The Quixotic Engineer

I’ve been a big fan of Grand Theft Auto ever since the series made the jump into 3D seven years ago. GTA3 was clunky and flawed in many ways, but it was my first “open world” game. I spent hours just goofing off, exploring the city and causing havoc. I really appreciated being given so much freedom to complete objectives, which turned each mission into a creative puzzle. To this day GTA3 is the standard to which I hold every other sandbox style game. In my eyes, Crackdown is GTA with super powers and Assassin’s Creed is GTA set during the Crusades. The sequels Vice City and San Andreas became incrementally better, adding small improvements while maintaining the high production value and brilliant attention to detail.

I had plans this evening, but managed to work in a few hours of gaming time in the afternoon. Here are my initial impressions:

• The very first thing you see in the game is… a man and a woman having kinky whip sex (I really hope that last phrase doesn’t turn up in my Google keywords.) Way to lay on the controversy right out of the gate, Rockstar.
• There’s a radio station devoted entirely to Eastern European pop music: Vladivostok FM! Sadly they did not include the “Numa Numa” song.
• Roaming around town, I’ve also heard “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by Iggy Pop and “Heaven & Hell” by Black Sabbath.
• I’m glad Rockstar hasn’t tackled a modern day GTA in 7 years, because they have a lot of satirical fodder at their disposal. My favorite quote so far: “Congress has renewed the jingoism act at the request of the President.”
• The cars are pretty hard to handle at first. My only suggestion is to hit the BACK button once to zoom out the driving camera a little, allowing you to see incoming obstacles a little better.
• I missed a mission to save my cousin from some loan sharks because I was busy taking some girl bowling. I figured I could simply complete the mission later, but he called me up the next day from the hospital and told me off! Very immersive. Sadly, I was offered to repeat the mission I missed a few minutes later.
• I love the new mission replay system, it really cuts the tedium of re-accepting missions you’ve failed. Ditto the auto-save function.
• It appears that Liberty City is composed almost entirely of urban environments. That’s rather unfortunate; my favorite parts of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas involved driving around the forest / farmland / desert.

Overall, it’s been mostly pleasant surprises so far. Needless to say, I know what I’ll be doing in my spare time for the next few weeks.