One of the most violent franchises of all time delves into one of the most racially insensitive plots possible. What can go wrong? A lot can go wrong. Although maybe it won’t be so bad…
Everyone here should have at least heard of Grand
Theft Auto. Maybe not everyone has played it, but here goes: GTA and all of its
sequels are Wide Open Sandbox games, which means that you have the freedom to
do just about anything you want to do (in the limits of the game’s program,
obviously). There IS a Story Mode but you’re not forced to play through it,
although some parts of it explain certain mechanics present in the game at
large. There are dozens of side-quests, as well as many things to discover around
the sandbox world known as Liberty City. You can be the biggest criminal ever,
or you can look for ways to get yourself killed. You can steal cars, do crazy
stunts, swim from the main land to the island, meet dealers, and earn a nice
sum of money… Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
As you can guess, it’s also a game series that has a
lot of detractors, like the concerned parents who didn’t know the ESRB’s M
meant “for Mature audiences” and bought this game for their little dearie child
who’s far too innocent and perfect to even want to participate in a bloody
shooting, however virtual it may be. Then there’s those famous words that
describe games like this one as a murder simulator, which puh-lease, if you
want to see an actual murder simulator, it’ll have to be a lot more detailed
than this.
Taking stuff from bins, stealing cars. Just a normal day in the City of Crime. |
It was a mad world, before Mad World was a thing. …The
Wii game, not the song. Alright, I could spend many parts discussing only the
Wide Open Sandbox aspects of this game, but I like to tell a game’s story. And
even though the plot here is split between multiple mission givers, we can
still follow much of what’s happening, as well as the clash between the personalities
of the different crime leaders. Alright, let’s start this slow descent towards
complete and utter criminality.
Ah yes, I love arriving in a new country and having to survive a potentially lethal scenario upon arrival! |
You see, these days Liberty City is right in the
middle of a gang war of sorts among the Triads. The grand
leader of Liberty City’s crime ring, Hsin Jaoming, is about to select a
successor, and all the minor gang leaders are trying to get in his good graces…
and you can expect that nobody is gonna play fair! What, are you expecting a
world of nice, loyal competitors? Fuck off, this is Liberty City. You want fair
competition? Go play some shitty Mario Kart rip-off. As a result, Kenny offers
Huang a free apartment. Yay for that, I guess. I hope he doesn’t mind this
apartment getting used to fuck some prostitutes…
…Oh right, the “prostitutes” mechanic of the previous
GTA games has been removed. Say whatever you want about the staggering amount
of criminal activity in the setting, there’s not a single prostitute in sight.
Not that this really helps anyway. After all, the crime bosses we meet
throughout the game are all complaining about hooking up with Trans prostitutes.
…Yeah… I did say this was one of the more offensive games out there. Don’t come
in expecting any kind of respect from those crime bosses. Respect? What’s that?
You’re in Liberty City, pal. Wherever you came from, you left your respect at the airport.
Why, thank you, beautiful. I'd lose a hundred swords if that meant getting into your.... good graces. |
Uncle Kenny tells Huang that he needs to get better
with weapons, and sends him to learn some fighting tricks… from Ling Shan, of
all people. Well, this is gonna be interesting… We learn the basic fighting
moves (punching, kicking, etc), and then we learn how to equip and use a
firearm. Kenny learns that little crooks are attacking one of his
restaurants, so he sends Huang and Ling to kill them. On the way, they search
in a trash bin to look for guns (apparently there are guns and many other
things hidden in trash bins).
Then they head out to fight the little mobsters.
They quickly reach the restaurant and head towards the fight… and Ling gets
shot and bathes in a pool of her own blood. Please, she can’t die, citizens
respawn all the time! She’ll survive… she’ll survive… oh, she won’t survive?
No, she dies. Well, fuck. She was the only female character so far and was
probably one of the rare few women characters in the game, period, so this game
is doomed to remain a sausage party. How fun. Sorry Huang, unless you’re into
necrophilia, you’re not gonna score with this lady. Well, we save the restaurant’s
owner, who looks a bit too much like Donald Trump for my tastes, and thus ends
another mission.
