Remowned

Just about all my free non-music time at home over the past two weeks has been dedicated to Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto IV, whose story I completed just seconds ago. As some of you know, I rarely finish games these days–in most cases, I really don’t feel most games actually have enough fresh, compelling gameplay to last the number of hours it takes to complete them. This makes my completion of GTA4 all the more impressive–it’s not just that I finished a game, but that it is such a massive game.

Everyone has said a billion great things about GTA4 so I’m not going to list them all off. Rockstar North indeed managed to create a bafflingly well-realized world with an impressive level of fidelity and life. It’s been said, and I agree.

For my part, the thing that impressed me most–and led to me completing the game at all–was how brilliantly Rockstar balanced on the midpoint between overexaggerated absurdity, believable mundanity, and genuine gravitas.

The first of those was established in the original Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2, laying the seeds for the crucial third entry; the second trait was most significantly introduced (perhaps moreso than necessary) in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas; and the third has been generally on an upward curve from III to Vice City to San Andreas; but it has not been until GTA4 that all three were so expertly set against one another.

Most appealing to me, perhaps unexpectedly, has been the mundanity. (more…)

As some of you may know, I currently serve as Editor-at-Large at industry trade publication Gamasutra.  Today, we ran a piece of mine looking at the idea of subtext in games, with an examination of titles such as Half-Life, Grand Theft Auto, Ico, No More Heroes, Full Throttle, and BioShock.  Here’s an excerpt:

On the surface, Full Throttle is a badass neo-noir biker murder thriller with hard rock music (on that level alone it is already more novel than most game premises), but underneath it is a melancholy reflection on the American frontier and the inevitability of invasive industrialization.

If you have any interest in a dialogue- and puzzle-driven game, Full Throttle isn’t overbearing or preachy in the least, but there’s a lot to chew on. Its subtext is essentially literary, hinging on classic themes of American fiction.

If you like, go check out the whole thing.