STATUS: GRAND THEFT THREE AS FUCK!

[WAREBOT]

GRAND THEFT AUTO 3 FOR THE IBM PC OR 100% COMPATIBLE, AVAILABLE MAY 21st, 2002!

END YOUR UNFULFILLING AND UTTERLY LOUSY RELATIONSHIPS NOW, BOYS AND GIRLS, A MATE CAN OFFER YOU NOTHING COMPARED TO THIS FINE, QUALITY WARE!!

[Jack Straw]

the goggles, where are they??!!?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Speaking of computer gaming, I was re-reading the old random quotes file from the dial-up version of the BBS earlier tonight. There was one quote that went like this:

The father of The Kid Who Died While Waiting For Magic: The Gathering (PC) to be released gets heckled by a dark and gritty sysop for not buying the game and depositing it on the Kid's grave.

And true enough, when I worked at Electronics Boutique, there was a waiting list for the first Magic: The Gathering computer game. That thing was extremely late, and when we got around to calling everyone on it to let them know it was in, I got one parent who was a bit agitated and broken-up over the person I was asking for. As it turns out it was his kid who had croaked at some point between getting on the list and when the game was actually finished. That's a right whoops moment.

At any rate, GTA3 is out and any deaths surrounding it are going to likely be due to its content and our impressionable youth. How the Playstation version of that thing didn't get dragged before Congress yet is beyond me. While the guy from Bad Religion in "Sorrow" curses the day he was born, I curse the development of the computer game, which poisoned the minds of our children with violence.

"When all soldiers lay their weapons down"
"Or when all kings and all queens relinquish their crowns"
"Or When the only true Messiah rescues us from ourselves"
"It's easy to imagine there will be... sorrow"
"Yeah there will be... sorrow"
"And there will be sorrow... AND GTA THREE."

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Well, a couple hours spent with it indicates that at first it *does* seem to be all that -- it deserves its rep, I mean.

But you can't save wherever you want. How the FUCK does this still HAPPEN? It took them a year to get this from the PS2 to the PC and they couldn't implement a save anywhere function? Jesus Christ that's incompetent.

$50 for a game I can't save wherever I want. I really have to stop doing this.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Another bitch: Save games are hard coded to be at C:\My Documents. (Payne was the same way.) This is so, if you have an XP computer with numerous people having "logons," EVERYONE CAN USE IT!! EVERYONE CAN SHARE!! YAAAY!!!

How fucking retarded is this?

Who the hell is sharing their gaming PC? What father is letting their kids logon and play a game like GTA3? It's not frigging Reader Rabbit for Christ's sake. There can't be more than 1% of all total users who do this in a non-work environ. Why are devs pandering to this style? If someone is having different people logon to their PC, and it's becoming a problem then they need to go get a Playstation. There are enough programs that HAVE to be on the C:\, save game files should not frigging be one of them.

I think it's safe to say -- this is a very bad console port of what probably passes for a good game in the minds of the average 13 year old idiot who owns a PS2 and has never played a real computer game in his life.

Also, this is how I have to get the game to run so that the thing does not have complete drift to the left:

1) Reboot my PC
2) Calibrate my Gamepad
3) Start GTA3
4) Go to one of the option screens, and attempt to change it. It will start to shift to the left but quickly stop
5) Exit, and then play game

Though I only *have* to do #4 and #5 every single time after playing it. #2 follows every rebooting of my system.

The controls are shit and the game saving restrictions are shit. The thing is, you will see something undeniably cool every couple of minutes. Something so over-the-top in terms of carnage and destruction that you can't help but want to keep playing. This would be the best game ever made for the personal computer if it either had a publisher who wantes something a bit more than a PC port as soon as possible, or a competent lead designer who made more than a few decisions for the PC version the complete opposite of what he did. I don't know who is to blame, so I'll blame everyone.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

...what's frustrating about the game is that it is chock-full of great "moments" and stories. Frustrating, because the lack of the save function makes me want to hate it but... but I just can't. Case in point: they quite helpfully include Crazy Taxi, Driver and Gran Turismo as "mini" games. Here's a story regarding the taxi missions:

I get out of the save-game spot and look for a decent car. Course, it's easier to find a car when you have a car, so I steal the first taxi that stops. I activate the "taxi" missions for the hell of it and funnily enough the cabbie who I just threw out of the cab needs a lift. Fair enough.

