So Rockstar have announced GTAV. Here’s some speculation from PSM.
My first thought is, will this be the sort of change we saw from GTAIII to Vice City – same technology but more features? After all there was much we saw cut from VC and San Andreas, like buying property or SA’s RPG style skills system, that we might wish to see put back in (personally I care more about the former than the latter).
However incrementing the numeral suggests a whole new engine\graphics upgrade, I’m not sure they’d do that *and* add substantial gameplay features?
(sidenote, I’d be happy for them to ditch the one side-feature GTAIV did have, ie people calling you up demanding to go bowling).
Also I’m wondering if it’ll address the odd sort of dichotomy that came up GTAIV.
GTAIV the story – Nico Bellic, a former soldier haunted by his past, seeks a new start in America. But he remains tragically trapped in a world of crime and violence, culminating in the death of someone close to him.
GTAIV gameplay – hi tech murder simulator as you run over 40 people, find this terribly humorous, then shoot up the cops that come after you.
You could say this disconnect started earlier in the series, I just felt it more in GTAIV which tried for a more grim and gritty story than the slight cartoonishness of before.
Anyway, I appreciate no-one would come to this crappy blog for news on the latest games, I just kinda want to update more often and this seemed like a good opportunity for a post. From our retro-gaming perspective, we’ve shied away from GTA (after the early installments) pretty much for the same reason we’ve not looked at Doom or Diablo2 – pretty much everyone into PC gaming will have played it and have an opinion of their own already. But, eh, I picked up GTAIII for £2 on steam the other day so a review could still happen eventually.
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It’ll come as no surprise to you that I haven’t even played GTA IV.
I enjoyed GTA III when it came out on PS2 but when it came to the PC version, I found that I really couldn’t be bothered to schlep through all the missions again for a review. Perhaps I was just in a bad mood or something.
Like you say, though, there’s plenty of GTA coverage out there, especially now GTA III is ten years old, which has prompted a whole shedload of (some might say) unnecessary retrospectives and articles.
I think the pros should be committing to more enlightening stuff than just "wow, this was the first game that felt like you were part of a real world!". How about interviews with the makers as part of a proper retrospective containing some interesting insights that couldn’t have easily been knocked out by, say, any chimp interested in gaming with access to the internet?
October 26, 2011 @ 12:24 pm
You mean articles like <a href="http://www.xbox360achieveme…">How Grand Theft Auto III Made Me The Gamer I Am Today</a>? I… don’t know what to say to that.
I’m sure you know by now that only Eurogamer could possibly be bothered to grab retrospective interviews, but I understand if they can’t get around to it. They are busy being pretty much the only game journalists around.
As for GTA V, I’m sure I’ll play it, and it would be nice if they opened it up to three cities like they did with San Andreas. That’s about as far as I’m willing to think it over this early in the process.
October 27, 2011 @ 4:38 pm
Oh, well, er. That’s really bad.
On the one hand, I hate it when people piss and moan about reviews because thanks to the internet they can grab any number of them for free without having to shell out a fiver for a magazine, so they should stop being so bloody whiny.
But then, on the other, so much of the writing out there is the kind of stuff that you feel that just about anyone who can string a sentence together could come up with.
I like to read articles about films when there’s some input from people who made them, and you find stuff out that you might not have known. You wouldn’t have a journo write a piece about a film years after it was released, with no contributions from anyone else, based purely on how it made them feel – because it’d be shit.
"I never really thought about sharks until I saw Jaws. Then I realised that they had really sharp teeth and liked to eat people."
October 27, 2011 @ 9:36 pm
I absolutely agree about the film retrospectives. Hell, even game retrospectives I enjoy when they go back and talk to people who made the game/film. What happened? What do you think of it now? How did you do this effect?
To be fair though, "official" retrospectives aren’t immune. There are plenty of DVDs where the director commentary is just the director narrating what’s happening on the screen. John Carpenter is guilty of this. Penelope Spheeris for Wayne’s World is the biggest offender I can think of.
Anyway, I’m sure we’d all be lumped into the category of "reviews knocked out by chimps interested in gaming that can string together a sentence." Hopefully not, but glass houses and all.
October 28, 2011 @ 12:04 am
I was absolutely thinking of myself when I referred to the chimps. And even "interested in gaming" and "string together a sentence" is stretching it a bit…
October 28, 2011 @ 10:54 am
We’re certainly in the chimp house. All I aim for is to be the best chimp I can and write something interesting enough to be worth 10 minute’s time for a few like-minded gamers out there.
(also, most chimps are probably better gamers than me. Seriosuly they’d kick my ass at Starcraft).
I think it’s fair to expect people who do this shit for a living to be a bit more resourceful.
October 28, 2011 @ 11:43 pm
As a background observer of GTA IV (i.e. no I didn’t play it, but my boyfriend at the time did, using my PC which meant I was constantly lurking in the background with nothing to do), I definitely felt it had upped the stakes a bit. I’m not sure how, but there was certainly a slight (dare I say) ‘Sopranos’ element to it which made it feel much grittier than the previous games (which I had also merely observed by lurking in the background).
I suppose the whole ‘kill-200-pigeons-across-the-city’ mission lightened things up a bit – even though it was ridiculous (and maybe a bit dull).
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents as someone who hasn’t played any of the games, but has merely seen them in operation. Kind of pointless of me really. Sorry.
November 1, 2011 @ 11:31 am
Well, if you’ve seen GTA IV in action, you’re one up on me…
And it’s always good to see a journal article with more than 0 comments, so don’t apologise!
November 1, 2011 @ 9:43 pm