Grand theft auto has always been a series I've managed to avoid.
Perhaps it was due to the fact I was one of the six or seven people in
North America who didn't buy a Playstation 2, or maybe it's because the
few times I did play it at friends houses, I found it to be an under
powered, poorly voice acted mess.
I was told that for the new generation of consoles, all of these
problems would be fixed, a big, beautiful new city, wonderful voice
acting, and a story that would pull me in so deeply I would find myself
thinking about the consequences of my actions for days, nay, weeks to
come. So I was pulled along in the hype machine, growing ever twitchier
the closer I got to the release date.
I stood outside at midnight Monday with the other huddled masses,
enjoying the first little rain Calgary had gotten for the spring. I
eagerly rushed home to slam it into my console and play all night to my
hearts content.
And I waited. And waited. And waited.
Waited for the rush of technical realism and beautiful story development that I had been promised by oh, so many reviews.
But it never came.
All I received was a technical demo focusing more on building a
"believable" (I'll get onto that more in a second) city than character,
proper voice acting, and plot development. I waited for the people
around Niko (the only character I managed not to develop a serious
disdain for) to develop into well rounded, lovable characters. Instead
what I received was a troupe of the most horribly conceived criminal
archetypes that reminded me almost immediately of the hackneyed
stereotypes pushed in previous GTA iterations. The moment I met little
Jacob and his horrible imitation of a normally pleasant accent, I began
my rather expedient decent into a deep seething hatred for this game.
While I will be honest in saying that I have not played through the
entire game to experience all it has to offer, it becomes rather
obvious that the fact I didn't finish the game before reviewing it
stems from the fact that after a mere seven hours. I don't want to play
it anymore. Playing it beyond this point has become more of a chore to
see if it "gets better" rather than enjoying myself. Why should I be
forced to push myself through the storyline to get to a point that I
actually enjoy? Perhaps this displays a
serious lack of patience on my part, but I ask, "if I skipped lacrosse
practice, sat outside in the rain with a bunch of people who would be
better served as test subjects for some brain altering chemical, and
then payed 65 dollars, shouldn't the game make at least a halfhearted
attempt at holding my attention for the first few hours?".
Getting away from the storyline, I also found many problems with the
technical marvel that is Liberty City. Reading review after review I
grew ever more excited at the idea of a "living, breathing city". What
I received instead was a bunch of strategically placed npc's yelling
out their conversations to anyone within a forty foot radius who cares
to listen. What kind of realism is that? I suppose I was pleasantly
surprised by the driving physics, Nikos' movement flow and the radio
stations, but surely that cannot be what garnered all this critical
acclaim. I did NOT pay good money for a driving and walking around
simulator.
I'm going to stop this review now as you can well see the bile reaching
the top of my throat as I write it. Perhaps I could have gotten over
the flaws that this game has if everyone and his brother hadn't blown
their collective critical load over it. And I suppose I could have at least accepted
the fact that the game IS NOT in fact, perfect if it hadn't received
what appears at the first glance, to be perfect scores all around. It's
horribly irresponsible to give this game a ten out of ten, five stars
out of five, ten pandas out of whatever, when it is not perfect. It's
far from it.
