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United States15536 Posts
On September 26 2013 21:13 adwodon wrote:+ Show Spoiler [A great post] +I'd pick it up later if I were you.
I wasn't too bothered about the game initially, didn't buy into the hype. Then once it was out I read around and decided to pick it up and I don't regret the decision.
I don't look back too fondly on GTA 4, something about just wasn't great. Probably the protagonist but other elements too, to me GTA 5 fixes a lot of that, but not without its own issues.
Firstly its well less aggressive with its 'satire', which is good, there are still a lot of great jokes but I think they've started to understand that while jokes can be contained within satire, jokes themselves aren't satire so there's less of the sophmoric 'punchline satire' of 4 and what you're left with is funny stuff, its not a deep or penetrating look at society like some claim but its funny, I particularly enjoyed a walk through the offices of the social network 'lifehacker'.
The game still struggles to juggle the balance between being a narrative driven experience a 'game', although it steps this up hugely from previous games, it's hard to put your finger on and I think its to do with the games pacing and how it sort of fails to set the tone initially. Some of the more gamey bit stood out and felt jarring at first but after a while you settle into the flow and tone of the game and things feel more natural within the game world, it genuinely does keep getting better the more you play and some of the bits are genuinely fantastic.
The idea that you've 'played it before' is a little odd to me, we've all played FPS before, hell if you've played space invaders you understand the basics of every cover shooter out there. It's how those mechanics are contextualized and while I think GTA 5 gets off to a slow start, it soon shakes that off and it becomes genuinely compelling when taken as a whole, however I guess analysing the individual elements might not appear quite so compelling.
The sexism issue is one thing I noticed about the polygon review and my thoughts are fairly straight forward, sexism in gaming only became a significantly debated issue in the last year or two, until then it really wasn't talked about much. Considering GTA has been in development for 5 years, and considering that voice acting and animation and writing are started as soon as possible, writing in a female character probably wouldn't have been something they considered. That being said, they have no excuse for the next game, its a cultural thing in gaming and GTA is the perfect franchise to demolish it. There also is the issue of writing, I'm not sure how many female writers they have on staff and its a legitimate reason to not write good female characters if you just can't do it, Woody Allen said the same till recently, he didn't write women because he couldn't, now he can and he does a great job but again its all about planning ahead. I hope Rockstar have noticed the shift and address this in future games, even though I can forgive it in this one.
To be fair though I wouldn't call it hugely sexist though, almost every character is unlikable in many senses. It's a complicated issue though.
So in short, I would genuinely recommend it, coming from an originally skeptical view point, with a fairly critical eye. I will say though I hope it beats Bioshock: Infinite for GOTY, that was not a good game in my opinion, The Last of Us was excellent though.
I've got The Last of Us sitting on my shelf... waiting (and only because I've been immersed in FFXIV).
As far as the sexism goes... here's my take on it. I love satire. I want there to be more of it. But it only makes sense if I can tell it's satire. At this point, the violence is the GTA series is so ridiculous and over-the-top (see katanas) that I know they're approaching it from a satirical point of view. It's so over-pronounced that it's too insane to be true or honest, at least in my view. Honestly though, I probably should be more concerned with the violence, and that's on me. Call it my American culture, but I guess I am just too used to explosions and gunfire. That's a problem and I should work on it. I'm just sad that most games contain these things. Maybe that's why I prefer fantasy: less realistic destruction (certainly in FFXIV, which is what I'm into now)
With the sexism issue (whether its there or not), it's a more subtle case. If the case is that all the female characters in the game are tropes and satire, it's a problem of establishing no context (at least to me). If you have ONE counterpoint to show the insanity of the rest of it, then it makes more sense to me. From what I can tell of reviews, that counterpoint doesn't exist, which makes me wonder if it's really satire. Does that make sense?
When it comes down to a purchase decision, I'm really more worried about things like gameplay and atmosphere, but I included the sexism point because it's something that especially concerns me in a more general sense. If this article lacks anything (I mean, it lacks a lot of things), it's the fact that I should probably be concerned with much more, including the game's portrayal of violence, race, and gender, much of which I find hard to speak about simply due to ignorance.
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Nice pace with the article. I was eager to keep reading it!
The ps2 grand theft auto games were awesome when i was starting middle school. I was more innocent then and this game allowed me to explore the dark and powerful facets of urban life in a manner that was half voyeuristic and half related to my own experience. The dark andd sinister vibes of grand theft auto 3 were awesome. The aesthetic was perfect. For me, it was the small beautiful things like exploring all the radio stations. Stealing a car from a jamaican guy and finding it on the reggae station, being about to take a man's life for some blood money andd realizing that there is an odd talk show on the radio. I think these small things add to the overall experience and the less observant gamers are led to believe it was the cars an violence that they enjoyed, when actually it was the context of these things.
Vice city was an improvement on the missions, and in many ways a lot better, but it lost many of the intangible elements that made number three an amazing aesthetic and emotoinal experience. By the time of san andreas, many of the things i fantasized that woul make gta a great game were a reality. Knives, bicycles (even with ramps) and moifying cars,were part of the game but it was too structured to catch the imagination.
GTA 4 i had no interest in. Everything became too realistic. The cars were hard to drive the violence was too real. I think the series needs to be more like a pulp fiction, like a tarantino movie, where aspects are exaggerate or understated.
Either way, I don't find crime as thrilling now that i see it more realistically, so the game was a game of a time period for me. This same thing is true for a lot of the titles that are hyped up.
Halo 1 was just a portal into an fps experience everyone had been waiting for. Halo 2 sort of wrecked some of the perfection of the understatement but it was still a great hit that many people enjoyed because it came out at a time when headset communication was a novelty an everyone wanted to play together.
So my point is, many of the biggest titles people look out for are really just a product of certain eras in zeitgeist and also because the makers had nothing elsethey had to mimic to keep the game true to the title. Really, I believe sequels go on for too long.
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I'll probably pick it up eventually. I've played basically every major gta release since gta 1 (I enjoyed gta 3 the most for its time). I usually wait til the hype and price come down a bit, though. I also don't have 8 gb of free space on my xbox360 hdd (not sure what to delete...).
The online aspect seems interesting to me, as well.
I think any sort of "outrage" about violence, sexism, racism or any other non-pc thing is buying into what GTA has always tried to do. Whether you think it is "well executed" or not, is another thing, but the franchise has always been about not giving a shit about any sort of expectation of "appropriate" and using that to sell games.
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On September 26 2013 22:27 AsmodeusXI wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2013 21:13 adwodon wrote:+ Show Spoiler [A great post] +I'd pick it up later if I were you.
I wasn't too bothered about the game initially, didn't buy into the hype. Then once it was out I read around and decided to pick it up and I don't regret the decision.
I don't look back too fondly on GTA 4, something about just wasn't great. Probably the protagonist but other elements too, to me GTA 5 fixes a lot of that, but not without its own issues.
Firstly its well less aggressive with its 'satire', which is good, there are still a lot of great jokes but I think they've started to understand that while jokes can be contained within satire, jokes themselves aren't satire so there's less of the sophmoric 'punchline satire' of 4 and what you're left with is funny stuff, its not a deep or penetrating look at society like some claim but its funny, I particularly enjoyed a walk through the offices of the social network 'lifehacker'.
The game still struggles to juggle the balance between being a narrative driven experience a 'game', although it steps this up hugely from previous games, it's hard to put your finger on and I think its to do with the games pacing and how it sort of fails to set the tone initially. Some of the more gamey bit stood out and felt jarring at first but after a while you settle into the flow and tone of the game and things feel more natural within the game world, it genuinely does keep getting better the more you play and some of the bits are genuinely fantastic.
The idea that you've 'played it before' is a little odd to me, we've all played FPS before, hell if you've played space invaders you understand the basics of every cover shooter out there. It's how those mechanics are contextualized and while I think GTA 5 gets off to a slow start, it soon shakes that off and it becomes genuinely compelling when taken as a whole, however I guess analysing the individual elements might not appear quite so compelling.
The sexism issue is one thing I noticed about the polygon review and my thoughts are fairly straight forward, sexism in gaming only became a significantly debated issue in the last year or two, until then it really wasn't talked about much. Considering GTA has been in development for 5 years, and considering that voice acting and animation and writing are started as soon as possible, writing in a female character probably wouldn't have been something they considered. That being said, they have no excuse for the next game, its a cultural thing in gaming and GTA is the perfect franchise to demolish it. There also is the issue of writing, I'm not sure how many female writers they have on staff and its a legitimate reason to not write good female characters if you just can't do it, Woody Allen said the same till recently, he didn't write women because he couldn't, now he can and he does a great job but again its all about planning ahead. I hope Rockstar have noticed the shift and address this in future games, even though I can forgive it in this one.
To be fair though I wouldn't call it hugely sexist though, almost every character is unlikable in many senses. It's a complicated issue though.
