The GTA series has been pretty much on auto pilot since GTA III. Make a few upgrades to graphics and physics as new hardware allows and roll out the next one. Which is fine because it’s one of those games that you just want more of. It doesn’t need to be overhauled or redesigned every iteration. All you have to do is come up with a new main character and basic story frame that doesn’t interfere to support some challenging missions. There's no real excuse for any garbage then. It's as formulaic as an episode of the A-Team. The problem is that a lot of the new innovations do interfere with the game play, and I can’t remember back to the previous GTA games but there’s some really basic changes that should have been added in.
Let’s start with Niko’s character. The main character is a war veteran who’s been worn down by the violence and just wants a shot at the American dream to live a normal life. That’s all well and fine. In the early part of the story, Niko talks a lot about wanting to live a peaceful life while running some really boring taxi missions. Then his cousin, Roman, is getting pushed around by a local mobster. He’s sleeping around with Roman’s girl and talking down to Niko. Niko gets pissed at him and shortly thereafter he’s dropping bodies while still droning on about his inner angst. His biggest sticking point for the rest of the game? Pay him well, good help doesn’t come cheap. I actually like the development for his character early on, but you can’t set him up as some kind of reborn pacifist when he’d kill his own mother for $500. My favorite set of missions were the killings Niko performs for Brucie. Basically Brucie says he needs somebody taken care of for some vague reason and you go kill them for the obviously steroid-addicted maniac. Later Niko finds out they were just people who cut Brucie off or dented his car or something minute like that and Niko throws a hissy fit. Here’s a thought: If you don’t like killing people for no real reason, you should probably stop being a hit man.
Next up is the network of friends and girlfriends for Niko. On the surface it’s a really great game play feature. You can call them or they can call you and you go hang out or eat or whatever. You get some cool mini games and interesting dialogue between Niko and maybe a dozen or so other characters. Also, when you get your friendship maxed with one of the important characters, they can give you bonuses. Brucie can give you a helicopter lift, Jacob can drive to you and sell you weapons out of his trunk, etc. As your network of friends gets larger and larger however, you begin to get bogged down. Between the lot of them you’re lucky if you can get from one mission to the next without being called by at least a half dozen. You can’t say no to hanging out with them, or they become angry with you. But you can’t just not answer your phone either. Same result. Ignore them too many times and you’ll lose your perks. The management and time required turn this feature from a series of nice subplots to a cumbersome upkeep system.
Cars and missions. It’s a game called Grand Theft Auto. I’d like to have fun stealing cars. I’d also like to have fun driving those cars on missions. Far too many missions in this game require you to ditch whatever ride you brought and use some other P.O.S. Sometimes this makes sense, like when you have to block off the tunnel and ambush a motorcade. But when it’s all said and done, I’d like to go back to my car and go home. Unfortunately anything a little out of your range despawns, which creates other problems I’ll get to later. This means taking your car out for a mission ends up with you losing it more often than not, and since you have no way of knowing what’s going to happen on a mission, why would you ever bring your own vehicle? But then why would you even bother to save a vehicle if you can’t really use it on a mission? Unless all you wanted to do was zoom around from one end of the city to another as a butt buddy for your friends to earn their perks.
Another problem with vehicles is that if you’re driving a certain vehicle, you tend to see a lot more of that vehicle spawning on the streets. So you may go for several hours before you find your first Turismo, but after that if you’re driving it around, you may see one every 30 seconds. Seems a bit broken.
Also, the vehicles you’re often forced into handle much, much worse. All of that is usually bearable, I just chalk that up to making the game play challenging. But the bikes handle like complete ass in the game. I don’t like driving them, I shouldn’t have to, but I do. The most irritating mission for this was the final mission. You go in guns blazing, come out the back and the bad dudes are getting away on a motor boat. So you have to jump on a bike. Not too long after, a car pulls in front of you with a guy driving and another hanging out the window shooting at you. I cleared them out and hopped in the car and caught up to the boat. Then I failed the mission. Why? Because I got too far away from the bike. You know, because it matters what vehicle I was driving when I murder someone.
Sandbox. I can do whatever I want in the ‘world.’ Problem is, there’s no lasting impact for any of my actions. Murder 50 cops in the police station? No problem, just get out of the radar range for 30 seconds or so and it all goes back to normal. Have to leave your car behind for some reason? It won’t be there when you get back. Go back to the police station where you killed 50 cops? No one cares. There’s 50 more ready to bleed coffee and donuts. Mass murdering people is kind of amusing for the shock value of it at first. Like “Hey, I can kill a lot of people! This is awesome!” 5-10 minutes later, and you’ve been doing exactly the same thing for 5-10 minutes. It runs out of steam quickly. I’d personally like some deeper ways to interact with the environment, or some lasting consequences of your decisions.
Linear game play in a sandbox world. If you know how something is going to play out, you aren’t rewarded for your creativity in planning ahead. You can stack all the garbage trucks you want in the alley behind the stripper joint, but when the mobster books it into his car in the back alley, all the garbage trucks have apparently been reclaimed by their dispossessed garbage men. Or how about when you’re really wailing on a car from behind with your SMG, but it won’t take damage because it’s scripted to drive to a certain point? If I can deal with the awkward drive-by shooting mechanics well enough, I should be able to take vehicles out early, or if I'm creative I should be able to finish missions in multiple ways.
And it should ‘save’ cars to you, so that if you ditch a car which you just pulled out of one of your spots and it’s relatively unscathed, you should find it back at that parking spot then next time you visit it. Or something similar to that. I get tired of walking out of a save point and seeing 2 pimp cars sitting in front of me and saying “Well, I don’t want to lose one for this mission, let me grab that minivan.” In the end that leaves you feeling more like Petty Theft Auto.
There are a few pluses, though. The shooting on foot has been improved with the lock on system. You don't have to worry about that whole eating fast food/working out thing anymore. And the core game play is still really well done. I'll be looking forward to V with the hopes that a lot of these design choices will be changed for the better.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment