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Grand Theft Auto IV: The Sandbox That Gets Sand Up Your Shorts
Grand Theft Auto IV: The Sandbox That Gets Sand Up Your Shorts
Last updated 3 days, 7 hours ago.
Elsewhere, I've posted an editorial on the issue of meaningful choices in gaming, specifically discussing Grand Theft Auto IV, called Grand Theft Auto IV: The Sandbox That Gets Sand Up Your Shorts:
The crux is really in letting the player decide how much realism is fun. Many games have crossed the line between realism and fun. The trick with Grand Theft Auto IV is that the game lets you make that choice. So while it's superb that Grand Theft Auto IV brings games to a new level of reality, reality by itself isn't fun. Being able to choose which parts of reality to experience is a LOT of fun. And that's where Grand Theft Auto IV gets my mixed blessing.
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Last updated 3 days, 7 hours ago
6 points
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— Jörg
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There's an anecdote in german, about some kids in elementary school asking: "Do we really have to do what we want, again?"
It's funny on a few different levels, but for this purpose the essence is that there can actually be to much freedom and it is a real problem, give the player the freedom to do what he wants and some players might actually get disoriented.
I think GTA circumvents this quite nicely that you can always get back to a strictly scripted mission if you had enough free roaming.
I think that the idea of including moral (Bioshock: Save the sister or let it be; GTA: Kill 'em or spare his life), a so-called either-or decision making system does GTA IV good. The living, breathing place that is Liberty City can transfer a liveliness that other games (e.g. Crackdown) couldn't quite come up with. GTA IV does a nice balance between free-roaming (driving = 75% of the game), and missioning. The game mechanics work out rather well (you can practically smell the beta-testing that went with GTA IV), even though the cover system can't quite compete with the one in Rainbow Six Vegas, but still. Thus, the balance between freedom and story-line comes out quite well. Oblivion, for instance, was too much freedom at once.
I like the ads/jokes/radio stations chit-a-chatter in GTA IV, though ...
GTA 4 is so funny it doesn't stop with the game itself it just begins there.
I 've read some articles in the non game related press as well as in the game related press that almost stand up to the totally overhyping media of liberty city.
Kyle, the article you link to is very interesting, as is the GTA IV review on the same site.
Thanks!
I love that game, i've played for about 60 Hours now, and I'm about 50 % completed.
I love the story, i love the main charakter (i can't understand the identification problems wich are sometimes mentioned) and i am having fun like i havent had for a long time with games.
Thank you Rockstar, this is a masterpiece.
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