Grand Theft Oblivion

OK, I will admit it, I am not a GTA fan but with the release of GTA4 next month I figured I would give it a chance. I tried playing the other games to no avail, I hated the targeting systems most of all and I really could not understand why every quest in the games were either fetch quests or the standard “go kill this guy” quest. Where is the variety in game play? There is none, and that's my problem.

At least with other open ended games there is variety in game play. Look at Oblivion for example. Yes, its not entirely the same as the GTA games but the games are more similar than you think. What makes Oblivion stand out more than GTA is the fact that you can play Oblivion like so many other games. It’s a shooting game using magic if you want it to be, its huge open ended RPG if you want it to be, its a fast acting action game if you want it to be. GTA is just GTA, there is only really one way to play the game, yes, its open-ended but why play a game like that which is so close to real life. Is it really fun to jack cars in the game? Is it really fun to go kill so and so? Is it really fun to take that thing to that guy? No its not.

In Oblivion its not like real life, yes, there are a bunch of fetch quests out there but the depth of those quests is a story in itself. I have played Oblivion for about 50 hours and I remember at least 5 quests that stuck in my mind because of how well the story was done. Has anyone had that experience with any of the GTA’s? I highly doubt it. What makes GTA such a hit is the culture of GTA and that it was the first of its kind. It came out with a roar when the Playstation 2 needed a killer app. At that time you were hard pressed to find a title that would let you jack cars and kill people at will and the original GTA let you do just that. But these days games need more. They need more than just messed up gimmicks in their games but they need the gimmicks because there is only so much you can do with a real life open ended games like all the GTA’s. gimmicks are what sells the games nowadays.

In GTA4 I guess you can get drunk now, what? Who does Rockstar think plays these games? Yes there is a rating for the game and its the parents responsibility to oversee what their kids play but we all know that there are thousands of kids out there that will play the game. Doesn’t Rockstar know that drinking and driving is illegal in real life but they put a drinking and driving mini-game into GTA4. Now some will argue that killing people is illegal also but most of the normal people in the world know that killing people and jacking cars is wrong and usually they abstain from those activities. Drinking and driving is different though. Having a d&d mini-game is just wrong. I can imagine the fifteen- sixteen year olds sitting around playing GTA4 one night and getting to the d&d mini-games. I think that's bad karma and I am a dad who lets his 7 year old play Call of Duty4 and whatever else he wants to play.

If the D&D mini-game is not as bad did you hear about the new Achievement that Rockstar put in its old/new title Bully:Scholarship Edition? Well word around the podcast community is that you can get fifteen Achievement points if you kiss a boy. I think that's a little strange but the pod caster who will remain nameless(because I cannot remember his name) tried to argue for this saying that it was like one of those choices you have to make in Bioshock whether you save or harvest the Little Sisters. I think this argument was totally pathetic, kissing a boy in a video game while playing as a boy has nothing to do with the conscious decision you had to make whether or not you saved or harvested the Little Sisters, its just a stupid gimmick to get people to talk about the game. What other developer puts such ridiculous aspects of game play into their game just to drum up interest?

The point I am trying to make is that their are better alternatives to GTA4. There are other games out there that will give gamers a better experience. Yes, its early but one can only look back at the past, the other GTA’s were the same thing over and over. Hopefully with GTA’s new cover and targeting systems the GTA franchise will be reborn without getting the positive reviews just because its another GTA.