I attempt to take him to his destination, but get going a bit too fast. My car starts really getting out of control and before I know it a cop is chasing me. I end up going off-road, airborne, and off some mini-palisades. The palisades are extremely close to water (which will cause you to drown) but the car stops spinning before the water. While it's still rolling, the game tells me that I have frightened my fare and that he wants to escape. Sure enough, with the taxi laying on its roof I see the cabbie feebly attempt to crawl out of it. I get out of the taxi as well, and there doesn't seem to be much around except for sand. Well, that and a directionless cabbie wondering what the hell he got himself into. So I take my bat out and beat him to death with it.

There is also locational damage to the other people in the game, so it's possible to shoot a guy in the leg and watch him hop around trying to attack you. Head shots, as well. Also -- does anyone know how you get your "wanted" level above four stars? I gave my brother the cheat code for the tank and he went on a rampage, but it only went 4/6 for his wanted level, never above that. And at one point he was taking potshots at the train as it went by, after being responsible for the death of at least three dozen policemen who attempted to run him off the road with their cars.

[Protagonist X]

Also -- does anyone know how you get your "wanted" level above four stars? I gave my brother the cheat code for the tank and he went on a rampage, but it only went 4/6 for his wanted level, never above that. And at one point he was taking potshots at the train as it went by, after being responsible for the death of at least three dozen policemen who attempted to run him off the road with their cars.

You can get a 5th star after unlocking the 2nd island. The FBI shows up, and they're loaded for bear -- guys in bulletproof vests carrying full-auto guns set to full rock-n-roll. I believe their weapons of choice are M16s, and they (the FBI dudes) come in discrete 4-packs of carnage.

Haven't gotten up to 6 stars yet, but I'd bet you need to unlock the 3rd island. From what a friend tells me, the Army (or National Guard, or something) comes after you. And they have rocket launchers, their own tank, you name it.

Groovy.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

My opinion did a 180 from where it was two nights ago, after playing it last night. (The drift bug I mentioned seems to have gone away -- either that or its only now manifesting itself after a reboot. Not sure just yet.) I'm starting to really warm up to it again.

I'm not sure how close I am to getting off the island. The last mission I completed involved grabbing cash from the back of the Wong laundrymat, where guys would corner you in from four sides. The first time I tried that mission I left my car outside the alley. I was able to introduce the shotgun to a few of them, but the delay in firing it gave a dude a chance to pop me. When I tried it the second time I kept my car with me and ran over the guys facing north and south, changed direction, then splattered those coming from the west and east.

I've got one car I've kind of grown attached to, and noticed that the repair / spray shop is close to the hideout on the first island. It's not as fast as the ones in the "Turismo" mission or a cop car, but seems to be faster than the ones the Diablo guys run around in.

Another fun thing was bringing a hooker into the spray shop and having her leave my car as the garage door closed and the place filled with spraypaint. When it opened she was going through that tired (or gagging) animation, which I guess she should be after being exposed to all those paint fumes. Kind of a neat touch on the devs' part.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

One of the most frequent questions I get in the ole JC Mailbag is, "Jonsey, why do you hate PSM so much?" I'd like to take this opportunity and explain why it's so downright offensive.

I was moved over to PSM when Imagine Media gave the axe to NextGen. I used to spend many a morning at Cyrix reading the new content on www.next-generation.com and even sending them my occasional take on things. (The print mag even printed a letter of mine. The Good Ole Days.) Imagine foolishly (in my opinion) canned what was probably the only gaming magazine published in the States that even remotely catered to those of us with our heads not up our asses. Rather than OH NOES give us our goddamn money back, they switched everybody to their non-official official Playstation Magazine -- PSM.

The sheer amount of bullshit and hype you find in the average issue of PSM trumps everything else but Nintendo Power. I mean, it's #2 with a bullet. Every decision made by Sony is the right one. No broadband plan? No, it's cool -- this gives developers time to create killer apps. Sega going to X-box for some of their games -- ah, that's fine, Sega is shit anyway with nary an original game idea. Even the frigging PS2 launch, which was without question the most inept and wholly laughable product launch, perioid, much less console launch in the history of human and alien civilization will get the occasional pseudo-prop from the gorillas who fill the thing with their dreck.

Anyway, flipping through this month I see that "The Getaway" seems to be the first GTA3 clone that will be coming out. Dragon's Lair, redone to be a true 3D game is also coming out soon, apparently. I knew about the new Dragon's Lair game, but didn't (off the top of my head) know which other consoles and platforms the thing is coming out for. Because these troubled little losers have to suck as much Sony cock as possible, they couldn't BEAR to state something like, "The Getaway is coming out in August for PS2, Gamecube and the PC." Or, "Dragon's Lair will be out in July for PS2 and X-box." NO NO NO. That would mean that the acne-riddled sheep who buy this thing willingly may have an epiphany and grab another system or something -- I guess.

