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• John’s Games of 2008: Year of the Character

  Next time you start telling somebody about a game you were playing — not a puzzle game or anything equally abstract — pay attention to how you refer to what you were doing in the game. Are you saying, “Then I jumped on the goomba!” or are you saying, “Then my guy jumped on the goomba!” Is it you finding the boomerang or is it Link? Are you driving the car, making the basket, managing the farm? Or is it your proxy, that little character walking about when you push a button to the right, that window meant to be a human being’s field of vision? As much as I thought about open worlds in 2008, I spent just as much time wondering what role character plays in great game design. A great game character doesn’t need to be one specific thing. It can be you, a literal representation of how you see yourself physically and even spiritually. It can also be a suit for you to put on, a fiction that you can inhabit, a doorway into story that isn’t just different from your daily life, but quite literally impossible. There was no shortage of astounding games in 2008, but there were a handful that, for me, were wholly defined by how they let you inhabit their characters, and characters made both for and by the player. In my first look back at ’08, I mentioned how it was character that ultimately kept me from getting the most out of Grand Theft Auto IV. There was just too much dissonance in how Niko Bellic was represented. There were three Nikos. There was the Niko you see speaking in cutscenes, a haunted, practical man of honor, making a new life for himself in a new country by hunting down the demons of his past. There was the Niko you guided through the game’s structured missions, a ruthless, opportunistic murderer who would destroy anything and anyone for a buck. And, finally, the Niko that you played, the blank slate who could do anything in Liberty City, whether it was enjoying a nice walk on the beach or assaulting an international airport with nothing more than a motorcycle and a baseball bat. At no point in GTAIV did these three Nikos meld into a single character, and the constant contradictions between them made it impossible for me to enjoy the game after a certain point. Metal Gear Solid 4 and Yakuza 2 (my absolute favorite game of 2008) were two of last year’s greatest achievements precisely because they didn’t fall prey to GTAIV’s representational failures. Read More... Posted Jan 07 2009, 06:45 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, the world ends with you, grand theft auto iv, playstation 3, nintendo ds, xbox 360, top ten, gta, playstation 2, mario, soul calibur, peter molyneux, yakuza, yakuza 2, best of 2008, soulcalibur iv, fable ii, kazuma kiriyu, old snake, goomba, solid snake

• The 61FPS Review: Grand Theft Auto 4 Part 2

  Into the valley of death rode the six-hundred-plus minutes I’ve spent in Liberty City since I last wrote. I would like to tell you that the rabbit hole has gone deeper but the truth is that it has merely gone on, level and consistent. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, per se. As I said before, Grand Theft Auto 4 is an engaging piece of software beyond the basic freedom the open-world gametype offers up. The story has continued to entertain and while reaching Alderney hasn’t revealed some kind of treasure trove of new experiences, the missions that progress that story have continued to impress. One in particular, a full-on bank robbery, stands out. At first, the job seems like another cut-and-paste shoot out; go to marker on your map of LC, watch a scene of dialogue, proceed to shoot everything in site. What actually happens is quite different. You, as protagonist Niko Bellic, retrieve the money from the bank’s vault before everything goes wrong. One of your partners is shot to death and you must lead your surviving associates out into the city against the full force of the LCPD while sticking to a loosely defined path through alleyways and the city’s subway system. Eventually, the escape opens up entirely, leaving you to decide how to evade patrolling helicopters and squad cars. The bank job is exemplary of how much GTA 4 has grown as game with specific goals over its predecessors and how artfully implemented linearity gives your personal experience of the game that much more impact. Read More... Posted May 19 2008, 04:30 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, zero punctuation, Grand theft auto 4, liberty city, gta, 61fps review

• The 61FPS Review: Grand Theft Auto IV, Part 1

  We’re going to do things a little differently here at 61FPS when it comes to reviewing games. For starters, all reviews are going to be brought to you in three digestible installments. Games are simply too long – not to mention that many can’t be completed at all – to offer you the most thorough critical examination we can offer in a single helping. The just released Grand Theft Auto IV is the perfect candidate for this formula because while there are a set number of tasks to perform in its world that will allow a player to see its narrative through to a traditional conclusion (in addition to a number of tracked statistics that will result in a 100% marker,) the game’s non-linear nature means that it can go on forever. Want to turn on the game and see just how many Hummers you can pile onto a Coney Island pier? Have at it. I’ve spent approximately fourteen hours in Liberty City at this point and while that’s no small amount of time, it’s clear that Rockstar’s world still has plenty to offer. Read More... Posted May 12 2008, 10:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, grand theft auto iv, rockstar, Grand theft auto 4, liberty city, gta, 61fps review