The Cheezy Blog

It’s Wednesday, which means a new Zero Punctuation is available for our viewing pleasure. This week Yahtzee is espousing the virtues and deriding the foibles of Rockstar’s most recent installment of the celebrated Grand Theft Auto series, GTA 4, with his usual celerity.

He makes some good points, the game is hillariously fun to mess about in, its lauded “sandbox” world means you can bimble around to your heart’s content without ever really getting anywhere, but still ending up with a sense of achievement.

The game is not without it’s issues however, for me the most notable is the awful save system when you are doing the missions. The main problem is that the missions are often preceeded with a long, drawn out expositionary element, where you have to drive accross the city without attracting the attention of the errant LCPD, sometimes following gang bangers or drug dealers who drive like a senile old grandparent. Once you arrive at your destination, you then usually have to face a fast paced gun battle of some description, which often ends up with you waking up outside a hospital to find some kind doctor has half-hitched a sum of cash that could keep the NHS going for a decade, and a mocking text message asking you if you’d like to repeat the entire experience, exposition and all.

This is probably the single most frustrating gameplay element I’ve encountered this side of the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2. Several times I have contemplated defenestrating my XBox due to this, and it is almost responsible for me giving up on the game entirely. The ability to save when and where you want to would, in my mind, make the game far more eminently playable.

He does take issue with the game’s somewhat subdued colour pallet. But I don’t think it really detracts from it as much as he seems to believe. Like most cities, New York is a dirty, swrawling mass of dull grey buildings, and I feel that this is reflected well.