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MLieber's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (XBX)
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| [November 24, 2010 11:33:18 PM]
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GTA San Andreas: November 24, 2010 5:30 pm
I really wish the Grand Theft Auto series didn’t have to be in such bad taste. It took 3 days of meta-playing to realize this. The game is so much fun, and there is so much to do. My biggest problem with the poor taste is that it doesn’t actually help the game; it just gives it a larger controversy. I remember when GTA 3 came out and it was really hyped for the stereotypes and the vulgarity, almost more than how good of a game it was. The same thing happened with Vice City, and then San Andreas. I can spend so much time in this game doing nothing. I like driving the fast cars, getting away from cops. I like customizing said cars, and I like shooting random people and then cops to raise my wanted level. Why those people have to be ethnically or gender stereotyped is so beyond me. I don’t think that the people who made this game are bad people. I think they think they are hilarious. This game just started to make me angry. I think there is too much hate in the world to need the stereotypes in the game. I think the developers rely too much on cheap laughs and easy stereotypes to make parents angry, and I’m still not sure why the need to do that. I don’t know why I sound so conservative writing this, I really tend not to try and silence anyone, but this game just seems to hurt the world more than help. I think my biggest concern with the game is that it’s so widely played. There is very little audience of this game who can say, “Oh, this is farcical.” I think that’s what creates the greater uproar. Maybe parents should worry more about raising smart kids who can understand parody and less time berating game makers for being a little vulgar. I feel like I don’t have anything more to say after what ended up being two and a half hours of game play. Maybe that’s a problem with this game, and perhaps the people who made it. They throw all these cheap gags in, but none of them actually stand for anything. You can steal a character’s Vespa, or in the game, “Faggio,” but that doesn’t really say anything at all, and there in lies a problem with the credibility of the creators
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| [November 24, 2010 11:32:51 PM]
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In my second day of playing GTA: San Andreas, I continued to avoid doing missions as they are quite frequently tedious, or just frustrating if I get caught doing one for a long period of time. I think having played the game before was the biggest issue, though, in that I already have the general idea of how the plot unfolds, thus I had C.J. do more recreational activities such as stealing cars, and fighting in the street and eventually using cheats to raise my wanted level to new heights. A sense of violence does come over me when I start playing with the rocket launcher, in that I wish the explosions were bigger. Also, I wish the environments were more destructible. I understand that in a world this big, the programming would be a nightmare to develop that much action, but I still would like to completely level an entire city block. (Writing that down feels weird, but that’s probably because I’m tired and since I’m just coming off the game, I may be a little over stimulated.) When I play this game, I start to think of a bit by the standup comic Louis C.K. I only think of it to pull myself out of the constant action, I think, but he proposes that television in really a dangerous thing for children and as an example of that, he says that if you have kids, when they’re watching TV, without them knowing you’re going to do so, turn off the television. Their reaction is proof that there is just too much stimulation in television and kids don’t know how to process it. (The bit is from the 2010 special, “Hilarious” which just premiered at Sundance Film Festival.) Anyway, I’m growing less interested in the ethnic stereotypes as they go on, I don’t know if I’m becoming numb to them or if they’re just so dull that my brain chooses to ignore them, but either way, I find myself more concentrated on the colors they are wearing. I forgot the Skateboard/bike Park in the first level. I spent a lot of time in there when I grew bored with shooting people at random. Maybe that’s why people think the Grand Theft Auto series is so dangerous, because the worlds are so vast and there is so much to do. I feel that in this game, much more so than in other narrative single player games, I can play for long periods of time, and constantly be entertained. I do enjoy raising my wanted level all the way to 6 stars because it’s actually an interesting fight with the SWAT teams who have similar if not better weapons than C.J. with almost all of the weapons cheats. Also, it’s interesting that so much cash can be gained from muggings. Friends who have been mugged have told me that the mugger usually doesn’t get more than twenty dollars and a cell phone, maybe a CTA pass out of the robbery. Also, my C.J. is now covered in tattoos and getting pretty muscular. My only problem with the tattoos in the game is that the artwork is relatively unimaginative. Especially with gang tattoos, that tend to be very subtle, these tattoos are really over the top. The outfits my character can afford at the more urban store are pretty funny, in that it’s hard to believe gangsters actually wore outfits like that in the 90s. After roughly 45 minutes of play, that’s what I noticed today.
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| [November 23, 2010 02:10:27 AM]
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Playing this game without bias for me is the most difficult part of writing a gamelog. From "hot coffee" to all the other scandal involved in GTA: San Andreas, the game has almost been more myth that game. I started a new game going in with this mindset. From the onset, I nostalgically remembered the opening to all GTA games with a short driving mission that gives you an outline of the city the game takes place in. From there I went on to do a few short missions, mostly fighting other gangs and getting a gist of the shooting mechanics, etc. I remembered that I had the most fun when I got to the gang territory part of the game, so I tried my hardest to get to that mission, but upon checking GameFAQ's, realized that my desired level would be rather difficult to get to and would also take quite a while. For the purpose of the gamelog, I really focused on not getting sucked into the game, to try and be more of a viewer as to what I could do within the game, and how I felt about it. The game is fun, there's no doubt about it, and the graphics hold up relatively well, apart from the "crab hands," but I think I only notice that now because my boss when the game came out criticized that aspect of the game. The characters in Grand Theft Auto were never really interesting to me, but C.J. definitely comes the closest to a character that I have fun with. I remember that a rapper was his voice actor, which I thought was interesting, especially because at the time he wasn't necessarily a mainstream rapper. Also, the presence of Samuel L. Jackson as the corrupt police officer was something that I forgot about, but once the character starts speaking, I remember the voice fondly. Whenever I hear his voice though, or see him acting, I get taken out of the action, regardless of whether he's appearing in a movie or a video game, and this character was no exception. The world of course is vast, and my favorite part of any GTA game comes in this game, and that's the customization. I liked giving my character haircuts and changing his outfit and giving him tattoos. When GTA 4 came out, I can still remember my immense disappointment that the game nixed all those features for the sake of quicker load times. As far as the actual sandbox gameplay goes, where one runs out in the street stealing cars, robbing random people and gaining wanted levels, the game is fun. I remember finding the ethnic stereotypes in the game funnier when I was a kid, and now, probably because I write more, find them a little too easy. I wish a game would create a world like "Citizen Kane" where every character has their own personality, and yes I know that games are a long way from that, and they were a longer way when GTA: San Andreas came out. I found myself having little to no problem killing at random when I got guns, and for the sake of fun, I decided to cheat and give myself weapons. That was probably the most interesting part of playing, that the cheats had become muscle memory and the neighborhood was like second nature to me. Maybe I played the game too much growing up. I have two more gamelogs to do on the game and I plan on having more fun in cars than I did in the past. I never realized how much the driving mechanics in this game were fun. They're so basic, so maybe I'll try to outrun the cops more.
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