Grand Theft Auto IV

I really wanted to hate Grand Theft Auto IV.

I had decided not to buy it early in its hype-cycle. “Fool me twice, shame on me” was my attitude. I had bought Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City because of the glowing reviews from just about everyone, but I found them tiresome, sophomoric, morally bankrupt and — worst of all — not much fun to play. I fully expected GTA IV to be more of the same. When our Editor-in-Chief informed me he was sending it my way, I prepared for the worst.

The worst didn’t happen. I don’t hate this game, even though it has things about it — many things — that are hateful. It is, in some ways, like two separate games sandwiched onto a single disc. One of those games is the sophomoric, hard to control, ponderous and boring festival of reloaded missions that I remembered from previous editions. But the other game is a brilliantly scripted, lovingly realized analysis of the American dream in general, and New York City in particular.

The writing, dialogue, and acting in this game are beyond superb. That in itself makes the game impossible to hate. That the writers so effectively persuade players to sympathize with the characters, including the player’s sociopathic Eastern European avatar, speaks volumes. And the most important character, of course, is New York City itself. No one who has spent any time in Brooklyn, Queens, or Manhattan can fail to be stunned at how effectively Rockstar has distilled these boroughs to their essences: making them navigable in reasonable game time, while still preserving their character.

Little, it should be noted, has changed about the core gameplay, and when you drift away from the script, the game deadens and ossifies. The sensitivity and subtle humor of the spoken-word aspects of the game only serve to widen the chasm between the script’s high quality and the visual game’s penis-joke mentality. Apart from the missions, there is precious little to do in Liberty City if you aren’t interested in mayhem or exploitation.

The save system, as in previous games, is ponderous. A mistake late in a mission can force you to replay it from the beginning, including the pointless and boring drive from your house to where the action is. It’s as if the game is begging you to stop playing it and find something more fun to do, such as playing Mario Kart.

GTA IV is a seriously flawed game with a split-personality. The sandbox portion of the game presents a false choice between being bored or engaging in brutality. The game’s setting and screenwriting, however, contain moments of great insight and beauty. If you can accept the moral ambiguity of choosing to play a game that presents murder as inevitable and acceptable, then you will find parts of GTA IV to be entrancing.

I don’t hate GTA IV. But I still don’t want anyone to watch me play it.

Violence in play is nothing new

Several years ago, a senator in my home state introduced legislation that would ban the sales of video games deemed too violent - including an earlier version of Grand Theft Auto. As a parent, I have no problem with restricting underage players from games that might include graphic violence or sex, but as a citizen of a free country, I always think it’s a mistake when the government tries to legislate morality. Read more

Endless Ocean

I have been known to be obnoxiously dismissive of “sandbox games”.  “GTA III isn’t really a game,” I’d sniff over a glass of port and a bit of Stilton, “but more of a toy.”  It’s thus with some embarrassment that I admit that Endless Ocean has me hooked.  It’s a toy, but what a toy.

Endless Ocean is a scuba diving simulator. The purpose of the game is to swim around underwater, look at pretty things, and occasionally interact with different types of marine life.  That’s it.  There is no shooting, no danger (the sharks in this sea won’t eat you), and no sense of urgency whatsoever. The only plot is various assignments, such as to escort a wealthy donor on a dive, pointing out their favorite fish to them. 

The game is structured in such a way that information opens up to you through experimentation and exploration.  You interact with animals in various ways (poking them, feeding them, writing in front of them with an “underwater pen”, and so on), and if you reach a certain level of interaction you earn an entry in the encyclopedia for that creature.

Some of the most intriguing experiences were the underwater caves. In a game where there is no way to fail, these beautifully created and realized caves still managed to introduce both grandeur and drama through natural splendour.  Douglas Adams describing Fjordland, New Zealand once wrote “one’s first impulse, standing on a cliff top surveying it all, is simply to burst into spontaneous applause.”  That’s the best way I can describe some of the sights I’ve seen in Endless Ocean. You can dive day and night, and the seasons vary offering subtly different experiences.

There are minigames going on all about you, but they are not intrusive and are easily ignored.  The music is soothing, lyrical,  apropriate, and reason enough to lazily explore the sea-floor.

You have a variety of tools to bring with you on dives.  The whistle can be used to summon any friendly sea creatures such as a dolphin. The camera is used to take photos for certain missions  or simply to add detail to your scrapbook.

