Final verdict: D
Final playtime: 41 hours

Yo, what ‘appening! It’s that time of the year again, folks. Time to paughty! Um, I mean, listen to me talk about this one game that I played.

So GTA IV. Little background first. I’ve never been much of a GTA guy. And I’ve certainly never thought of the series as the pinnacle of gaming like so many believe. Especially around these parts where GTA and Pro Evolution Soccer are synonymous with god. The only reason I play them is because they’re so god damn popular I can’t avoid them! I can’t have my street cred called into question. Respeck up in da hizzouse, know what I’m sayin’?

All this sandbox bullshit doesn’t do anything for me. So what if I can kill random people, crash several cars, and snort coke off hookers? …woah. That sounded a lot cooler on paper than it actually is. But no, that might be fun for maybe an hour tops. And then you just feel empty. Like the morning after sleeping with that cheap hooker. So basically what I’m saying is GTA is the videogame equivalent of a cheap hooker. Watch out for those STDs!

…actually, this analogy took a turn for the gross, bro, so let’s move on. Like I said, running around in your sandbox game is just the kind of easy pick-up-and-play time-waster casual gamers like. So of course GTA would be popular around these parts. Those faggots probably only play for 30 minutes a day, so of course it’d be perfect for them. But me? No, I can’t be expected to live on shit like this. It’d be like giving a grown man a G.I. Joe action figure to play with. He would need something meatier to keep himself entertained. In fact, I don’t think even a kid could keep himself entertained with a toy for very long. Sure, little jimmy sees the shiny Optimus Prime action figure or whatever the fuck, and he wants it real bad. Little does he know he’ll get bored with it after a few hours because guess what, jimmy jimmy? It’s just a fucking toy. Shouldn’t have wasted your allowance on that huh? But of course you wouldn’t know that, because you’re a stupid little kid. Fuck little kids man. All they see is that it’s a new, shiny, cool looking thing. Whatever happened to having a critical eye? God damn.

Uh… what was this article supposed to be about? Oh right. Hookers. I mean. GTA IV. So yeah. That’s a difference between a toy and a game. A toy you can only play with for a little while, but a game can be something you lose sleep, food, and girlfriends over. And that’s the thing with this sandbox bullshit. It’s more like a toy than a game. And it’s too fucking open. They’re basically saying “Here, have this playground and try to have fun with it!” Well fuck your mother, jackass. It’s your job to entertain me, not mine. But of course, you’ll probably go “Oh, but we have the missions for those who don’t like our free gameplay.” Well guess what? You forgot the part where the actual gameplay in GTA is a bucket filled with and made out of shit. But you don’t care about that. As long as you have all the dumb masses happily dicking around in your faggoty ass sandbox. Why would you put any actual effort into the gameplay? Building your empire on dicking around and controversy has worked wonders up to this point!

But y’know, I’m doing the devs a disservice by saying they did no effort. They actually did seem to put a little bit of effort into improving the gameplay. Problem is, well, it’s pretty much still shit. Just not nearly as shitty as previous iterations. They seem to have improved aiming a little bit, and implemented a cover system that’s more or less a copy of Gears. Except they forgot to copy the not sucking part. Man. I liked that part in gears. Why did they have to leave that part out. But yeah, truth is GTA IV is still a pretty fucking awkward game control-wise. Despite the improvements firefights are still not all that fun. Which makes the missions, as always, a drag. Nevermind the fact that failing a mission and having to do everything all over again including getting to your destination is annoying as it has always been. I know faggots just love pointlessly cruising around the city in a car, but if you ask me that’s just a fucking waste of time. If I wanted to do that I’d drive around in real life. You’ve got your real life in my videogame! What’s that? You can’t run over people in real life? Oh yeah, like that doesn’t get old after the tenth road kill. The only thing that kept pointless driving tolerable in GTA, was the music. It’s too fucking bad that the music in IV is made out of legendary fail. The music in Vice City was great. Hell, so was the music in San Andreas. So what the fuck happened here? Damned if I know, but almost all of the stations are terrible. Although hey, Vladivostok FM isn’t too bad. It’s pretty much the best one. Yeah, who knew I’d be listening to Russian music. Jesus. Also host Ruslana has a cool accent.

Oh and speaking of accents, Jesus H. Christ, somehow everybody in Liberty City is a fucking immigrant or some shit. Good luck understanding what anybody is saying without subtitles. And sometimes it’s impossible to understand even with subtitles. But hey, these rasta accents are pretty funny so it’s all good. I mean, not as hilarious as the gangsta nigga accents in San Andreas, but still pretty damn funny. And while we’re on that note, if I had to say one good thing about this game, it’s that it’s funny. The story and cut scenes are quite well done. Though don’t get me wrong, the story isn’t actually good so much as enjoyable, hilarious, and cheesy. The game doesn’t take itself seriously, and neither should you. I mean come on, it’s hard to take it seriously when Niko starts getting dramatic and being all “Back in the war…there were some terrible things… it ruined me…-” “OH SHUT UP, LET’S GO TO THE STRIP CLUB AND GROPE SOME SILICON FILLED TITTIES!”

