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Grand Theft Auto Retrospective
Sadkey writes "In light of the release of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for the PSP, UGO has posted a retrospective around the GTA games. "Come take a trip through time, and see how a franchise went from a cult hit to a cultural phenomenon, set the tone for an entire generation, and made open-ended gameplay a buzzword of the early 21st century. It's a long, bumpy ride, but at the end, Grand Theft Auto stands tall as the game that changed everything.' ."
I remember playing the top down GTAs and just loving it. Great games.
Ironically, with the huge surge in multiplayer games in the last few years, GTA is one of the few examples of the death of multiplayer in a series. The first two GTAs (the top down ones) had wonderful multiplayer. It easily is in my top 5 list of the best multiplayer games of all time. The shift to 3D, for some reason, meant no multiplayer. Yeah, there is a mod for GTA (MTA I think) which adds multiplayer, and it's good but its still in its infancy last I checked. I really would like to see Rockstar add multiplayer to the game.
Top-down view was a part of GTA being GTA. When they replaced it with "real 3D" in GTA3, it was one of those things which ruined the game for me (and I absolutely loved the original GTA). The others were non-linearity (you didn't have to repeat the same mission over and over again till you get it done) and actually humorous rather than idiotic missions.
I enjoy so called "open ended games" for a few minutes to a few hours, after that I feel that it is a waste of time.
.... then I am just bored of it suddenly.
All respect to Rockstar, the game is kickass, I just cannot help it but it leaves me all the time with the game unfinished and me bored to hell of it.
I can't help it. I KNOW that it is not more of a waste of time, that playing far-cry hours long online and stealing the sample and shooting the same buddies in the same time for hours, or running thru a doom 3 map and killing monsters from hell, but somehow it just gets boring to be so open-ended.
Kill all humans took me 1 hour to showe it in the "never see it again pile", while GTA kept entertaining me for many hours.
I have the same problem with racing games. I progress, and progress, and progress
In GTA, the missions give some linearity, but it is too "open" to restart a mission without driving for 10 minutes, but to linear to skip a mission that just annoys you.
You might say that I need directions, but I don't in real life - I am working alone without a boss, and were in management a few times here and there and can plan a day or a project on my own.
So what is the problem? Could not figure it out.
Online play can entertain me for hours: I can play CTF or TS on xlink or xbc for a day straight, but DM makes me bored in 30 mins tops.
I've read that Japanese players cannot take open ended games in general as they need a score or a mission to chase/finish all the time.
Dunno, I guess I will skip the next installment of GTA and choose something with a good multiplayer mode as story modes are just getting the same old crap over and over to mee to.
Hmm, actually just got a bunch of games to try, and realized, that all I am interested in gaming is shooting or racing people online untill I fall asleep in front of my projector...
Am I missing the point of GTA ? Maybe I need an online version of GTA-style open endedness?
I was actually looking at reviews of matrix massive online multiplayer, but so many people complained that I decided not to buy it at the end... So what ?
I realize that GTA has fans, and that this game is unlike ANYTHING that has ever been on a portable platform (self-made portable PS2 hacks notwithstanding). But how can a game with such terrible flaws (read the reviews) as no difficulty difference between early and ending missions (except for the fact your weapons are terrible at the start), a bad camera and terrible targeting system, and mind-numbingly boring/anoying missions get 90+% grades?
Simple: no one wants to risk pissing off GTA lovers and losing them as readers/viewers/subscribers.
Don't get me wrong. I loved GTA 1 and 2. I played GTA 3 and found it fun to drive around but I didn't get far due to the terrible targeting. I loved Vice City even more (great soundtrack) and got farther, but I eventually dumped the game for the same reasons. The game was better, but it still wasn't there. I haven't played San An, and I don't intend to play LCS now.
Bugs and problems were OK for GTA 3, it was a first of it's kind (being a 3D world). Vice City was buggy and they should have done better. I don't know if the targeting was fixed for San An (I heard it was better) but I didn't care by that point. Then they release this game shortly after with all these problems. I realize it's the first on the platform for the series, and that the second analog stick is missing, but come one. You've made THREE OF THESE GAMES BY NOW, can't you fix some of this stuff?
They were rushing it, or they didn't care. Those are the only two reasons I can think of for having the same problems that put me off of GTA 3 four years ago this week.
The sandbox they created is fantastic. The stories and great, and the games have tons of replay value. But playing occaisionally makes me feel like I'm running towards $1,000,000 in a foot and a half of water. There is something great there, I can see it, but getting there is just so hard .
