Tag: gta

>GTA DLC; TRU bummer; Gadgets

>1. GTA IV DLC revealed (sorta)

It’s not quite enough for a Guessing At Future Games feature here on SFTC, but it is certainly something to look forward to during the post-holiday doldrums of 2009. Everyone was wondering what DLC for a GTA game would look like, and this is apparently what it will be – a new character in a new story, and featuring “a whole new side to Liberty City” (which presumably means that it will take place in areas of Liberty City that were not central to Niko Bellic’s adventures). No word on length or price just yet; I’m going to guess 800 Points, although I think I’d be prepared to spend up to 1200.

2. Tomb Raider’s disappointing reviews

My fondness for the Tomb Raider franchise starts with Legend. Having never owned a PS1 or PS2, I never played the original games and so I never really paid much attention to how terrible the series had gotten (although I do recall playing a demo for whatever TR title was released on the Dreamcast, and absolutely hating it). Legend, however, scratched a very specific itch for me – it had all the fun Prince-of-Persia environmental puzzle solving that I liked, it had decent-enough combat, and it looked and played fantastic. Anniversary was more of the same, which was just fine with me, and so I have rather high expectations for Underworld.

Unfortunately, the reviews are starting to come in, and for the most part everyone seems to be a little disappointed in this one. I obviously can’t agree or disagree, since my rental copy still hasn’t left Gamefly’s offices, but I must admit I’m a little bummed out by this. I’m curious to see if my fanboy-ism will blind me to the game’s obvious faults, or if my knowledge of the game’s apparent crappiness will only make these things even worse than they actually are; if nothing else, I’m certainly self-aware enough to know how easily swayed I can be by external opinions… except in the case of Metal Gear Solid 4, because nobody will ever convince me that MGS4’s storytelling is anything other than a normal-mapped turd.

3. I am in need of a new cellphone. I covet the iPhone, but there’s two big things preventing me from pulling the trigger:

  • I’m a Verizon customer, and I’m not looking to switch service providers; and
  • There isn’t nearly enough storage on the iPhone for me to use it as my primary music storage device.

So I was eagerly awaiting for the Blackberry Storm, Verizon’s first big attempt at making an iPhone killer. And, unfortunately, it looks like it still needs some time to cook.

I suppose I can wait a few more months for them to fix the bugs (and, by doing so, avoiding the crush when it launches tomorrow), but still: damn.

>A re-appreciation of GTA4, because of how crappy Mercs 2 is

>When it comes to ranking my favorite franchises – not single games, but franchises as a whole – I have no hesitation in putting GTA at the top of my list. As far as the games in the GTA franchise, though, it’s not so cut and dried; all of them have their charms, even if the last-gen games are dated. Still, when I have to think about it, GTA4 is my favorite, even though I tend to think about San Andreas the most.

Anyway. This post is only kinda about GTA4. My weekend was spent with a bunch of new and semi-new 360 titles: Mercs 2, Tiger 09, Tales of Vesperia, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, and Infinite Undiscovery.

Infinite Undiscovery is intriguing, but underwhemling. Between IU and ToV, IU has better graphics and a better battle system, as well as a stupid story, stupid characters, a noticeable lack of music, and some rough edges.

Viva Pinata feels like an expansion pack, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing; I did like the first game a great deal. If anything, my problem with the new VP is that there’s too much stuff going on at once, and keeping up with managing everything is more frustrating than challenging. The game does a very nice job of showing you how everything works, and then, suddenly, there’s a zillion species that I’m trying to get organized, and most of them have romance or resident requirements that entail getting stuff that I’ve never seen. Most annoyingly, you get a size increase at level 11; I stopped being able to deal with everything at level 10. I’m not sure that a moderate size increase would have helped me, though.

I made a tactical error in Tiger 09, which is going to haunt me for the rest of the year. I’ve decided to abandon the Tiger Challenge and simply play the PGA Tour mode, and since my character is a bad-ass and I’ve set all the tournaments to one round, I’ve been breezing along. However, I decided to skip one particular low-paying tournament to go straight to a high-paying Major, and after I did so I realized that even if I won every remaning tournament, I’d miss out on one particular Trophy Ball, and thus an Achievement, and that my time-saving choice will actually ultimately mean that I have to play through the entire Tour AGAIN.

