Presentation
The most focused on point previewers of GTA IV are touching on is how the game responds to players’ input. By this I mean that when you are running through the streets, if you run into an un-expecting pedestrian, the pedestrian will be shoved out of the way and look disgruntled as the player continues on their way. This dynamic animation reminds me of Assassins Creed; however not to the same extent. The mobile phone has been integrated to a far greater extent into the user-interface, the main example being described is when you are have just been wasted or busted while on a mission and are outside the spawning point you have the ability to bring up your cell and restart the mission from there.
Story
The story is based around a guy named Niko. Niko is a fresh immigrant to Liberty City and as such starts at the bottom of the food-chain. The story follows him on his way to the top via some of the less conventional social groups (drug dealers, the mob, etc.). This comment seems to follow very closely after comments made about the presentation, and that is that the voice acting is superb. One of the earlier missions is described where the player has to transport and protect a Jamaican drug dealer. The trip is rattled with context fitting, hard to understand (due to the strong Jamaican accent) conversation. Context being that if you’re taking your time the drug dealer might tell you “you’re going to slow!” to which Niko replies: “I’ll get there in my own time.”
Cohesion
The main other focus that previewers have been raving about is how well the game feels like a cohesive experience rather than just a play through of another game. One previewer describes his first experience with a gun and no specific objective. He finds an old man walking down a path and as he firstly shoots him in the hip he sees the old man convincingly grimace and twist at the intense amount of pain he must have been in. After shooting him in the head the previewer states how he felt empathy towards the character and found it hard to deal more pain to the already wounded man.
Most describe the cohesiveness as mix of: Firstly an unscrupulous attention to detail and secondly how well the many great additions from all fields of the game flow together in a synergetic way.
I want to make some distinction between the idea of Aggression and the idea of Violence. I have had various talks about how violent video games cause an increase in aggressive behaviour and even violent behaviour.
Firstly, I hear people speak of how violent games cause increased aggression in the players. To be honest I would say anything where competitiveness is a major factor (games included) would lead to increased aggression. Think about it, being aggressive doesn't mean to grab a gun and kill people, it means to be more forward, more confident about the action you are doing and is by no means violent by principle.
The only way to win a competition is to be the most aggressive, whether it be chess, where the more aggressive of analyzing the board and understanding your opponent will be the winner or soccer where the team who is more aggressive with their training, more determined not to give up, the most aggressive tacklers, to learn and perfect new techniques etc. wins out.
When described in this way I really doubt many would argue that giving players a virtual channel to learn how to control and focus this aggression is nothing but a good thing that would help them in many other aspects of competitive life.
What society is really scared about is the violent behaviour. I've always believed that violence stems from frustration. I see friends play Halo 3 online and I see one of them die multiple times obviously due to latency issues and then watch him as he gets tense, blames the latency for giving other people an unfair advantage over himself and is generally frustrated about the situation. As he does this he speaks in an angered voice and throws his controller to the floor. Both actions which could be considered violent, but were created out of frustration rather than aggression. It could be said that the reason for his frustration was because he was playing aggressively to win and that is true, but doesn't mean that his violent actions were due to aggression.
In terms of how video games could ever possibly make their players become violent, the only way then is to frustrate the player and as game designers know well, good game design comes from giving the player the perfect balance of making it not too easy, but not so hard that it is frustrating.
The only other thing games could do to provoke violent actions would not directly provoke them as such, but rather give those with the direction and ability already (before playing any games) an glimpse to what these violent actions may feel like to do in real-life; to basically “enable” the player to understand from this perspective. Only those with a predefined fixation would have a higher chance to do violent actions from video games. However if these people can be manipulated by video games then they can also be exposed to books, real-life events and film in the same way, removing any blame on video games as a medium for creating violence in our society.
If you’re reading this then you’ve probably already figured out who I am, however I'll introduce myself anyway.
My name is Jonathan Rickard and I’ll give you peek into what I am: I’m all about video games. I’m a programmer by trade, have dabbled on the journalist side and have spent the most recent of my days on an R&D project for a local games company; venturing into the deepest depths of immersion in video games and come out the other end with some wacky results. I currently reside on the western boarder of Auckland City, New Zealand.
“Why are you telling me all this?” you may be asking; this is because I plan to build this blog into a hub for up-to-date news and information on video games and anything you could possibly relate to them (Like mind-control =D). So if you like what you’re reading then stick around.
The Overview
(If you know what it’s all about, skip ahead to the next section)
To that small minority who don’t know what the GTA franchise is all about, you’re about to find out. The idea behind GTA was just that Grand Theft Auto, stealing cars, killing people and generally not giving a damn about the law. The third instalment of the game and the first not to use a birds-eye view could be considered the game that made GTA go mainstream. Compared to the games before it GTA III brought a completely new style of game-play which these days is referred to as the “sand-box” style of play. This meant that players were placed in a gargantuan-sized city where they had the power to whatever they wanted, including breaking into cars, jumping off buildings and rampaging to the extent where you could jump in a tank and drive down the streets of a city not so different to New York. Sounds pretty fun eh?
The Game-play
“The fuel that drives the machine”; The game-play of the GTA series definitely suits such an analogy and as such I’m sure your wanting to know more than anything else how IV plays compared to its predecessors.
Driving
The differences in driving style from car to car have been made even more prominent; making players appreciate the handling and acceleration of that sports car over the (lack of) ability of a soccer-mum van.
Players will also have the ability to break the window and fire out (or throw in the case of a grenade) with any of their weapons, this of course would be invaluable when trying to get away from the authorities.
Combat
Think Gears of War. That, Rainbow Six: Vegas or Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. That’s right, you guessed it: covering. I personally have no problem with it, I found the gun fights in San Andreas hard to deal with in terms of how the targeting system worked and this adds another level of sophistication to it. The other major change to the gun fighting combat is the targeting system. Players can auto target an enemy and then switch to a more precise aim to shoot specific parts of the body.
The physical combat has had refinements to it as well. I won’t go into too much detail, but suffice to say that players have the ability to block, punch and kick with varying degrees of power and create combos with certain button presses with correct timing.
In Part II I’ll will look at the story of GTA IV and how well the developers pulled off the look and feel of the game.