These days I'm getting less and less time to play games. My backlog is piling up. I just finished Pyschonauts (Great game, but the framerate on the PS2 version was a JOKE), and I'm in the middle of Sly 3 now (better than Sly 2!). If I was a freshman in highschool and had the time to commit, I may be able to play it. But at this point I don't need to fight a game to play it. There are a couple of games I've got RIGHT NOW that I know will be good that I won't have to do that for.
Sorry Rockstar. Try harder, huh?
-- A guy who wants to love GTA
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Jeez, pull the stick out. Wether it's GTA3, Doom or Custer's Revenge the appeal of anti-social games is simple: Catharsis. The whole idea isn't that you're doing things which you wish you could do; the idea is that you're getting an oppertunity to do things which you'd never do. It's closer to primal scream than anything else. But if you take gaming that seriously, maybe you should stick to mario 64. ;)
Is this a localised thing, or something from GTA2? I never ran over Elvis's's...
:)
In GTA2 (the last top-down view in the series) you could run over a line of Elvis impersonators for points, something missing from newer versions. I was referring to the also missing (since GTA2) "Kill Frenzy" mini-game where you're given a fancy weapon like a flamethrower and told to kill X people in Y seconds. If you complete the "mission" you get points.
They've removed Kill Frenzies from newer versions of GTA replacing it with with "Kill X Gang Members." I suppose it's supposed to be more sensitive since killing 40 gang members isn't as bad as killing 40 random people on the street (I guess).
If anyone's interested, you can actually get the full version of GTA2 for free from Rockstar's website (or bypass stupid soul-sucking registration for a direct download). Either way it's 345MB but worth it to see some of the game's roots and get a quick stress-reliever
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Dude, I loved Sim Copter. I would play it for hours when I was age 12 - 14. I'd make cities specifically to fly through, pick up injured people and hear them gurgle endlessly. The real problem with those games is that they came out far before 3D graphics could truly bring out their full potential. Most of the buildings were blocks, the copters were literally flying polygons visually...the trees were odd...your character didn't have a fact. It was still fun and had all the little silly aspects of most Maxis games, though. And they really need to bring back sim ant. I was addicted to that game, too. And sim tower...and...sim farm. Good stuff.
I loved Mafia, and I'm not too hot on GTA3+.
Mafia had a neat storyline and interesting thing going on with the stealing of cars. You had to learn how to steal each model of car, and you steal it by breaking into a parked car without anyone seeing, not just walking in front of it while it's moving and then pulling the driver out.
You have a garage at your hideout (well it's an italian restaurant) where you can keep very many cars that you've previously stolen, and you can drive whichever one you wanted for any mission.
Also you often had to drive very sensibly in the game, you'd get police on you by speeding and things.
And there was alot of FPS action in it. The missions were pretty cool, I'm just remembering them and there was alot to them. Stopping the bad guy from leaving at the airport and stuff. (And the whole morality thing going on - you start as just a driver but end up doing some very bad things that you really don't want to do, so you decide you have to get out somehow...)
Yeah that game was very cool... Pretty much a ripoff of the gta's but really well done and better IMO.
Because the Bible glorifies "sinful" acts? Ok, whatever.
I already addressed your "point" here. I have to say that it's rather disturbing that so many people can equate containing certain themes to glorifying those same themes.
Taking the Bible as an example, what happened when David slept with Bathsheba, then bumped off her husband? The profits certainly didn't show up and start yelling, "You da' MAN! Those moves are the shizzle!" Try opening the Old Testiment sometime. It shouldn't take you long to find something along the lines of, "Yet XYZ did not turn from their sinful ways, and God's wrath poured out upon them." (The New Testament is a heck of a lot more lenient due to the coming "grace" talked about in Galatians, but it still didn't glorify ugly behavior.)
Or moving onto more complex literature. Was the point of "Gone with the Wind" that Rhett Butler was such a great lady's man? He was manuvering Scarlett O'Hara toward the bed the entire book, but when she finally consented he merely said, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." Why do you think that was, hmmm?
Is there any part in GTA where your character suddenly realizes the toll his lifestyle is taking and wants out? No? Why not? After all, isn't GTA like fine literature, chock full of lessons to be learned and humanities to analyze? Or perhaps it's just one big, antisocial, utterly meaningless, and depraved wankfest? "Look! I slept with the chick and bumped off her boyfriend! I'm the shizzle!" Great.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
My first experience with the GTA series was renting the top-down version and thinking "this game sux", I promptly took it back to the blockbuster. When GTA III hit with the third person perspective I was willing to bive it a try and from the first meeting with the Leone family sluming for work I was hooked, even though the system of opening up the islands sux. Vice City was craaazy and added to the excitement of the franchise with Tommy doing his own thing was nothing like chasing them fools on that motorcycle or running from the cops with 5 stars trying to get to the ocean view then hard braking and sliding up onto the steps popping out onto the hood with police slamming into you trapped taking incoming til you could wiggle a space between the car to enter the door and feeling like whoah I made it. I still wished I was able to buy lots of clothes from Rafaels, pimp that club I brought more, and make really good porn flics. But hey, I was just a game right. Then Uber-Hyped SanAndreas hit the pipes and I gotta have it, the whole switching from Tommy/mafia to CJ/gangbanger thing some getting used to, and what was with that orange blurr heat wave effect. It looked for a few minutes like I was headed for gamers hell trying to take a g back I didn't want. Once I got pass the culture shock I was sucked into the modding cars (nitrous... how cool is that), rapid fire missions... come on who didnt just love the mission with smoke shooting from the back of the motorcycle being chased into the aqua ducts. Wow. The schools system was a blast and the selection of cars, boats, and bikes was awesome, not to mention my favorite talk radio station... nothing like going berzerk listening to talk radio. But for me, loading up on molotovs and rocket laucher shells, securing 5 stars baiting them back to CJs moms house, climbing atop the alleyway rooftop letting them have it til the tanks came was priceless. Though I did get a bit annoyed with the relentless dating, just for a few suits.
To quote Walter Neff, the evil hero in "Double Indemnity", "Do I laugh now, or wait 'til it gets funny?"
Actually, no. GTA1 was fully open-ended within the boundaries of one given city. You could not even bother with the missions at all, just run around, kill cops, sell cars and earn your cash that way. When it came to missions, again there were many to choose from - one or two main lines, but countless hidden phones, cars etc. The main difference was that when you failed a mission, that was it: you failed; try something else. It actually allowed you to fail the tougher (or less interesting) missions and still move on in the storyline. What I hated about GTA3 in particular is a situation where you have 2 or 3 open missions at hand, but each one of them is hard enough that you can't do any, and the game forces you to keep trying till you succeed. In that aspect, I'd say GTA3 is actually more "arcade" then two previous games in the series were.
"Come take a trip through time, and see how a franchise went from a cult hit to a cultural phenomenon, set the tone for an entire generation,..."
Are you kidding? Looks like the editor has lost the ground.
After all the GTA series is just a bunch of games. Very good ones, at least the 3D games. But there is no way these games a "cultural phenomenon, set the tone for an entire generation". Not for a generation of people, maybe for a generation of games. Depens on how you read it.
If you look at the culture portrayed in the games... Vice City is clearly 80s Miami Vice style and San Andreas uses all the gangsta stuff.
*raises hand*
I like the freedom and simplicity of the original; the unadulterated sleaze in the story and missions (III & VC seem so polished by comparison--haven't played SA yet); the announcer--including the total mayhem bonuses of GTA2 (I fondly remember being recognized as a "Cop Killer!" and causing a "Medical Emergency!"); GTA2's awesome fire truck--you know the one I'm talking about; the train station and frying the passengers; the car bombs (III & VC are nerfed); the multiplayer; the subtlety of the humor (III was pretty good still, but VC got really old after a while--its humor wouldn't look out of place next to the word "ham-fisted" in the dictionary).
On the other hand, the third game was an incredible leap to 3D; introduced free saves (God how I hated the total inability to save in the first GTA and the very very expensive saving in GTA2); gave us choppers, planes, and useable boats; introduced a more sensible health system (single-bullet-death sucks--never mind that you could dodge them); a real story (okay, so it's not epic writing, but the original games had about as much story as DOOM); the kick-ass jumps the 3D engine allows (the 2D "Insane Stunt Bonus!"es were nifty, but had no real substance); and the way the 3D aspect really opens up the world--I figured out how to get to the third island in Vice City before doing a single mission by jumping off a bridge onto a boat. I did this by myself by observing the game world, and not trying to "hack" anything. This wasn't cheating--it was a genuine trick that let you move bypass some of the roadblocks present and move to new sections of the city early. The thing is, I doubt the designers envisioned this. I think that this is possible because the engine represents the game world in such impressive detail that things like this just arise by themselves.
In short, the original has classic moments that the 3D games can't replicate (and some that they sadly just seem unwilling to bring back). The 3D games have addressed a lot of the problems of the originals and added incredible depth. I love both. I probably won't even *start* SA for a few months, but I got to 100% in Vice City and enjoyed every minute of it (well, almost every minute).
Telltale Games: Bone, Sam and Max
Top down was the worst thing about GTA. In the faster cars and especially with the motorbikes, there simply wasn't enough screen available to let you see where you were going. If you came anywhere near to top speed, you were essentially gambling that you weren't going to hit anything instead of using skill to drive fast. The 3D change was good because you could now drive quickly and see where you were going.