How GTA Became The Dragonforce Of Gaming

Early into its release Nier was overshadowed by two games, the first was Final Fantasy XIII , and the second was God Of War . Square-Enix naturally threw all its financial and advertising weight behind its most lucrative franchise. What little marketing Nier did receive, made it look like a low-budget God Of War style action g

Rockstar remains one of the classic innovators of gaming, letting loose an expansive, free-form-mission mentality that would pioneer the success of the "open-world" genre. Grand Theft Auto is the crown jewel of that kingdom. It’s an international phenomenon and one of the most important game series of all time. With Grand Theft Auto V , Rockstar made the biggest open world of its kind, but despite its commercial success, the developer is simply giving into its own very hazardous addiction. Grand Theft Auto V secrets Theft Auto V simply exacerbated the recurring issue that has been plaguing the series since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas , an issue that is continuing to drain the studio’s credibility in making top-shelf open world games.

A former two-bit criminal, Michael has retired into a witness protection program. Thanks to his previous life, he’s absolutely loaded and lives in a mansion with two kids and a wife. His kids are spoiled brats, with the son spending all day smoking pot and playing video games (no offensive, readers) and the daughter a fame-obsessed promiscuous teenager who will do anything to become a celebrity. His wife, on the other hand, resents him even though he gives her anything she could possibly want (including some surgical enhancements) and is having an affair with likely multiple suitors. Depressed and not challenged in his current country club life, Michael decides to team with Franklin for some excitement. Unfortunately, coming out of retirement made former partner and current psychopath, Trevor, take notice.
Rockstar’s mentality of "bigger is better" is what is making Grand Theft Auto less interesting of a series than it should be. For such a maverick of a series, one that broke ground for gamers, critics and politicians alike, it sure hasn’t been as ambitious as its peers these days. While Skyrim was displaying a smart array of carefully placed activities and Saints Row was slowly chipping away that obnoxious padding between missions, Grand Theft Auto was just putting on more and more unneeded pounds. I like the idea of big games with lots of stuff to do, but simply making a game bigger and smugly putting down your competitors for their "lack of ambition" isn’t a good way to evolve your series, especially when your game is big and empty enough that you need to include yoga as a legitimate side mission.

But once San Andreas was released in 2004, Rockstar adopted a mentality that ended up damaging the vision of an open-world. Unlike Vice City , San Andreas expanded the world size considerably, encompassing three major cities instead of just one. It was a technical endeavor for the Playstation 2, no doubt, but it also drew upon a number of issues that have made the open-world setup more problematic than it did back in the day. Making a world bigger requires many more activities to keep things interesting. Otherwise, you’re wandering around from mission to mission with barely any sort of activity. It might as well be empty space. Changeable topography, different challenges that appear while moving from location to location, these types of things keep that lull between missions away. San Andreas didn’t suffer from that too much, but it brought to light the idea that spreading something out can leave plenty of weak spots in between.

Of course, one of the aspects this series is most renowned for is its music. Vice City sparked a minor resurgence in New Wave, while Grand Theft Auto IV perfectly captured the burgeoning indie scene in Brooklyn at the time. Building off of the presentation and quality of the latter’s soundtrack, V boasts one of the series’ best collections of music. For indie lovers, Radio Broker is replaced by Radio Mirror Park, which features tracks from Twin Shadow, Yeasayer, Health, Neon Indian, The Chain Gang of 1974 and more. The incredible thing is that all of the aforementioned artists are contributing new music to the game and the fact that there’s so many critically revered artists with new music on one channel is astounding. For electronic lovers, there’s Soulwax FM, named after and featuring many remixes from electronic band Soulwax. On the pop side of things, there’s Non-Stop Pop FM which features an excellent blend between current top ten artists like Rhianna, lesser-known ones like Robyn and classic acts like Hall & Oats. Of course, there’s something for everyone with other stations focusing on rap, country, classic rock and more. The amount of care put into curating this soundtrack that could have simply been a collection of random songs is more evidence of how much work goes into even the smallest features of the game.