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I’m breaking my tradition of playing all the game in a series when reviewing – mostly because I already know I don’t like the GTA series. It’s not because you shoot cops, use baseball bats to “encourage” people, or even the whole “hot coffee” (NSFW) controversy (apparently, there’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to controversies surrounding just GTA IV). In point of fact (and this is a rant that is 10 years late), I think GTA doesn’t go far enough. You don’t cause enough violence and mayhem. The real complaints about GTA (and the reason behind the controversy) come from video game mechanics interfering with the serious story. People criticize GTA and take it seriously because it takes itself seriously.
Initially, I thought this problem may have been limited to GTA IV. After all, my friends growing up kept telling me how great San Andreas was; but when I finally played GTA IV, I was struck by how much it reminded me of Man of Steel in tone (yes, I was very late to the GTA party). And, it had the same problem as most (but definitely not all) of DC’s movies – you have superhuman people able to soak up bullets and spit them out without batting an eye, but then we’re expected to believe the narrative when they ignore their powers for some dramatic moment. Similarly, this happens in GTA when the character is perfectly reasonable in cut-scenes, but a psychopath the moment the player has control.
How do you solve this disparity without limiting player freedom? Saints Row. The opening scene to Saints Row the Third is your character robbing a bank dressed in masks of themselves. They lift the vault from the bank with a helicopter and only fail when they are attacked by a rival organization. This is actually somewhat reminiscent of GTA III’s opening: you are shot in the face by your girlfriend after robbing a bank, somehow survive, and are broken out of a prison convoy. The difference is that Saints Row does not take itself seriously – so when you get out onto the streets and start driving on the sidewalk, it makes sense. In GTA, it’s a non sequitur because the character and story are supposed to be taken seriously. For a far better (and more amusing) look at this, I highly recommend Zero Punctuation’s review of 2 and IV (Saints Row’s naming scheme irks me).
To GTA III specifically, then. Well, it’s a sandbox game where you run around, do missions, and beat people up. Trouble is, there aren’t a whole lot of other things to do. I hadn’t realized how important the Saints Row mini-games were to making you feel like you didn’t completely waste your time by driving to some other random location on the map rather than doing one of the missions. I could drive on the sidewalk and generally run about stealing cars and listening to the radio in GTA III, but that just increases your wanted level and will eventually lead to you losing $1000. Either you lose that money to the police if you get caught, to a car shop that resprays your car, or to the hospital if you die. It’s a bit frustrating that the answer the game has to having psychopathic fun is always “lose $1000” – just differently flavored ways to get there. Maybe the game picks up later, but I suppose I’ve just been spoiled by Saints Row.