So in short, I would genuinely recommend it, coming from an originally skeptical view point, with a fairly critical eye. I will say though I hope it beats Bioshock: Infinite for GOTY, that was not a good game in my opinion, The Last of Us was excellent though. I've got The Last of Us sitting on my shelf... waiting (and only because I've been immersed in FFXIV). As far as the sexism goes... here's my take on it. I love satire. I want there to be more of it. But it only makes sense if I can tell it's satire. At this point, the violence is the GTA series is so ridiculous and over-the-top (see katanas) that I know they're approaching it from a satirical point of view. It's so over-pronounced that it's too insane to be true or honest, at least in my view. Honestly though, I probably should be more concerned with the violence, and that's on me. Call it my American culture, but I guess I am just too used to explosions and gunfire. That's a problem and I should work on it. I'm just sad that most games contain these things. Maybe that's why I prefer fantasy: less realistic destruction (certainly in FFXIV, which is what I'm into now) With the sexism issue (whether its there or not), it's a more subtle case. If the case is that all the female characters in the game are tropes and satire, it's a problem of establishing no context (at least to me). If you have ONE counterpoint to show the insanity of the rest of it, then it makes more sense to me. From what I can tell of reviews, that counterpoint doesn't exist, which makes me wonder if it's really satire. Does that make sense? When it comes down to a purchase decision, I'm really more worried about things like gameplay and atmosphere, but I included the sexism point because it's something that especially concerns me in a more general sense. If this article lacks anything (I mean, it lacks a lot of things), it's the fact that I should probably be concerned with much more, including the game's portrayal of violence, race, and gender, much of which I find hard to speak about simply due to ignorance.
This is pretty spot on when it comes to the sexism, or the fact that the game just ignores women. There is nothing bad about the story in GTA 5 and the characters are really fun to be around. But there a noticeable lack of any female characters in the game worth talking about. One of the playable characters has two children, but they focus almost totally on the son and the daughter is displayed as a vapid teenage with no personality. There are some neat female characters, but they are glossed over in almost every way to focus on the men in the game.
I don't mind that its all men, but the game is so rich with satire, even a nod toward the lack of female characters would be have gone a long way. Just saying "You know, these stories don't feature women in a positive light. Its just angry men yelling at each other and sleeping with easy women until the credits roll" would have been enough.
Its a great game and a lot of fun. But the fact that I noticed it made me see just how far video game stories have come in 5 years.
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Female main characters just doesn't fit in gta, unless you play the police side, which just doesn't make sense given the nature of the game. I mean whoever heard of a female gangsta? It has got nothing to do with sexism.
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On September 27 2013 00:50 Cubu wrote:
Female main characters just doesn't fit in gta, unless you play the police side, which just doesn't make sense given the nature of the game. I mean whoever heard of a female gangsta? It has got nothing to do with sexism.
That kind of the point though. At least of Rockstar had said something along those lines during the game, people would have laughed it off and said "you know what, they are right, crime dramas never have good female characters."
And its a minor complain, but it is noticeable. But GTA is its own things and I can respect Rockstar for not trying to force something in. I would like them to make a game with a female lead, just because I think they are great writers and it would be cool to see what they do. After all, Red Dead is still one of the greats games of this generation.
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I refuse to take polygon ratings seriously when ever they mention sexism. I have read a few where some aspects of a game WERE sexist, and the reviewer basically wrote a whole page about those tiny aspects and tanked the score of an over all really good game because of it.
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I'm going to save everyone some time and TL;DR this blog post:
Well articulated garbage.
You have no experience in this game series aside from running around and shooting people, which is like saying I have experience in playing Starcraft from playing fastest maps, then you go on to criticize it despite the fact you've never taken the game series seriously to start with.
Seriously, this is about as stupid as you can get. You're good at using words, I can see that, but you didn't trick me into thinking you wrote something worth while. This was a complete waste of time.
EDIT: As an FYI - I'm not a fanboi of the GTA series, and have played them in a similar fashion as you have. I ,however, have not tried to make silly claims about a game, or series I've never played in-depth. So if you think I'm being an asshole because I'm a fan of the series, then think again. I'm being an asshole because your blog sucks.
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United States15536 Posts
On September 27 2013 04:49 hoby2000 wrote:
I'm going to save everyone some time and TL;DR this blog post:
Well articulated garbage.
You have no experience in this game series aside from running around and shooting people, which is like saying I have experience in playing Starcraft from playing fastest maps, then you go on to criticize it despite the fact you've never taken the game series seriously to start with.
Seriously, this is about as stupid as you can get. You're good at using words, I can see that, but you didn't trick me into thinking you wrote something worth while. This was a complete waste of time.
EDIT: As an FYI - I'm not a fanboi of the GTA series, and have played them in a similar fashion as you have. I ,however, have not tried to make silly claims about a game, or series I've never played in-depth. So if you think I'm being an asshole because I'm a fan of the series, then think again. I'm being an asshole because your blog sucks.
Whoops, I guess I must have accidentally written an opinion blog about something I don't really get. I don't think I made any claims and really just based everything (and stated so) on a lack of understanding OR a reading of reviews, so people wouldn't think I was making statements about something other than what's in my own head. The whole thing is about why I'm not interested in playing it... not why I don't think other people should or "why it sucks" (which I often say it's clearly a well-reviewed and respected game).
Perhaps I'm confused.
Additionally, I'm not sure why you're being an asshole matters. Why are you being an asshole at all?
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