game really deserved its 10/10 from this publication, because "driving is more of a challenge."

And there, my friends, is the end of our odyssey this week. I hope that you have some stylish and/or critical things to say about this rant. If you do, just scroll down to the text box at the bottom of the page. Take a pen, and write on your screen. In a few minutes, your post will be uploaded. It's the power of science!

Honestly, I can't believe I've been so consistent so far. For three weeks I've delivered a rant on time. I hope you're looking forward to next week, and, if you do have anything you'd like to say, just scream into one of your speakers. That should work fine. If it doesn't, please call your cable guy.

And, no I won't tell you what excerpt came from which site. Do your own research!