There are also a number of “off-screen” locations that you can unlock through the course of the game.  For example, a local aquarium may ask you to stock one of their tanks; you decide what sort of marine life should live in the aquarium.  As in most of Endless Ocean, there is no particular reward or reason for this beyond pure esthetics.  And that’s just fine.

Some might pick nits about the accuracy of the game.  There is the aforementioned lack of danger.  There is the setting, a fictional sea which conveniently has flora and fauna from every ocean in the world.  There is the ease with which complicated diving manuevers can be performed.  But these complaints fundamentally miss the point.  Endless Ocean is a simple world meant to evoke wonder and joy simply by existing, and by being interesting and beautiful.  And that’s more than enough to make me happy.

Assassin’s Creed

From my perch on the highest point of the synagogue, all of Jerusalem stretches out in front of me.

This is an experience that I shared with the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed countless times while I reviewed it.  Before we dive into stories and gameplay and graphics, it’s a point I want to make as clear as the developer made it to me:  Assassin’s Creed is a technically astounding game.  The sheer size of the world, and the eagle-eye view from which players take it in, is easily worth the price of the title.  If you’re thinking of picking up the game on the 360 (I reviewed the PC version), I can see it being an excellent reason to buy a monster TV as well.

As you might have guessed, Assassin’s Creed is the story of an assassin.  While that would normally be enough to pull in the gamer love, Ubisoft went the extra mile to create a story that combines both the present day and the time of the Crusades in the cradle of civilization.  I’ll not spoil the plot for our readers, suffice to say that the story didn’t appear as usual to be slapped in at the last minute by a motley group of drunk developers.

The title falls into no genre, although we imagine that Assassin’s Creed must have been meticulously cross-bred from the likes of Splinter Cell, the Grand Theft Auto series, and Heavenly Sword.  Players find themselves slinking around a large realm, making contacts with allied ne’er-do-wells and learning more about each of the nine targets the game presents for assassination.

Players are given a choice to avoid guards and ruffians with a small arsenal of sneaking techniques, or throw caution to the wind and kill every obstacle in their path.  Do you want to sneak up on your mark and dispatch him with a hidden blade, or are you feeling lucky?  Why not waltz right into his sanctuary, in front of 10 guards, and draw your blade?  Assassin’s Creed let’s you decide, and though we found stealth assassination to be more “in character”, it was a blast to usher on your opponents and leave no man standing.

The game thrusts players into the combat system when an overly anxious guard spots you or you cause a disruption in a crowd.  Galloping through a group of jar-carrying peasants will do it, as will jumping on the roof in the presence of guards.  Regardless of how it happens, once the combat system is tripped the player has two choices: fight or flight.

The combat system is a combination of swashbuckling and Jujitsu, and players deciding to shed blood are given an arsenal of fighting techniques that makes a field of dead soldiers seem commonplace.  Swords and the occasional lunge can be countered with deadly blows, all presented in theatrical angles that look great and stamp the ESRB rating M all over the landscape.

If bloodshed’s not your cup of tea, you can also bolt like the sissy-coward you probably are.  To make a clean getaway, however, takes more than skills of the foot.  Players must first break line-of-site with their pursuers, then blend into the city through a variety of hidy-holes and busy crowds.  As fun as the combat is, the real action takes place in flight.  There’s no better cardio workout than running across the roofs of Bethlehem like some sort of crazed circus performer, and I’m talking about your heart racing, not the assassin’s.

Each assassination bring players closer to unraveling the overlying plot, which spills out in modern day throughout the game.  More importantly, perhaps, is that each dead boss increases your arsenal of weapons as well as your combat repertoire.  As players approach the end sequence, they’ll have a somewhat overwhelming series of options as to how to accomplish each mission.  At the end of the day, however, these options are what make the title worth playing. In fact, the one option you don’t have is passing up this game.

Assassin’s Creed is all of the good things we’ve enjoyed in action-based sandbox games, with a measure of stealth thrown in for taste.  The immersive landscape and killer combat systems make for a great game, and the only thing to complain about (which I didn’t, I might add) was the occasional minor PC camera issues that source from the game’s origin on a console.  If you’ve got a copy of Steam running, or just want to run to Wal-Mart today, pick up Assassin’s Creed and burn up a weekend or two.  Never mind the mess afterwards, the peasants will clean it up.