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Jan 17th, 2010 at 22:40:50 - Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas (XBX) |
After following the first few missions of the story line I wanted a change of pace and decide to explore the city. To get money or weapons at this point in the game you have to beat down people in the street and kill them. You can go after pimps, gangs, police, or women. It didn’t matter who I killed as long as they dropped weapons or money.
In some cases the characters would put up a fight and deal damage to my health. Once I did manage to kill them I could continuously kick their corpse. For some reason murdering them wasn’t enough. I needed to desecrate their remains as payment for dealing damage to my health and further prove my dominance over them. At another point I got into a fight while some fellow gang members where near by. To my surprise they all pulled out guns and shot down the person. After that I smiled with contempt.
It now feels strange to reflect on my in game actions and question them. In other games I don’t express myself as violently. In Grand Theft Auto almost every character can be murdered. It doesn’t matter if they are a police officer or a woman. Killing them will get you money, weapons, or a strangely satisfying thrill. In the end everyone in the game are dehumanized while the player is being desensitized to violence.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 17th, 2010 at 22:42:47.
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Jan 17th, 2010 at 22:38:25 - Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas (XBX) |
I want to start out by saying I don’t care much for the Grand Theft Auto series. Not because I find any of the language or material offensive, it is because I can never out run the cops! Once I start playing this game I can’t resist the urge to cause total mayhem and carnage. However the level of destruction I can cause depends on how well I can evade the authorities which would be nothing past two wanted stars.
At this point I would just enter the cheat codes for all weapons and unlimited health while also taking away the thrill of the game with in an hour when I have had my fill.
But I know there is more to this game then a giant sandbox where someone can live out their violent fetish. So with cheat codes aside I will play this game for its intended story.
The game starts out with the protagonist tossed out of a cop car into a rival gang’s neighborhood. The first thing I do is grab a BMX bike and peddle back to my old home. Being a PC gamer I am not very graceful when I need to use a thumb joystick instead of WSAD keys. I crash my bike into a group of guys dressed in purple. They started hitting me so I began to punch back. Then I was surprised when one of them pulled out a gun and shot me down. Not even three minutes into the game tutorial and I was already wasted!
What just happened? Did I really suck that bad at these games? Perhaps, or maybe I just wasn’t accustomed to the context of the game. I should point out the majority of the games I play have monsters, aliens, and zombies as the enemies and not random NPCs walking the streets. I had to play through the first few missions of the game before I really understood the context of this game.
My character was a gangster returning to a hood that had changed since he had been away. And things needed to be set straight. I didn’t recognize at first glance that a group of black men all wearing the same colors was a gang. But the first few missions of the game taught me they were a rival gang that had taken over my territory and purple was their color.
After outrunning a drive by shooting on a bike, I pull up to the safe house where scantily clad women were walking around outside. I must have pressed the wrong button when I dismounted my bike and hit her on accident. She then pulled out a knife and started to attack me. I dialogue the characters shouted out labeled her as a ho. She must have been a prostitute carrying around a knife for protection.
After these two encounters I began to look over the characters walking the streets and deciding who was dangerous or not. Black men seemed particularly dangerous while the few white characters didn’t seem to be a threat. It was then I then realized that I needed to stereotype the characters of the game. Their clothing and how they talked all signified if they were brought up on the streets and carried weapons or if they were just business men who posed no threat. The next two missions in the game had me spray paint over rival gang’s graffiti and beat up a crack dealer. While on the streets driving around I knew I could run over some of the NPCs while others would shoot back if I hit them. I also learned I could get better weapons off of gangsters that carried guns after I killed them.
I had originally saw GTA games just as an environment where I could open fire at random strangers. But the game teaches you to recognize stereotypes and make assumptions about them in order to avoid a lethal gun fight when you don’t use cheat codes and play the game seriously.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 17th, 2010 at 22:42:23.
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