Noooo! Ling, no.... (I would make a joke saying that I didn't even get to cop a feel, but.... I just can't...) |
On his next mission, Uncle Kenny states that the
restaurant’s owner has been “dissatisfied” with the quality of the service
Huang gave and ordered every last one of those little street mobsters killed.
Guess who’s gonna go out on a killing spree? Everyone’s favorite Huang, of
course. So we go there, chase down one mobster that takes us to the whole gang,
and after a standoff and a car chase, they’re all dead. Yay for that, I guess?
I should probably explain the whole PDA thing right
away. See, you have many tools in your personal assistant. The main one is a
GPS map that you can use to get anywhere; just assign a spot on the map with
two quick taps of the stylus, and it’ll tell you the quickest route there. You
can set some of your favorite destinations, and you can also keep tabs on
all the important places; tattoo parlors, Pay’n’Sprays (to repair your car),
scratch card shops, all the houses and apartments you come to own as you
progress through the game, and of course all the drug dealers you find, since
those are the major money-makers. The bottom screen also indicates which weapon
is equipped at the moment (and whether it’s a firearm or a melee weapon), and
whichever additional weapons you have (such as Molotov cocktails, the fire hose
if you’re driving the firetruck, or grenades as an example). There’s a Briefing
section that keeps track of the recent things you’ve done. There’s an e-mail system
through which you can receive deals from Ammu-Nation, news from dealers who either want to sell a drug at a very low price or buy a drug at a very high price, and of course you can
also receive plot-relevant e-mails from crime family chiefs who want you to do
their bidding. What, you thought only Uncle Kenny would give you missions? Oh
Hell no, you’ll become everyone’s servile little bitch-er, I mean, associate.
Yes, I totally meant associate. There’s also a Stats section that keeps track
of all sorts of data about your playing session so far. I’ll go back on the
many, many sidequests in a later part; all you need to know is that there are MANY side-quests, and they range from helping random people to raiding warehouses to destroying all security cameras...
Now with 98% less "Enlarge Your Penis" spam! |
On the next mission, Kenny explains that he has a rival hoping to be Hsin Jaoming’s successor, and it's none other than Hsin's own son, Chan Jaoming: A hotheaded
moron who prefers to do drugs and participate in street races than lead. And yet he seriously believes he has a chance. So much so that he invited Uncle Kenny
to work for him. Kenny refused, of course, but decided to send Huang to do Chan’s
business instead. So you bring three race cars to Chan’s garage.
Just wait the next edition, it includes meth and bath salts! |
When that’s done, Huang gets an e-mail from Chan Jaoming,
inviting him to come help him on his quest to earn Hsin’s good graces. Chan
says Kenny is out of the race, and says the big competitors are himself and
another called Zhou. Well, time to go help a fat, stupid, drug-addicted crime
“leader”, I guess. Starting now, you can do missions from both Kenny and Chan.
The next mission from Uncle Kenny is to make Molotov cocktails and use them to
burn a restaurant belonging to a competitor. After which he orders Huang to
pick up potential recruits for his gang. You can’t get to the top of the chain
without lackeys to follow your every command, can you?
Off to ruin a car! |
One star: We're still good. Two stars: Kinda getting tense... Three stars: What have you done? Four stars: |
This car better have some nice treats. |
Since the documents found inside the antiquarian’s
truck mention the Spanish Lords, Kenny tells Huang to deal with them; and as
luck would have it, a bunch of Spanish Lords are headed towards one of Kenny’s
properties to burn it to the ground, so Huang has to stop
them. Which he does. Wow, you can turn Huang into a one-man army in this game.
Just a few explosives and boom go the Spanish Lords’ vans! I swear Officer, I
didn’t start the fire, these guys did! I just replied with even MORE fire!
I wouldn't start touring the Hollywood studios to pitch your movie about the criminal world just yet. |
Holy fucking Christ, first Kenny, then Chan, then
Zhou, and now a cop. What the Hell am I getting myself into… Actually, you know
what, this has been long enough. I’ll take a break until Monday. There’s only
so much criminality I can take in a day… Phew!
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