Oh yeah, and Niko. He’s not too bad of a character. He’s a stone-cold sociopath, and yet at the same time somewhat socially awkward and polite. The characters in general though, like the story, aren’t actually good so much as funny. And GTA IV continues the long standing tradition of characters that are uglier than several aborted fetuses. However, this poses a problem in the dating aspect of the game. Yeah, as Niko you can date various women in the game, but because the game’s graphics are so bad, or at least, the artists who made the characters are such failures, that it’s pretty much pointless. Because I ask you, what is the point of dating ugly women? That’s right, none. If I’m gonna go on a date with an ugly woman in this game I might as well hang out with a guy, because at least they’re funny and entertaining, unlike the girls. And damn but the women in this game are fugly. I’m talkin’ uncanny valley shit here man. I’d rather be celibate than fuck these chicks. But hey I still took them out on dates when they called me ’cause I felt bad for them. Yeah I know, I’m such a nice guy. Though I never “tried my luck” on them. Jibblies.

But yeah man here’s how a typical date in this game goes: “Hey nice car!” “Thanks, yeah it is nice isn’t it?” “Oh and nice clothes! So nice weather we’re having huh?” FUCK. YOU. What kind of boring pointless small talk is that? Hey wait a minute, that sounds like how a real date would go. Oh and if you wear the same clothes or use a car they don’t like? Better get ready to get chewed out. Because apparently your clothes and your cars are really important to these chicks. Otherwise known as how much money you have. Holy shit, girls only care about money just like in real life! This is way too fucking realistic. You’ve got your real life in my videogame. I want my completely unrealistic and idealistic girls who somehow love me unconditionally despite my myriad flaws! Jesus, who ever told you realism was good in video games?

In fact, a lot of things are too realistic in this game. Like how you go up and down stairs. Or how if you don’t mind where you’re going you can bump into shit and knock it over. When the game started I was walking in my apartment and I knocked over a chair and table and some other shit. I was like “woah what? I need to get my mind out of JRPG mode.” It’s funny how we get so used to the way games work, and when something like this happens that would seem completely normal to a nongamer, we get surprised. While we’re on the subject of realism, though, I’ll say that driving is harder in this game precisely because of this whole realism thing. Most of the cars are pieces of shit with terrible handling, just like in real life! And who wants that? Nobody. This isn’t supposed to be a driving simulation, so just give us cars that don’t spin and go out of control on every tight turn when you’re going at 200 mph.

Of course, not everything is realistic. For example, how there’s fucking nothing to spend your money on. Basically just guns which aren’t all that expensive. You can also spend it on dumb things like food and shows and stuff but that’s always chump change. There are really no big important purchases to be made, nor are you ever hurting for cash like you should be. Why hello there game design 101. You just failed it. You’re taking away an important part of the game if you give the player truckloads of cash and then nothing to spend it on. But yeah. Gay sandbox gameplay, even gayer missions. I was bored with this game halfway through. I still beat it even though it wasn’t any fun, in the interest of keeping my street cred. I mean critical integrity. And really, this game is touted as giving you a lot of freedom, but at the same time it can be frustratingly limiting. I mean I don’t care if games are limiting, but if they are, at least don’t say they give you untold amounts of freedom. Basically, you need to do missions exactly the way the designers intended it. Say there’s a guy waiting in a truck who you need to chase and then kill. You decide to hide somewhere, and snipe him in the head from far away. Oh wait, guess what! He happens to be immortal because you’re not supposed to kill him before the car chase! Or say a guy you’re chasing is about to make a getaway on a boat. You shoot the boat with a rocket launcher so he can’t escape on it. Ohh wait a minute! The boat is magically absolutely indestructible because the guy is supposed to make his getaway on it! You’re chasing a guy’s car down the freeway, and he rams into a gigantic fucking monster truck. What happens? Oh, well that’s obvious! The truck goes flying off and the tiny cooper stays unscathed and doesn’t even get diverted from its course because the car chase isn’t supposed to end until you get to a certain point. So on and so forth. That’s the way it is in this game. It’s like “SANDBOX!” “FREEDOM!” But you try to complete missions in creative ways? “FUCK YOU, YOU WILL DO WHAT WE TELL YOU!”

But never mind. The bottom line is this game isn’t very fun. But people will still lap it up. Why? I don’t fucking know. Because people are idiots with no taste and I’m the only one who knows the score.

Final Verdict: D

Final Playtime: 41 hours