Reviews: Nit-Picking About Minor Actions of Extreme Violence

So, Grand Theft Auto 4. I almost feel bad about reviewing this one, because WHO HASN'T? It had its volley of exemplary reviews and the immediate backlash, to the point where there's practically nothing left to say.

But in case you haven't heard any of that, here's the quick summary. GTA4 is about the same as every GTA game since the third. It's a 3D action/shooting/driving game inside a larger, fully explorable city. This game play almost all takes place in the city itself, and in between or instead of missions, you can perform various mini-games or optional missions, find hidden items, or just go nuts and shoot people, evade the cops, or jump off buildings for no good reason. GTA4 reboots the series with a graphical update and complete design of New York-substitute Liberty City, and it is praised for its much deeper, serious story that connects with the dark criminal world the game takes place in. It also is criticized for that same story, as the series has always been known for sheer chaotic fun. More importantly, the game includes constant interruptions by your character's "friends," who are incapable of going a day without calling you, usually while you're doing something much more important, and asking you to get food, shoot pool, go to shows, or do other things not remotely related to the missions or the general mayhem. And if you refuse, they like you less and you lose some benefits. Oh, and also the driving is more realistic, and thus much worse for the insane high speed chases much of the game takes place.

But that's the stuff everyone praised or complained about. To make this review remotely worth it, I have to comment on the things that bugged me personally. For starters, there's the fact that all the friend and girlfriend interactions start exactly one in-game hour (about three minutes in real life,) after you make the plan. This is true if you're three blocks away from their house or if you're technically a state away and you have no chance of making the meeting unless you're already flying a helicopter at the time. If you're late, they dislike you even if you're a bit late, possibly lowering the approval instead of raising it. And they don't always show up at the same place! You could be midway to their normal location having prepared for this mess only to find they're on another island completely for no good reason.

The game includes a day planner, letting you know if there is a meeting on, say, six o'clock in three days. It's used about once in the normal game and maybe three other times for optional missions. What's the point? Why not set up these schedules up with your actual friends? And these silly things are so pointless. Going to a bar or getting food is just a time-waster. And you might enjoy the pool, darts, or bowling games, or watching the shows or...stripper lap dances (I won't judge.) But you can just do that anyway! You don't need a friend to help you with them. So why not give these games a point? Instead of generic date/hang out activities, how about there are actual missions, appearing randomly or after enough regular events, to surprise the player? It ties the friends/girlfriends to the plot better, you won't have to do as many irrelevant missions in the main story, and the surprising and fun missions make the player look forward to those silly dates.

This implies that the missions themselves get more interesting. Too many missions are one of a few things: go to a place and kill everyone, chase an escaping person and (usually) kill them, and...that's about it, really, and it's about the same as every GTA game I ever played. Some variety would be nice, or at least more optional ways to complete a mission. Even Crackdown, a superhero-themed copy of the GTA games, had many more options to beat a mission. And one more thing. Since Vice City or so, if you fail a mission, you have a way to restart the mission without driving back to the mission's start point. But you won't do it. You might if you just failed normally, but if you die, you lose 10% of your money (usually 1 to 2 times what you would earn for finishing it,) and if you are arrested, you lose that AND all your weapons! Nobody's going to do that when you can just load your last game. Why include such a useless feature. Maybe penalize the player for failing a random chaotic killing spree, but losing a mission shouldn't give these penalties at this point. We're beyond that.