Fuuuuuuck.

I finished the first “dungeon” in Tales of Vesperia; I’m still on the fence about it, although I’m not as quick to return it as I was for Infinite Undiscovery. Not quite sure what it is about that game that isn’t resonating with me.

And as for Mercs 2… I’m done with it. Mercs 2 is actually why I decided to get back into GTA4 and go for 100%; I have little patience for bullshit, and Mercs 2 is chock full of bullshit. But even beyond the many design flaws, the technical issues and the stupid story, the thing that finally killed it for me was the in-game advertising. Yesterday I was stuck re-doing a mission that kept going wrong at the last minute, and I happened to look up and saw a movie poster for the new DeNiro/Pacino movie that’s coming out. Why a Hollywood movie would be playing in war-torn Venezuela is beyond me, especially since I haven’t seen any movie theaters in any of the cities, but more to the point, it was proof that EA felt it was more important to get in-game signage working than to fix all the other problems that game has. The first game generated a lot of good will – it was a GTA clone, sure, but it was striving to do more than just exist as an easy cash-in; it had its own identity and it executed on its vision exceedingly well. Mercs 2, on the other hand, does feel like a cash-in; it feels unfinished, unpolished and, most depressingly, it feels like it was designed by corporate suits instead of game developers.

It was my frustration with everything that Mercs 2 was doing wrong that got me back into GTA4, as a matter of fact, and now I’m back in love with it, if for no other reason than GTA4 understands that RIGHT TRIGGER = GAS and LEFT TRIGGER = BRAKE. Mercs 2 commits many sins, but none greater than fucking up the driving controls and not giving an option to customize them; it took me too long to get used to the Mercs 2 controls, and then it took me a while to un-learn them and get used to doing things the right way in GTA4. Which is ridiculous, considering how much time I’ve spent with GTA4. DAMN YOU, Mercs 2, for fucking that up.

>Lego Indiana Jones and the Quest for Attainable Achievements

>Funny thing happened yesterday. My copy of Lego Indiana Jones arrived via Gamefly, and even though I had a million things to do, I felt compelled to pop it in and check it out. About 30 minutes later, I’d unlocked 2 or 3 Achievements, and I suddenly realized it had been at least a week since I’d heard that sound or remembered what that felt like.

See, ever since I finished the story in GTA4, I’d sorta been half-heartedly trying to get to 100%, but it’s a time-consuming process even if you are giving it your all, and I’ve got a long ways to go on pretty much everything I need to do. So aside from finally figuring out what I was doing wrong on the “Fly the helicopter under the bridges” Achievement, and somehow beating the CUBED high score, it had been many, many hours since I’d unlocked any Achievements. Add to that my time spent on my PS3 – Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds is pretty addictive, and I also decided to download Crash Bandicoot 2, just because – and you can see why getting a little over 100 points in just over an hour in LIJ would feel like a shock to the system.

As for LIJ itself: I gotta say, I’m really enjoying it so far, maybe even more than the Star Wars games. Maybe it’s because I’ve always secretly liked the IJ movies more than the SW movies; maybe it’s because I think the puzzles are better, and are a more natural fit with the source material; maybe it’s because watching Lego Indiana drop kick a “Nazi” is always endearing and awesome. The humor is just as spot-on as it’s ever been in this series, but they also do a pretty great job with the platforming (such as it is) – there are moments where this kinda feels like a Tomb Raider game, which is great considering what Tomb Raider games are emulating in the first place.

My rented copies of Ninja Gaiden 2 and GRID should be arriving any day now, and I must admit I’m not really looking forward to either of them. The previous Ninja Gaiden game utterly broke my spirit, and everyone’s saying that the camera in NG2 is even worse than the first one. And the word about GRID – about how the 360 version suffers from freezing – is very disappointing, as I am a huge fan of DIRT and was really looking forward to this (although, of course, since I haven’t actually played it yet, I have no idea how bad the problem is, or if it even exists at all).

