Monday, April 14, 2008

Gamestop.com User-Submitted Previews: Grand Theft Auto IV, Part 2

Can you feel it? The murmur of fanboy excitement building to a roar... The Internets alight with world exclusive preview information and the official OXM review (10 out of 10!)... The veins throbbing in Jack Thompson's forehead...

Yes, we are but two weeks away from the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. I already looked at the user-submitted previews for this game once before, but since then a bevy of brilliant new ones has surfed the wave of fan excitement onto the welcoming shores of Gamestop.com. I couldn't resist one more go at it.

(Also, uh, I got halfway through writing the post before I realized I'd already done it once before.)

Gamestop.com user "playerofgames" reminds us, apropos of the Resident Evil 5 controversy, that all games and gamers really are colorblind:
I am hoping for the best. In the previous although i enjoyed them i just felt like a block person running around doing pointless missions. instead of completing the campaign i spent all my time just killing cops and hookers.

Maybe I'm just a reverse racist and I'm choosing to look at issues of color where none exist, but, uh... did he mean to type "black" person right there? I really want to know. Maybe "block person" is a really term I never heard before right now.

"BIOCOMMANDO" is also skipping gleefully through a post-racial utopia:

Okay Rockstar has been making crappy GTA games lately! GTA3 was amazing, VICE CITY was the best game ever! Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories had no point first of all they were the same as there originals just with different stories and main characters, but that is an obvious one! San Andreas was the lamest game ever; I wanted another quality game not a 50 cent style stupid gangsta rap game. That totally ruined it for me, it went from high class mob to low end petty thug style to appeal to today’s modern teenage pop culture and its stupid yo yo gangsta rap phase! Now they want to make a new game with this balding old out-of-shape eastern European guy with the strongest accent! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO RELATE WITH THAT?

Most of the new comments are more sophisticated than that. In fact, they're suspiciously highbrow. "a customer" writes:

The best thing about the new GTA is how it actually has literary themes. Of Mice and Men comes to mind. I foresee the best GTA plot yet. And not to mention, everything else.

In the previous post, Johnson commented that some of these might the product of marketers trying to drum up viral support for the game. I wonder if the above commenter was trying to preemptively block any Thompson-esque criticism of GTAIV. Also, I have to say, of all the books that come to mind when I look at this game, Of Mice and Men ranks somewhere beside Don Quixote and In Search of Lost Time.

Speaking of Proust, if you thought he digressed much, check out this comment from "metallink666":

saints row was a fun game but it never captures theth magc of gta in interesting characters awesome story (i sure hope this one has custumization new clothes tats new haistyles i loved that from gta san andreas) the coolest part is how liberty city is modeled after the atual nw york and finally we get decenttargettina gameinformer said i would be similar to crackdown so killing pedestrians will bemore fun. when i found out gta4 was coming out same day as the ps3 version that moment i became anti-playstation killzone 2 it might not even be good he first game suckd and im nota stealthactionfan so mgs s out for e too uncharted is good but with its short length and low replay value make it a rent and ratchet and clank on the easy side so a good game for kids all the ps3 has going for it is basically resistance and haze may be good and i've had problems with shooter controls on the playstation in the past so you see why im against the ps3.

He, uh, he was talking about Grand Theft Auto IV at one point, right?

One last lit note. I submit that you will not find a better use of analogy anywhere* than in this comment by "Gta 4ever":

one gta4 is not gta3 in hd. no, this time liberty city is a exact recreation of new york well the famous parts. saints row sucks compared to gta, its like having kratos(gta) fight a telytuby(saintsrow).

Why, that would be no fight at all! But Kratos against all four Teletubbies -- now you might have something.

"YNSR Smith, K." is more levelheaded than most:

honestly, i dont have a positive or negative thing to say about the game since it didnt come out. all i know is that i preordered my copy and im patiently waiting for april 29th to roll around.

Let me address you directly for a moment, YNSR Smith, K. I appreciate your honesty here. It's probably the smartest thing you could do, reserving judgment on the game until you've played it. But do you have any idea how hard you're making my job right now? Come on, at least tell me that Saints Row sux tha coq or something.

To cap it off, this installment's winner for best fanboy meltdown goes to "Evolution":

Man Rockstar are a bunch of sell outs how can they sell Grand Theft Auto 4 (the biggest title to grace a sony playstation ever) to the X-Box system? the Playstation 3 is a much more powerful machine for gaming its like the Alienware of console video games and they are more then likely going to make 1 version of the game and they will be forced to make the graphics 360 friendly. GOD i hate the 360.

I've heard about rock stars selling out before, but this is ridiculous!

Yes, I'm willing to go out on a joke that weak.

*Anywhere on Gamestop.com, I mean.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

first post! oh and I agree with you that no content unless unbeleivable ridiculous and unrelated to the game, such as mods, should be withheld from going into the game at the time it is shipped but if they wish to develop some new maps or new guns later fine.

Duncan said...

I admire your dedication to unearthing the really depressing.

Mitch Krpata said...

I serve the people.