When NextGen readers got switched to PSM, they had a responsibility to get their asses in gear and pick up some of the slack. Reviews of video games are awful everywhere so I'm not going to take them to task for that. Maybe they are fine. I have a PS and not a PS2 so neither know nor care. And shit, I don't care that they devote way too much space to screenshots and that they have their readers send in cartoons and drawings of Wolverine and Ryu grinning at Psylocke's geisha tits. But the contempt for the audience should be above them, considering the influx of subscriptions they were given, even if they were not due to their own talents in any way.

Anyway, The Getaway is going to be published by Sony, so at best we see it on no other platform other than 10 months after its release on the PC. It looks like Dragon's Lair 3D will appear on the Gamecube, the X-box, the PC and the PS2. No charge to anyone at PSM for doing their goddamn job for them.

[Ben]

I'm only vaguely skimming the posts here, because I'd really like to not have anything overtly spoiled for me, and I'm somewhat of a newbie to the whole "GTA" thing, having only bought GTA3 yesterday, and having never bought/played any of the other GTA games at all, ever. So, take all this with a grain of whatever.

Here's what I'm gonna say about this game, though:

This is the greatest motherfucking game in the universe. OH MY GOD!!!!!

I am SO UNHAPPY that I picked this up yesterday (and got a new computer the day before), because now I am SO UNHAPPY that I have to (ha! "have to") leave on vacation tomorrow for a week and a half.

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!

You know the best part of the game? You're engulfed in the midst of a torrent of action, mid-mission, and you're all stressed out, and then finally you complete the assigned task, you get paid off, and then there's this moment (which I stretch out probably more than you're "supposed to", but fuck 'em) where you're just like, "Ahhh. A big city, and me with nothing to do." So you (me) just drive around, stealing some cool cars, generally wreaking havoc with everything, and just kickin' it old school around town. That is AWESOME!

This whole game is AWESOME!

On a scale of 92 to 289, I give it a 385!!!!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Absolutely, I hear you. Honestly, if this thing had save-anywhere support it would be in my top ten all-time. But this return-to-hideout shit to save doesn't fly in Zork, X-COM, Duke 3D, Knight Orc, Doom, The Bard's Tale, Bomberman, FPS: Football 96, I-0 and Civ II.


But now that the control thing I saw earlier had been eliminated, well, hell. Good for them. It's also made me aware that my W98 system has been up without a reboot for an entire week. An ENTIRE LOAF of UPTIME.

I wish there was a toggle you could use to get the Ammu-Nation and Pay & Spray thing to appear. Especially Pay and Spray, because it eliminates those police stars all nice-like.

Looks like the kids are coming out with custom cars, car skins, and car models. Time... to investigate!!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Ben, don't read this:


Oh, and the fact that the thing LOVES using player death to "teach" you how to play the missions is really, really lame. Case in point -- you have to tail that "Curly" guy and whack him if he "squeals." I didn't notice the spookometer at first but, eh, it was there. So I miss out on that and have to do it again. I go forth the second time and do not spook him. It comes time to kill him, so I decide to run him over. Now, I have 750 Uzi bullets. But I'm in a car and he isn't. I go to run him over and he apparently was carrying a rocket launcher or SOMETHING that made him blow up when I ran him over (killing me as well). Hahahaha! Boy, if only the in-game cut-scenes showed him carrying a FUCKING PISTOL MUCH LESS A BOMB STRAPPED TO HIS FUCKING CHEST. BOY, THAT CUT-SCENE WOULD SURE BE A GRAND WAY OF INFORMING THE FUCKING PLAYER THAT HE'S NOT JUST SOME PIECE OF HUMAN GARBAGE WHO WOULD NEVER, EVER SURVIVE GETTING RUN OVER. Course, I just had to re-load a save game -- oh, right, can't do that.

Let's see... not having to learn from death was universally heralded as "bad" back in... let's go with 1982. Well, welcome to video game design in 2002: each and every computer game is made in a COMPLETE VACUUM. No-one who has ever made one has EVER played one before.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Also: the way that you die when you fall into water? OK, no biggie. The way you die when you fall in shallow water attempting to go from a boat to a dock? AWFUL.

I'd really sound like a broken record if I said that they could have plotted around that terrible design decision by allowing save-anywhere, so I won't say it.

I did play the thing for many of the last 24 hours, though, but that I didn't feel like commenting on. When it gets good in this thing, it's as good as it gets.