And then MGS4 arrives next week. I’ve set up my Gamefly queue so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t get a copy immediately; and yet I kinda don’t give a shit. I’m playing it because as a PS3 owner I feel obligated to play it, and so that I’ll be adequately prepared when the first wave of discussion hits the ‘tubes, but… as soon as I hit a cutscene that goes past 10 minutes and I lose track of whatever the fuck is supposed to be going on, I’m gonna sink back into my couch and wonder why I let myself get talked into something I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy.

>GTA4 wrap-up (spoilers)

>Finished the story mode in GTA4 over the weekend. Should’ve written down my stats; off the top of my head, at the time I finished the story, I was a little over 66% complete, and had put in around 37 hours. I suspect I’ll keep playing for a bit longer; I don’t think I’ll ever bother with getting 100%, but certainly there’s lots of Achievements left, and ultimately I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to Niko and Liberty City just yet. Right now I’m doing the Assassin missions and Brucie’s races, while keeping an eye out for pigeons and stunt jumps.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I chose to kill Playboy X and keep Dwayne alive; I chose to kill Francis and keep the older junkie brother alive (can’t remember his name); I chose to keep Darko alive, which surprised me a great deal (it should be said, though, that my controller has glitched out a lot in GTA4, and Niko ends up walking around in circles a lot when I’m not actually doing anything with the controller, and I think Niko glitched out and walked away while I was making up my mind).

But at the very end of the game, I chose to kill Dmitri, rather than do a deal with him. That felt satisfying. Then, of course, Pegorino had to fuck everything up, and the very final mission in the game was the first and only time where GTA4 fell apart for me.

The mission starts out with a long and somewhat aimless chase sequence – but it’s not terribly difficult or unusual, or even particularly fast. Then there’s a medium-length shoot-out, which can be made much quicker and easier with some strategically thrown grenades. But then there’s a motorcycle chase on a beach, which IS unusual being that you’re given the shittiest motorcycle in the game, and you’re driving on incredibly wonky terrain, and THEN you’re flying a helicopter that you’ve never flown before, with guns that you’ve never fired which makes controlling it that much more difficult, and the guy you’re chasing starts firing rockets at you, which you didn’t know he had, and – at least when I played it – you’re SUPPOSED to get hit with one, which triggers the final scene. I fucked up the mission from the motorcycle sequence on about 5 or 6 times, and when you replay a failed mission you’re stuck with the same stats as you had when the mission ended, so you’re dealing with less ammo and less health; basically, it fucking sucked and I hated it because all my 37 hours of playtime left me thoroughly unprepared for the last 3 minutes of gameplay. /end rant

I’m curious to see how much longer I can stay engaged in the endgame, although certainly the multiplayer is reason enough to keep the disc in the tray. I played San Andreas for months after I finished it, and I think GTA4 is a vast improvement over San Andreas.

I love the ambiguity of the ending. Unlike the previous games, there’s no triumphant scene, no winner-takes-all montage; Niko is a man in pain, still, and his life is as unsettled as it ever was. I could definitely see his story extending to at least one more sequel, or for as many as Rockstar would want to make for this generation of consoles; he is arguably the most compelling player character in the history of videogames and his story would appear to be far from over. He is a criminal with a conscience; a compassionate but cold-blooded killer; he is a human being, riddled with doubts and yet focused on the task at hand. I think it’s telling that GTA4 is the first time the player has been offered the opportunity to actually make choices; Niko’s really the first character they’ve created where you, the player, can actually feel the emotional weight of those choices, as those choices must weigh against Niko.

In any event, it’s a masterpiece, even if that last mission sucked. It’s a staggering achievement on a multitude of levels, and Rockstar has raised the bar yet again. I have absolutely no idea how they will top it, but if their previous track record is any guide, they most certainly will.

>Giant Bomb GTA5 thoughts; Boom Blox; Metroid Prime 3

>1. The latest Giant Bombcast is probably the best one they’ve come out with thus far; it’s funny without being “wacky”, focused, and informative. They also have a rather nice discussion about GTA4 that I soooooo wish I could have been a part of; namely, what to expect in the next iteration.

