Well, another week went by, and the real world went to shit that much more. Not that I noticed. My eyes were on more important things. In its first week, Grand Theft Auto IV offended New Yorkers, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, and Hillary Clinton, while quite predictably breaking all videogame sales records in existence.
Bluster be damned, millions and millions of copies have sold at $60 apiece. The game’s popularity has everything to do with its open, sandbox-style of playability. It’s a kind of roleplaying we totally fantasized about as children playing crappy Atari games where your “man” was a single dot on the screen. But we knew it would be here one day, with this level of incredible detail.
Once your 30-year-old Serbian immigrant Niko Bellic shows up among the towers and parks of Liberty City—modeled painstakingly after the Big Apple and Jersey—what happens next is entirely up to you. But to a diminished degree, I must say. That’s right, Grand Theft Auto IV actually moves backwards through videogame evolution. Despite universal praise from the press, the game represents a major step backward from the series’ previous incarnation, San Andreas.
First and foremost, GTA IV is noticeably more visually realistic than San Andreas. By the end of that game, you could fly Carl Johnson around in a jetpack in his underwear, sporting a pink mohawk and Groucho Marx glasses. The obvious next move was to land on the Welcome to Las Venturas sign and shoot police cars with a rocket launcher until the sheer weight of an entire state’s military authority shut you down with rockets of its own. Fair enough. The whole, preposterous rampage had to end eventually.
But while GTA IV might look way better, there’s actually considerably less to do. Gone is the jetpack. And the Harrier jet. And the tanks. And the pink mohawk. And the haircuts. And the bodybuilding. And the ability to get fat on purpose by eating too many hamburgers. And the purple dildo. And being a general in neighbourhood gang warfare, the sound of fire and chaos echoing through the streets.
Worst of all, Niko Bellic is, quite simply, no exasperated Carl Johnson. Sure, Bellic gets some fine lines, like shrugging off a “no” every time some street hustler rhetorically asks him, “Know what I’m sayin’?” But Johnson’s plight in the faux-L.A. inner city was a fucking seriously captivating narrative, especially as his first few missions were done for nothing more than neighbourhood cred. With Bellic, it feels more like you’re a gofer on a movie set. And though said set is truly beautiful, one city cannot compare to an entire state parodying San Fran, L.A., and Vegas. Maybe I’m just West Coast, homies. But among the giant steel and glass fingers of Liberty City, you simply can’t ever get the same speed going, especially with the extra-sensitive cops.
This time around, we have simulations of the Internet, a GPS, a cellphone, some funny TV, bowling, and darts. Plus a giant, beating heart inside their version of the Statue of Liberty. Points. But they should’ve been added, not exchanged with the fact you could literally change the shape of your body through hard work or neglect in GTA SA, then fly around like Superman. Course, I write that sentence and look down at my beer belly and double-click on the irony here. It’s not all bad. I mean, I did leap out of a speeding sedan onto the streets 20 seconds into my first date, the second she asked me a personal question. And I’ll abandon anything if my fur hat ever gets knocked off. You can’t make that shit up, or even explain why it’s so funny.
That said, despite the unstoppable chorus of praise this massively consumed game is getting, I just wish it were as silly as the last highwater mark. Oh, 9/11—did you have to buzzkill everything?
