The Greatest Game Ever Written

(I wrote this years ago, but thought sod it, and here it is...)

Ah!

When the waiting finally stopped, and the world and it's reviewers finally got their grubby mits on GTA IV, the praise was universal and gushing. A glace at Megacritic and you can clearly see it's received more 100% scores in over half it's reviews.

It therefore *must* be the greatest game ever written, but I hasten to differ. Not beg, but hasten!

I'd try and offer some counter points first - a few acknowledgement of what GTA IV does well - before launching into my criticisms, but I'm not going to bother. You can use that link above to find many words on the wonders of GTA IV without me re-treading old paths.

So. What is wrong with GTA IV? One thing from one review I read of the game was that GTA IV was an advancement in the series to where you "no longer need patience to play the game". I think the review was from Eurogamer but I can't be bothered to look it up. On the strength of this statement I was initially excited; the game had obviously been polished to perfection. The truth of the matter was indeed.

Lets take a fundamental; this game is about steeling cars, it is of course called "Grand Thieft Auto". So - following that fundamental point - the game itself should predominantly be about driving cars... the basis of skill on which the game is played should be about your ability to drive cars....? Now - throughout the course of playing the game, I can't actually remember a single incident when my l33+ driving skills were ever much called into action. Many mission involve taking person A to place B - which is completely without challenge (most of the side missions involve doing exactly that - and usually involves them getting straight back in the car and driving all the way back. Sorry... remind where this is actually fun?) - a few missions involve chasing bad guys in cars and trying to take them out, but that is usually more easily accomplished by simply following them and either waiting till the AI screws up and you take them out easily while they are attached to a lamppost or simply waiting till the end of the journey where they get out of the car and they are removed without hassle.

Most of the actual missions are cut from one cloth. Meet a guy, they tell you to kill someone, you jump in the car (making sure not to use a nice car since you are bound to lose it when going on a mission, so all your nice cars end up in your parking spaces and never actually get used) drive to the place, you get out the car and shoot them up - and the fundamental element of skill in this is the shooting. The game isn't "Grand Thieft Auto" but "Murder in the First, by shooting people". Car driving is largely irrelevant. But thats okay, you say, because since the game is 90% shooting, and I love shooters, that part of the game will undoubtedly be very polished? You probably already know how un-true this is.

The on foot element of the game is woeful, even comically bad. Most of the time shooting is simply hit left aim-y-thing, jam right trigger till bad guy is dead and repeat. Absolutely no skill what so ever. In fact - the only area where this could involve any skill would possibly in shot selection, although that is totally broken - it's almost impossible to convince the target to loose it's currently selected victim and select the one you want. Your direction is totally irrelevant when you press aim as it'll simply go for the nearest bad guy that is currently hiding behind a wall as opposed to the guy shooting you to shit that you are looking at.

The cover system would be a nice addition to all this but in the end serves as the place of most frustration and indeed the only way I ever actually die. Pressing the "cover" button will put you in cover. While in cover, there are 10 buttons on the pad that effectively do nothing. But rather that use one of them to do one of only two actions available (other than aim/shoot obviously) is break cover and head to other cover. Unfortuantely these two action are triggered by the same button - yeah - the same one that puts you into cover. God forbid that you could press "run" and the direct you wish to run to break cover, oh no. After all that might waste one of the 10 unused buttons - that would be far too sensible. Instead, you get the fun of being caught between two objects (or two walls in a corridor, say) in which *all* you can do is simply bounce between the two, with an additional disorienting camera spasm to boot. When you have the pleasure of breaking cover and becoming unattached to nearby furniture, you then have the unenviable position of being shot to crap while the character finally responds by actually running.

Hmmm.... luckyly for us, Rockstar have solved this problem! As stated before, you don't need patience to play this game, right? Because whenever you die, you can re-spawn to replay the mission again instantly! Awesome! Adding a feature like that shows they care of course? It does of course, break any sense of jepardy or achivement but at least it's a hell of a lot easier than actually trying to fix the fucking useless control mechanism.

After all control isn't exactly an important aspect of games, is it?

So, lets re-cap. We've a driving segment that requires no skill, we the predominant shooting sections who's only skill is patience and persistance - a guarantee to progression. And.... er.... well that's it. That's all GTA is for the most part.

"But wait! Col, mate, you are missing the point", I hear you say "it's not just about the missions, there are loads of other side-missions that exploit some of the areas you want, like the races for car driving skill...." Oh, yeah - the races... those races of which I've never failed to finish first....? Those ones? Those really challenging races...?

And talking of irrevance - could someone explain to me the meaning of money in the game. Money is given as a constant reward for ****

What it boils down to, it that GTA IV is effectively a point and click adventure. It's probably the reason why I've spent so much time on Guitar Hero III and Rock Band. Those are both games that rely entirely on player skill. If I'm not good enough, replaying infinitely won't make me succeed (not without actually improving my skill.) I'll never complete the game unless I'm actually good enough.

"But Col, mate, it's not about skill, it's about immersion - it's about story and characters".... ah, yes - those characters - my friends and girlfriends and employers and even family members - those characters, which bar one, I'd quite happily murder every single one. They are all either two dimensional or fucking irriatating. Being told to kill someone is uninteresting whether it's told by 2-dimensional gangster #1, 2-dimensional gangster #2, 2-dimensional gangster #3 OR 2-dimensional gangster #4.

Focus!

I've finally gotten round to picking up this blog, and now I'm going to use it as a developer diary for the game I'm producing. The game is an Online Football Manager game. Probably been writing it now for about 4 years. I've done 100% of the work, and only in my spare time. It's finally starting to get to a playable state. Check it out;

www.otbcs.co.uk/tacs