Ryan and Jeff talk about how Vice City and San Andreas were not totally unexpected choices when the franchise moved to 3D – those were cities where GTA had apparently already taken place in earlier games. I’m not entirely sure I agree with their implied assertion that the city came first in those games, and then the story (Jeff mentions something quickly about Vice City seemed like a great place for boating, which was a new mechanic in that game); it seems to me that it wasn’t the city but the films they decided to embody. Both Vice City and San Andreas don’t even really bother hiding their cinematic inspirations, as it seems pretty obvious that the developers basically picked Scarface and Boyz in the Hood as jumping-off points, respectively.

More to the point, Jeff says that his expectations for a new GTA game have definitely changed since playing GTA4 – it’s not the city that’s the most important thing as much as it is the story, and I absolutely agree – although it should be said that this new Liberty City is a staggering achievement, on a multitude of levels (technological, artistic, geographic, architectural, the city just feels right), and the city goes farther than any before it towards making the story feel real and emotionally involving.

That said, the city is usually the first thing that Rockstar reveals whenever they’re getting ready to release a new GTA game. Jeff talks about London (yay!) as something he’d like to see, but also raises a very interesting question, and one that I hadn’t considered – would American audiences be alienated by the switch to an unfamiliar locale, considering how the GTA franchise is famous for its satire of American pop culture? I think it could work if the lead character was an American; certainly that would help the American audience see the city through a foreigner’s eyes. London isn’t that strange a place, anyway, and certainly there’s enough of it that would be recognizable. I also think that Rockstar could do a lot with London, and not just in terms of “Austin Powers and ugly teeth” jokes. They’re from Scotland, anyway – I feel like this would be right in their wheelhouse.

Anyway. It’s kinda ridiculous for me to be theorizing about GTA5 when I’m still working on GTA4. I haven’t had much opportunity to play this week; I’ll maybe do a mission in the morning, before I go to work, and then I’ll play for an hour or so before going to bed. Last night, for example, I decided to ignore the story and go over to the airport to get the 4-star and 500-foot wheelie Achievements, which I succeeded in doing. I died a few times after that, though, and in the process I lost a ton of money and weapons, and I didn’t save my game. The Achievements aren’t going away, though…

2. Brought home BOOM BLOX for the Wii last night, and my wife and I played through a bunch of the multiplayer; we had a great time, but both of our right arms are absolutely killing us today. Towards the end of our time we figured out that it’s not so much in the arm motion as it is in the wrist, and we only figured that out because we couldn’t really move our arms anymore.
The game is loosely similar to Jenga, but more destructive and more responsive. The physics are absolutely spot-on and you really feel connected to the action on the screen; the controls are very intuitive and responsive, too (although not totally 100% accurate). I’m not sure it’s a game we’ll be playing forever and ever, but certainly it’s something we can pick up and play.

3. Had a rental copy of Metroid Prime 3 laying around for a while, and I decided to pop that in just to see if it was worth holding on to. Short answer – not really. The storytelling is sophomoric at best and the controls are irksome. I’m not a huge fan of the series so maybe that’s why I was so quick to dismiss it; in any event, I played up until the first boss and then sent it back to Gamefly.

>What to look out for in GTA5, if EA successfully acquires Take Two

>*shudder*

For starters, the radio stations would be replaced by the all-seeing, all-knowing DJ Atomica, the music would be considerably less eclectic, and the ZiT in-game feature that lets you know what song you’re listening to would simply be replaced with actual text pop-ins, the way every other EA game does.

After all, your cellphone would actually be an iPhone, or a Verizon LG8600, or a RAZR.

The GTA games are known for, among other things, their incredible attention to detail when it comes to satire, and this goes all the way down to the fake commercials on their radio stations, not to mention the tons of signage and branding for their fictional properties – BurgerShot, Sprunk, Cluckin’ Bell, etc. EA, on the other hand, is known for their incredible devotion for gratuitous in-game advertising; it would surprise absolutely no-one to see an EA-published GTA take place in a world with real commercials and real billboards for real products, which you could then buy in-game. Imagine getting a health power-up from eating a Big Mac!

Let’s see… we’ve got the EA Trax soundtrack, we’ve got the gratuitous in-game advertising… well, I suppose we can extend that to Branded Achievements. Drive for 1000 miles and get the GoodYear Tires Achievement; crash into 200 cars for the AllState Insurance Achievement; snipe 100 headshots and get the Johnson & Johnson “No More Tears” Achievement.

Of course, it would be hard to imagine any wholesome product that wouldn’t be attacked from the Jack Thompson side of the fence if it allowed itself to be placed in a game this subversive, notorious and controversial. (It hasn’t stopped UbiSoft from putting car commercials in Rainbow Six games or Nextel devices in Splinter Cell games – or car commercials in Crackdown, for that matter, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.) This is a long way of saying that GTA5 can’t feature any more killing of hookers for points. (Which doesn’t happen in the actual GTA, but I digress, again.)

So the storyline and cast of characters would have to be switched up. Which would mean that instead of featuring a compelling and epic narrative about the troubles of a European immigrant fresh from the horrors of war, we’d get a 10-15 hour story about Bobby Flash, a streetwise white kid from the suburbs who hopes to be a skateboard champion but who runs into a gang from the other side of the tracks, probably featuring tons of ridiculously over-the-top FMV cutscenes that likewise fill up the Need For Speed franchise – hey, maybe they can throw in a Need For Speed billboard or two, while they’re at it!

>GTA4: stats recap

>Tomorrow, May 5, will mark the first day I’ve had to go to work since GTA4 was released; I thought I’d put up a brief selection of GTA4-related stats before I turn in for the night. I’ll do a fuller recap tomorrow.

  • 51.07% game completion
  • 26 hours, 14 minutes, 17 seconds
  • 51 days (in game)
  • 67 missions passed
  • 6 deaths
  • 410 people killed
  • $430,812 on hand (the vast majority of which came from the Three Leaf Clover mission)
  • Favorite radio station: Liberty Rock (I’m guessing this is tabulated by in-car airtime; in terms of the actual music, my favorite stations are Fusion and IF99; for what it’s worth, I didn’t bother checking to see what the game says my least favorite station is, as I know it’s the hardcore station)
  • 9 pigeons
  • 3 jumps
  • 11 Achievements, worth 95 points

>A quick and dirty defense

>I saw a movie recently; it started out with 2 thugs slicing up a prostitute, featured multiple brutal beatings, and ended with a massive bloodbath, including the murder of the town sheriff. Was this movie considered pornographic? Was there a massive outcry? Were pundits up in arms, talking about how sick and depraved Hollywood was?

Actually, the movie was “Unforgiven”, and won 4 Oscars.

When I’ve surfaced every few hours from GTA4 to check my real-life RSS feeds, I’ve noticed that my “Games” folder has been filled – and not just from Gamepolitics.com – with story after story about people getting all bent out of shape about GTA4 – it’s a murder simulator, it glorifies violence, it – well, let them say it:

The glorification of killing of any police officer is just wrong. I mean, it desensitizes people to the real mayhem that’s going on out on the streets, and we already have a real problem with people not valuing human life.

People don’t seem to have a problem turning guns on cops, and this game — I know it’s just a game, but people sometimes have trouble separating reality from fantasy.

* * *

There’s a new world of entertainment here… But what does it contain? In this case, [protagonist Niko Bellic] kills, maims, has sex, then kills and maims some more, while also stealing various forms of transportation…

What “Grand Theft Auto IV” affirms is the pleasure of eschewing decency for obnoxious violence…

And, of course, there’s always the “you can have sex with prostitutes and then kill them to get your money back” line… These kinds of arguments are infuriating, because they fail to address what the game is actually about. It’s an easy thing to say; it’s similar to how the mainstream media always gets annoyed with bloggers and immediately invalidates anything a blogger says because “they’re unwashed and live in their parents’ basement.”

