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The Making of Grand Theft Auto
Edge Online has another fantastic feature, discussing the creation process behind GTA. From the article: "One of the defining moments of the series happened in early 1996, not long after Baird joined the team. 'At that time, we were still a series of small missions,' he says. "We had a long, long brainstorming session where we picked up on an idea for one long level containing multiple missions proposed by one of the level designers, Paul Farley. We took this and expanded it into the open-ended structure that the game shipped with. This meant a big expansion of the scripting and improvements to game systems — they had to handle the game running over multiple missions instead of the short structure.'"
Driving from the top-down perspective drove me crazy with the first GTA, and trying to walk around using the keyboard made me want to ignore the game and just kill all those virtual people. I can't imagine how many times I was killed while walking for a mission, for me it totally overshadowed the "living city" aspect they go on about in the article. Hell I don't even remember that I noticed it was "living" at all, since like most GTA games then and since you merely have to move out of the zone you're in and back into it to find everything "reset"; no crashed cars, dead bodies, etc. Where the hell are all the tow trucks, EMT's, and coroner's that mysteriously clean up behind me? Why can't I kill them too so the wreckage stays? Do I just need to install a "decal limit" hack? ;)
Jonah HEX
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I've played almost all the GTAs. GTA 1 & 2 were fun little distractions, I played them when they were relased for free.
But people go on and on about 3+ and say how great they are and I just don't get it. To me, it's like the whole world is blind to what is right in front of their face.
GTA 3 was kind of fun. They all were. Driving around is fun, and I liked the radio and such. The driving controls weren't that great but they worked and that may even be one of the reasons why they were fun. But the rest of the game just SUFFERS. I know there is supposed to be a great story and tons of missions, and I've played some of them. But the shooting/targeting/aiming controlls have been abysmal.
Legend of Zelda: Occarina of Time invented the Z-Targeting system in what, 1997/1998? It worked great. So why is it that a game released 4 years later had such a lousy targeting system? It made fights with one person a struggle, and figts with a mob basically unplayable.
So I gave up on it and then tried Vice City a few years later. The music was fun and the story was interesting, but it had the same problem. The controlls were terrible. STILL.
So now there is San Andreas. It's supposed to be the best yet. I haven't tried it and I don't intend to.
Then there is Liberty City Stories. This is the game that is supposed to be so amazing that they put on the PSP. Guess what, the controlls are terrible. The lack of the second analog stick probably makes things worse. Too bad they aren't using Z-Targeting which would have made up for that.
But even on the consoles, they could have used FPS controlls and they would have worked just fine. Heck, the old Resident Evils seemed to have better shooting controls.
I've posed this before. What's the response I usually get? "Try the games on the PC!". So the solution to bad controls on a console is a port that they made later? If they can't get it right on a console (where I can at least rent it) then why should I shell out money for the PC version?
I know they are making another GTA. Maybe the controls will be decent this time. Probably not. But what score will every magazine and game website give it? A 5/5, a 98%, or something similar. Buggy graphics and gameplay? Doesn't matter (note: I never experienced that, other than the terrible pathfinding in GTA 3). Abysmal controls for some of the most crucial parts of the game? Who cares! Cram the game onto a console with even WORSE controls? We'll keep the score the same because they are the first to put a GTA style game on the PSP.
As long as your game is fun for those people who don't mind playing the same part over and over because they can't get the character to do what it's supposed to because the controls are terrible, it's OK to give the game a 100% type score.
PS: Yes, I KNOW this entire post is basically sacrilege. But when I see this series contine to get great marks and held up as this great thing when then controlls are just SO BAD while other great games get marked down for comparativly petty things, it infuriates me.
The living city thing is VERY cool (even if it has serious limitations in the form of PS2 games, maybe on next-gen). But as people say about Id shooter games: "Neat demo, maybe now someone will make a game out of it".
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I like all the games in the series, but with the move from GTA2 to GTA3 they lost one of my favorite features. In 2 there were three gangs in each level. They each had a gang they hated and a gang they were indifferent about. So to do missions for one gang, you had to be hated (to a certain degree) by their rival gang. The fun part was that when you finished all the missions for one gang you could go on a rampage in their turf and get jobs from their enemies. It felt like you got 3x the gameplay for each level.
Also the humor was lost in the transition to 3D. For example the wandering line of Elvis impersonators who were especially skittish, but if you managed to run over all of them at once you got a bonus and the words "Elvis has left the building!" Or the announcer's voice when you got an insane stunt bonus.
The score multiplier, which would get zeroed by an arrest, along with charging in-game money to save the game, added real tension to the game. You didn't want to save very often because it was expensive (the way to get out of the level was to get a certain amount of money), and you loved the multiplier which gained +1 each time you completed a mission without getting busted or killed. So, by the time you had a 6x multiplier you were on edge for any sign of the cops since you would lose so much. Naturally, the missions were designed to get the cops all riled up which was very thrilling.
In the 3D ones, you save whenever and don't care (which limits the risk to repeating once single mission), there is little humor, and the levels are pretty linear, as far as the missions go. That said, I like the 3D versions, and absolutely love Vice City (80s music + the PCJ = ftw!)
I...I'm attacking the darkness!