{"id":1005,"date":"2008-06-04T09:06:13","date_gmt":"2008-06-04T15:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamingwithchildren.com\/?p=1005"},"modified":"2008-06-04T09:06:13","modified_gmt":"2008-06-04T15:06:13","slug":"greetings-from-liberty-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/04\/greetings-from-liberty-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Greetings from Liberty City!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The City is Beautiful. Glad You’re Not Here.<\/p>\n

Where’ve I been? Where do you think? Liberty City. Ah…\u00a0Liberty City.\u00a0It’s sort of an “adult” vacation spot. Not a place to bring the kids. In fact, this sprawling metropolis is bereft of children or teenagers.\u00a0That’s a good thing. Because there are a thousand stories in the naked city and all of them are M-Mature. It’s time to come home and I hate to admit it. . . I’ll miss these mean streets. I’ll miss my terrifying breakneck speeding through the\u00a0Booth tunnel. Buzzing the top of the Statue of Happiness with a stolen heli-tour copter. Cranking up Vladivostock radio, digging some Reggae,\u00a0or tuning in to the incomparable Lazlo to help drown\u00a0out the\u00a0gunfire, screams, and constantly whining police sirens. <\/p>\n

MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Liberty City – a believable place. That’s not a common thing to say about a video game world but the people at Rockstar have loaded both barrels here. One barrel contains all the violence and depravity, offensiveness and envelope pushing Rockstar is justifyably\u00a0known for. The other barrel contains unexpected twists and turns, betrayal, and a few genuine surprises. Rockstar knows parody – why else would the two main “squeezes” – the two ladies you are forced to date (there are also personal ads and whores, but those aren’t part of the main plot) aren’t what you’d expect. Both are 3-dimensional, both are realistic where most game developers would have gone for “Va-va-voom.”\u00a0 Michelle is a bit plain, has boring taste in activities, and is way too interested in your character’s personal business. And Kate is a bona-fide “good girl” from an Irish family. The most realistic mob-innocent since Adrian from Rocky played Sonny Corleone’s sister. She doesn’t “put out” but Rockstar makes her the principle love interest.<\/p>\n

Bravo on that Rockstar!\u00a0 I’m sure your opponents were expecting a Carmen Electra type instead.<\/p>\n

Then they offer what looks like a truly offensive limp-wristed queen plotline. It’s hilarious in the most un-PC way possible to watch Bernie (his name when straight was “Florian”) mince\/jog his way through Middle Park. I didn’t like Niko when he teased and mocked his now out and proud friend but Rockstar doesn’t leave it at that. No. They have Bernie run through a tunnel and get smacked in the stomach with a pipe by a gay basher. Then Rockstar hands you the reigns and says “Go kill that homophobe!”\u00a0 From then on Niko treats his friend with more respect. A lot more.<\/p>\n

Because of the story I was disapproving but mostly onboard with most of Niko’s loathsome actions. He kills a lot of people (yes, but they were all bad) and does a lot of bad things. Then the kidnapping mission came up. I have to admit that Rockstar is endlessly inventive and that having a mission where you must kidnap a mob bosses spoiled daughter is clever. I admit that having her scream in anger the whole time was a good choice and that having her attack you while you drive – making the car lurch around the road – was a stroke of genius but I did not like it when Niko hit her to shut her up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Does that seem odd to the non-gamers? I can pull a virtual trigger but I cringe at an non-interactive cutscene showing a man hit a truly awful woman?\u00a0 Maybe not.\u00a0 While in real life I’m sure I’d find the killing more shocking, even in the movies I find domestic violence more disturbing than killing.\u00a0 Why is that? Believability? Justification?<\/p>\n

A game is making me think.<\/p>\n

A lot.<\/p>\n

Thanks Rockstar.\u00a0 Grand Theft Auto IV holds a special place in my heart. A guilty pleasure\u00a0alongside Pulp Fiction, Sin City, Scarface, both Godfathers and the Sopranos.\u00a0 I’m proud to finally induct a video game into that august company.\u00a0 And like those other powerful and amoral stories . . .<\/p>\n

I look forward to sharing it with my kids.\u00a0 Once they’re old enough.<\/p>\n

Liberty City, a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The City is Beautiful. Glad You’re Not Here. Where’ve I been? Where do you think? Liberty City. Ah…\u00a0Liberty City.\u00a0It’s sort of an “adult” vacation spot. Not a place to bring the kids. In fact, this sprawling metropolis is bereft of children or teenagers.\u00a0That’s a good thing. Because there are a thousand stories in the naked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}