GTA IV

You’ll regularly hear throughout popular culture things like, “that song changed my life”, or, “that album changed my life”, or even, “that film/painting/book inspired me/changed my life” and so on and so on. However, it’s very rare that people say the same about a video game. Especially when it comes to a video game that involves shooting policeman, and beating prostitutes for money.

But that’s the thing you see, that’s just the image of the Grand Theft Auto series that is forced down your throat, isn’t it? The Daily Mail readership, the ITV News network and the people from the classification department who are stuck in the past, they’ve never actually played the game have they? They’ve seen screenshots and heard terrible things about it, and so the moral panic spreads.

Fair enough, a large part of the game involves crime, it involves fleeing from the police or inevitably killing them, it involves stealing cars and killing passer-bys, blowing up cars, killing rival gang members. But the real beauty of the GTA series lies in its open-endedness, its escapism, its black humour, and the fact that you can come in from a hard day of work, sit down for an hour and drive around to de-stress.

The world portrayed in GTA games may well be far detached from our reality, it may well be cartoon-ish and disrespectful in the way that it looks at life, but in truth, is it anymore fucked up than the world we do actually live in? In recent times, Iraq and illegal wars have been hot on the lips of the do-gooders, these are the same do-gooders who are quick to say, “Oh no, Grand Theft Auto, you kill the police, you kill prostitutes, it glorifies violence, it should be banned” etc. etc. etc. In all honesty though, the condescending voices are missing when first person shooter games are released almost every week involving conflicts against soldiers of a certain creed/race/religion. Games which do tend to be a whole lot more realistic than any GTA game.

Grand Theft Auto, historically, has been more of a homage to popular culture. It’s taken our favourite scenes from films, it’s used some of our favourite music and allowed us to create our own experience, allowed us, the protagonist, to become embroiled in a film of our own.

Grand Theft Auto III changed the way that I viewed video games. It made video games an important part of my life. Previously I used to maybe play a video game if I was bored, if I had an hour to kill, but GTA III (which is still my favourite of the series, maybe for sentimental reasons) made me cancel plans, as sad as it sounds, to sit in and lose myself in the story for 5-6 hours at a time. I began to know the streets of Liberty City like the back of my hand.

Similarly, Vice City and San Andreas had this effect. Although the games became bigger, I still favour Grand Theft Auto III as my favourite game ever. This is why I can’t wait for the arrival of Grand Theft Auto IV.

The game is out on April 29th, 2008. I wouldn’t be surprised if it became the fastest and best selling game of all time on its opening weekend. Rumours are abound that EA are trying to purchase Take Two, which would mean Rockstar as well, but hopefully the franchise won’t be taken over by a company who’ll precede to place any amount of advertising in the fictional cities of GTA. For me, it isn’t all about making the game seem more and more like reality, all it’s ever been is an escape from my otherwise shitty life, and that’s why I love it.



Here's a homage to GTA from Coca-Cola.........