Gaming Weekend: City Lights Edition
The most shocking thing about Grand Theft Auto IV isn’t the ubiquitously referenced ultra-violence and winking misogyny on display. Rather, the most shocking thing is that for once Rockstar has lived up to their potential in crafting a game that does several unexpected things at once and the result is, for better or worse, an example of what a game can be in terms of interaction, narrative and socially conscious (and therefore relevant) satire.
I noticed it first when I found myself not adhering to my typical GTA playbook. Since GTA III I’ve basically started each game with a saveless rampage where I try to use the items readily available early in the game (usually a handgun, baseball bat and cars) to wreak as much carnage as I can muster. I do this mostly to get it out of my system but also to get a sense for how the Police AI in the game responds to my actions. Call it a warm-up for later in the game when I’m trying to avoid causing more havoc than necessary while I accomplish missions that have me setting fire to buildings or chasing down rival faction heads with a garbage truck. After I get arrested or killed in these pre-game excursions I usually re-load and start in on the game the way most people would.
In GTA IV I never got to the point where I wanted to wreck stuff just to see what the cops would do to me. In fact, even as I began playing through the missions and managing the game’s unexpectedly intriguing social standing system I found myself not playing as if I were in a criminal sandbox simulator where everything goes. I paid the tolls. I stopped at certain red lights (or at least waited for the cross traffic to clear). I avoided random confrontations with pedestrians. In effect I played the game the way the character was written, as a reluctant villain rather than an overt thug.
GTA IV has a remarkable way of placing you in this funhouse mirror of the US, drenched with an attention to detail that you might not expect even from Rockstar, and peppering it with game-based approximations of this character’s life that feel maybe not completely authentic but at the very least integrated with the rules of the world that has been created. The seasonings of smart dialogue, richly woven game elements (witness the wonder that is the new cellphone based in-game menu) and scalpel-edged satire make the stew that much more sumptuous. If you want to understand what Rockstar does right, compare and contrast the crass and subtlety-deprived Saints Row (a game I actually enjoyed) with Grand Theft Auto and you’ll find that Rockstar doesn’t back down from a biting remark or a juvenile in-game prank, but they’re smart enough to find the not-so-easy punchline rather than just resorting to the potty-mouthed shocker.
Not that GTA isn’t rude. It’s very much a game of excess, a parody of how stupefyingly obscene we all are that is reflected back to us through a lens of humor and escapism. No one is safe from the game’s sneering barbs here, and it is as it should be. But nearly hidden beneath the nose-thumbing swagger of the game’s obvious indifference to its own notoriety is a surprising humanity mostly shining from the superbly realized main character, Niko Bellic. He is a reluctant crook, a tortured murderer similar in some ways to San Andreas’ CJ but with more consistency and a more everyman quality. There but for the grace of God we all go, perhaps. The tone of the game feels spot-on as you understand Niko’s awe at the oddness of the city, it’s vulgarity and hostility. Casting the player as an immigrant is as smooth of a narrative decision as I’ve seen in game writing and design. It fits and it works because you feel alien in this world even as sometimes uncomfortably familiar as it is (to Americans).
The game isn’t perfect; technically it is maybe missing a few nice-to-have QA passes and gameplay-wise it hasn’t matured significantly since San Andreas since you’re still mostly chasing, fighting or fetching various things around the city. But I was looking for the title to be a step ahead in the evolution of Grand Theft’s signature formula. I didn’t expect an evolution in my concept of what a game could be.
The Rest of the Games
- Shadow of the Colossus – I really enjoyed the time I spent with GTA IV, as you might have guessed from the text above. What I didn’t expect was that an older game would provide almost as much marvel at the achievements in game design and narration in an interactive medium as that title only coming from a completely different direction and mindset. The beauty of Shadow isn’t necessarily in the game’s mechanics but in its general atmosphere and tone. The long, lonely stretches between temple and Colossus battleground are silent, moody moments punctuated by the occasional faint sound effect and little else. But the frantic ballet of tension and determination surrounded by crashing orchestral music during the actual confrontations don’t actually change that mood, they are still lonely affairs and mostly silent except a few grunts from your avatar and groans from the intimdating Colossi. As a game it is probably the best example of minimalism expertly applied with a close runner-up being Portal. As an experience of entertainment it stands as a testament to what can be accomplished in the medium.
- God of War: Chains of Olympus – I didn’t get the game in the mail until late Friday night so my progress isn’t even as complete as when I played through the demo a few months ago. But I still admire the feat of faithful translation that is bringing the series to the PSP. I still surprises me that developers took as long as they did to figure out that the PSP is its own beast and shouldn’t be treated like a portable PS2. It is a portable system, and it is comparable to the PS2 in terms of power, but that’s not to say that every PS2 game ought to be CTL-C/CTL-V onto the handheld. Some people dislike even the concept of a big home console-style game on a handheld and I’m not one of them, but you have to be cautious about whether the game is going to even work in that context and the good news, for series fans, is that God of War absolutely does.
- Lost Cities – I’m still finding myself drawn back to this game despite the new influx of great titles to play. I put down GTA IV to play Lost Cities for pete’s sake! But I owe it to the remarkable Achievement design that makes those cursed points desirable because of what they represent rather than what they grant. There is something addicting about trying to meet the taxing requirements for some of those rewards and while the game doesn’t have enough depth in its mechanics to warrant the amount I’ve sunk into it already, the dangling carrot of the Achievement provides plenty of motivation.
- Peggle – Since completing the Adventure mode I’ve taken to using the game as a time-waster on my work breaks by doing random levels with random special powers. It may not be quite good enough to persuade me to put any more effort into it than that, but it certainly suffices for killing some downtime.
- Dementium: The Ward – I sort of tried my hardest to get into this game. I really wanted to like it maybe because it represents an unusual demographic which is the mature DS owner. But while I appreciate almost everything the developers were trying to do and it has some real promise, I simply can’t abide the literally painful combat controls and clumsy (even by Resident Evil standards) efforts at stirring up scares. I made it my bedtime game last week since I was a bit burnt on Jeanne D’Arc and I wanted to give it a fair shake before I decided whether I was going to list it on Goozex or hang onto it and I think it’s got to hit the list. Kind of a shame, but maybe they’ll come back with a killer sequel.