GAMING: GRAND THEFT AUTO

As this game recently turned 18 years old I decided to give it a write up. I find it amusing (and at the same time horrifying) that Grand Theft Auto is old enough to go into a UK game shop and buy its self now.

So Christmas 1997 I was getting Playstation one games as gifts. I had heard everyone at high school say that this crazy violent driving game was out, which had tons of violence involved. When I picked up the game in store and looked at the back for screen shots, the graphics looked like Super Nintendo quality and I didn't like the idea of playing a top down video game in 1997 on a 32-bit console. I chose the Duke Nukem 3d (a game I already had and loved on PC) Playstation port instead. Duke Nukem sucked and was a terrible port and to this day one of my biggest shopping regrets ever. Not long after I rented Grand Theft Auto from Vidbiz in Collier Row and ended up doing so all the time throughout 1998.

So Grand Theft Auto is a video game where you take the role of a two bit criminal who makes his way up the criminal ladder by taking jobs given out by payphones. These jobs range from bank heists, bombings, drug deals, murders and many more dark deeds. Another way of completing Grand Theft Auto was by scoring points by raising as much hell as possible.  Due to this feature the game was one of the first ever sandbox type games where you could explore the world at your own leisure. It was this type of freedom that set apart this game from other adult titles where the games brutality and violence was really down to the players own aggression or mood.

The game was very large in terms of maps which had 3 giant cities for you to explore and cause as much havoc as possible. The game was full of lots of different cars and bikes which all handled differently and had different music tracks for radio stations. The game also had a good variety of weapons ranging from a standard pistol to a rocket launcher.

The game also featured secret missions and mini games including Kill Frenzy which once activated the player scored points by committing the most murders as possible in the allotted time. Another odd points bonus would occur if you managed to wipe out a straight line of Buddhist pedestrians with a vehicle.

Although the game had decent driving mechanics and giant maps with unlimited freedom, the game did suffer from terrible combat mechanics. Being a top down game made accurate shooting extremely difficult in combat situations. The player can only shoot in the direction he is facing and it takes a fraction of time to turn him in that direction. So blowing up cars and non aggressive NPCs is no problem but when facing an aggressive element such as police and other enemies, its very difficult and they are always very accurate when it comes to shooting you. Unless you have armor equipped you will die in one shot.

The police in the very first Grand Theft Auto are as cheap as hell and literally turn up the second you commit a crime and turn up in force. Their AI is very simple- to destroy you and keep re-spawning at any cost. The only way to shift them is by collecting stars strategically placed around the map or completing the current mission. Another thing which hasn't aged well at all is the mission structure. Once you are on a mission that's it! if you die or fail you will never be able to retry it unless you power off your console. There was a saving option bu this was only available after completing each map.

Another thing which has not aged well at all is the navigational system of the game. The game sports 3 giant maps of Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas but without a map on the pause menu, all we had to go on was the giant printed map which came with the game manual (which most people lost) to navigate your way round. There was an arrow which pointed from your car to indicate which way to go but it wasn't much use if you were stuck on the wrong side of the map making a 20 minute mission into a 3 hour road trip.

Minus the above mentioned flaws of Grand Theft Auto its still a great game to play and something which can be mastered and learned by spending countless hours playing and learning. The freedom it gave us and the fact we could bring out the sociopath in all of us just by playing a top down driving simulator was what made it stand alone when it came to videos games from back then. This is also what made the game one of (if not THE) most controversial video game titles of all time. Like always liberal douche bags were using the title as a scapegoat to blame all of Americas social problems on at the time. Another game which got blamed for violence and crime among young people. My take has always been that if kids were playing at home on their Playstations then how could they be out stealing cars and stabbing nuns? .. Oh yeah.

One day if someone starts crucifying and stoning people to death in the streets after reading the bible.. will they ban that?

Grand Theft Auto had another 2 top down sequels (one of which a London expansion pack) and made the jump from 2d to 3d in 2001 with GTA III and now the franchise is the biggest selling game of all time.

Grand Theft Auto is up there with Super Mario when it comes to the most innovative and important video games, but unlike Mario.. this one has not aged well at all.

HALLOWEEN 2014 COUNTDOWN: GAMING: RESIDENT EVIL 2

On April the 28th 1998 Resident Evil 2 was released on the Playstation 1. For me this was a big fucking deal as I was a huge fan of the first title. After playing the demo of the sequel in December 1997, I counted down the days to the release of Resident Evil 2.

The game was £50 which was fucking steep for a game back then and being only 14 getting hold of that kind of cash was pretty hard. I remember selling my SNES, Megadrive and Atari 2600 consoles to Cash Converters and only getting like £15. I then had to trade in some of my other Playstation 1 games and that along with some birthday money I received mid April was enough to seal the deal.

At the time I knew that sacrificing all my vintage consoles and some of my lesser loved games would be worth it on the 28th of April.. and it fucking was.

So we all played the first game in which members of the S.T.A.R.S Team are trapped inside a mansion which is full of zombies, monsters and mutants. The house also houses the secret laboratories of the Umbrella company. The first game was a purely terrifying experience which still holds up today, which is pretty cool considering the game was made almost 20 years ago!

In this second installment the virus has spread to the streets of Raccoon city and we follow the stories of Claire Redfield (the sister of the male leading character in the first game) and Leon Kennedy who is a cop on his first day on the job. The two are separated when a fuel truck explodes leaving them on either sides of the flames with hordes of the undead to contend with.

The two survivors take refuge in the local police station which turns out to be Umbrellas latest hiding place for their underground laboratories. This can be reached by solving puzzles and descending the underground sewer system. From there you have to fight some nasty monsters and then ultimately the final boss and blow the place to kingdom come. So yeah this one is a mega beefed up version of the first game.

The game play is very much the same as the first game but with many more features and tweaks. The graphics are much better and there are more varieties of zombies and monsters. In the first game there were only 3 types of zombie creatures, where this game has many different types of zombies lurking around. The game uses the same types of level designs using 3d characters over a drawn static environment which still looks pretty damn good.

The game has some terrifying moments throughout and gives the first game a run for its money in terms of atmosphere. From giant mutant crocodiles in the sewer to mutants flying through windows its all in there when it comes to bringing the terror.

One gripe I do have with this game (and the whole series in general) is the fact you can only carry a certain amount of items. Although I do really admire Capcoms taste for realism, I really don't enjoy spending a lot of game time running round storing items in boxes which magically appear in other boxes on the other side of the building. One thing I will say is that this game is more generous than the first in this aspect.

We also get to play as two other characters as the game progresses. These characters are Ada Wong and young girl called Sherry Birkin who's father caused all this mess and is the main boss at the end of the game. 

Resident Evil 2 will not only go down as one of the greatest PS1 titles of all time but it will be ranked up there with the top games of all time period. With an amazing story and gameplay experience and not to mention the hours of extra content and replay value Resident Evil 2 is a bench mark when it comes to great video games. If you want to replay a classic Resident Evil 2 should be way up on the list.