>It has begun

>I’m not sure I know how many hours I’ve put into GTA4 today. I ended up waiting in the midnight line last night; got my copy at around 1:00 or so; ended up going to bed around 3:30. Started playing again this morning at 10:00, and have been pretty much going straight through until now, 5:30pm, with a few breaks in between…

I’m so tired and incoherent. I feel slightly hungover, even though I’ve been totally sober throughout this whole process. Actually, it’s more like: I feel like I haven’t blinked all day.

So I’m not really in any position to discuss the game. I can say that I’ve surprised myself by mostly adhering to the main story and side missions; I haven’t really done any adventuring (I guess I’m saving that for when I unlock Manhattan). I’ve gone on a few dates; I’ve shot some pool; I’ve not gotten drunk yet. I’ve killed people, both accidentally and on purpose; I’ve also finally discovered what this game’s “hidden package” is, and it’s a little weird. Appropriate, but weird.

I suspect I’m speaking into the void, now, anyway – you’re all either already playing it, or you’re waiting to get home to start playing it. (Or, you’re not playing it at all, in which case: why not?)

>The Weight of Waiting

>

I am compelled to keep blogging in this space – even more so than on my other, “real-life” blog – because the wait for GTA4 is turning into an all-consuming hunger. I’ve already taken time off from work for it (even though I have a legitimate and necessary reason for doing so that has nothing at all to do with it), and every time my RSS reader dings, I become inexplicably giddy at the thought of getting new GTA4-related information.

And so today I’m trying to figure out what other soon-to-be-released games I can recall getting this bent out of shape over. This list isn’t necessarily reflective of my all-time favorite games (although certainly most of these would make the list); this is simply a list of the games that I absolutely could not wait for any longer.

1. On the 360, there’s been a lot of big titles to get excited for – and believe me, I’ve been foaming at the mouth for most of them, especially Mass Effect – but I guess I’d have to put Oblivion at the top of my list, which was a surprise to me even while it was happening:

I’m not even sure I myself knew how much I was looking forward to Oblivion; certainly I got really caught up in the hype over the last few months; I pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition, I sucked up every available preview and direct-feed morsel I could find; I even watched some of Gamespot’s 12-hour playtest, which I had originally dismissed as being the most retarded idea I’d ever heard. Here’s the funny part – I bought Morrowind – twice, for both PC and Xbox – but while I really appreciated the concept, I never got further than reaching the first quest-related town of Balmora before I lost interest. Between the two platforms I probably put in a total of 8 hours. Why, then, was Oblivion such a coveted purchase? Why was I so deeply enamored with a sequel to a game I’d hardly put any effort into? Was I a sucker for PR? I don’t even own an HDTV, so it’s not like my inner graphics-whore/crack-addict was going to receive that sort of gratification…

2. On the Xbox, I was tempted to say it’s the GTA Double Pack and/or Fable (I was also excited for KOTOR, but not to the same extent, even if its become one of my all-time favorites), but I think it has to be Psychonauts, which had been first announced in 2002 and was one of my primary reasons for buying an Xbox in the first place (along with the Oddworld games, which, sadly, weren’t all they could have been). That Psychonauts managed to still be awesome under the weight of years of expectations is a remarkable achievement, even if the Meat Circus ended up driving me (and many others) totally batshit insane.

3. On the PC… well, to be honest, it’s been quite a long time since my PC was my primary gaming center, and I can’t recall being amped up for a game that I knew I was only going to be playing on my PC. I did get excited for Neverwinter Nights, I guess, but that wasn’t an all-encompassing hunger. And I’m not afraid to admit that I’ve been looking forward for Duke Nukem Forever for, well, forever – and when they finally get around to releasing DukeNukem 3D for XBLA, I will DEFINITELY be going crazy for it.

After that… well, I’m not sure. When I was a little kid with an Atari 2600, I really can’t recall getting excited about new releases, because (a) there was no internet, (b) since my parents bought the games for me, I had no choice in the matter as to what to get excited about. If anything, I would get excited to get games that other friends of mine already had. Same thing with my brother’s Sega Genesis, which I never bought games for, either. But by the same token, we could play all those old games OVER and OVER and OVER again – we didn’t necessarily need anything new when we could keep having fun with what we already had. (Boy, I miss those days!)

So, what about you? What games have you been unable to sit still for?