Affectionate Diary

GTA’s cutscenes have always produced an incredible sense of disgust in me, so it should come as no surprise that GTA IV has a truly abominable amount of them. There’s cutscenes for fucking everything, including buying clothes. This is without a doubt one of the most blindly stubborn pieces of pure gaming bullshit that you could possibly imagine, needlessly extending the time required to browse the game’s absolutely reprehensible lack of clothing options. When I buy a fucking game, right, I don’t fucking expect to see gaping holes everywhere with a faint whiff of “DLC to go here” to about them. But anyway, that stinging slap in the face aside, the brutal pace at which GTA assaults you with every manner of gaming bullshit is, for a game in its 4th 3D iteration (6th if you count the PSP ones), genuinely, genuinely unforgivable. I know it’s either out of “we’ll still sell fuckloads so why bother” or “it’s a GTA hallmark to have to restart missions from the beginning”, but it’s still fucking appalling and only serves to underline how there should be a mandatory set of gaming standards that everyone has to abide by, or I’ll come round and shoot their fucking faces full of fucking holes that I’ll then fuck.

You know - things like:

* Every game must have Halo 3’s replay feature

* Menus must appear instantly when selected. No fucking anims.

* When browsing items, present everything available as a set of icons.

Two of those rules apply directly to GTA IV. Guess which ones.

Anyway, getting back to GTA, the last thing I expected it to become was the FUCKING SIMS. Like sure, getting drunk with a pretend friend is really funny the first time, but who the fuck wants to do it more than once? So stop fucking calling me, Roman, because I don’t fucking like you. Why can’t you get the fucking message? I’m not particularly happy about the fact that when I saved you from those drug dealers, you thought we were friends again and started calling. FUCK OFF. You’re a cunt. A liar. A pathetic, selfish little shit just like Del Boy Trotter, who should have died from face cancer. Also, dating. What in god’s name am I supposed to get from pretending to date a pretend woman? Other than getting her drunk and then hitting her, there’s precious little entertainment to be had and here’s another thing: if I wanted sports minigames, I wouldn’t be playing a driving crime running around killing sim. Don’t kid yourself that you’re something you can never be. Appreciate that you’re a game, not real life, so for fuck’s sake drop the boring shit.

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What I wanted from GTA was an adaptive thing, which seemed to be hinted at in San Andreas. I want to start a rampage and for the game to realise that, start a combo timer and begin spooling replays. I want a game where if I kill a drug dealer, pick up some drugs and then sell them to a junkie, I start a drug-dealing arc. If I rob a bank, I become a heist specialist. That sort of thing. That, to me, is truly what the next gen game design should deliver. More sophistication, not a re-tread of the old standards in shiny new clothes. I don’t care if it’s really, really hard. You’re fucking Rockstar. You have the most
money and clearly, plenty of talent. Just stop being complacent, you know?
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More’s the pity, then, that GTA still languishes in the frankly embarrassing belief that it should somehow meld game with film, a disgustingly teenage obsession that games seriously need to graduate from if their maturation is to continue. The lack of learning from 8 years of player interaction is completely inexcusable and the thin spread of actual content is depressing. The detail in the world is remarkable, but the game and the gameplay are old and do the world a horrible disservice. It’s a damn good thing that despite truly colossal quantities of frustration, idiotic choices and lazy slapdashery, GTA still does mayhem like no other. Like a sucker punch to the jaw, it’ll make you love it like you always did, but hey - you know it can’t get away with this shit ever again.

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I want to write something that accurately conveys the hate inside me for this ‘product’ but I can’t find the words. Have you bought it? If so, you deserve what you got. Let’s face it, if this had come from anyone else, you would have laughed in their faces. You’ve been suckered by the same people who suckered you into thinking doing basic arithmetic was fun.

I was in Islington last week hoping that they’d have a copy of GTAIV in stock. Obviously they didn’t. It didn’t seem to matter to the business of the shop, though, because it was PACKED with woman buying Wiis and Wii Fit. The kind of woman who you wouldn’t ever want to have sex with. The kind of woman who will most certainly not buy another game for her Wii. All this “we’re expanding the user base” bullshit that Nintendo is spewing - total falsehood. Each Wii purchase for Wii Fit is more than just a befuddlement of the installed userbase statistic for Real Game Developers. It’s a direct dilution of the strategy of every game developer on the planet as each publishers strives to diversify its portfolio to cater for these new Wii owners. Who don’t really care.

It’s not that nobody cares about you anymore, dearest gamer. It’s that less people who make games care about you. And more importantly, less time and money is going to be spent on trying to make you happy.

It’s not getting fit and having fun doing it, because getting fit is already fun. Because getting fit is not just going to the gym and getting on a treadmill and never has been. It’s pretending that it’s the only fun choice and robbing you of your will to seek out fun physical activities. And it’s directly raping the resources that go into making the things that you love the most.

If you want to play games, don’t buy this piece of fucking shit. Don’t add to the hysteria surrounding it. You can already do fucking press ups in your living room you stupid fucking cunt. If it’s not fun then do something else, like fuck. Fucking is fun and should always leave you exhausted.

Wii fucking Fit - preying on your fear of death since 2008.

Ed Boon - what a cunt. On Street Fighter IV - “I hope they add enough new stuff”. Yeah, cos that’s what makes a fighting game good - loads of additional pointless gimmick features that amuse for a second or less. At least I know from his comments that it’s definitely NOT worth touching the new Mortal Kombat game. Not that I ever really needed validation. If a game sucks 20 times in a row, you can hardly have hopes for the 21st version.

If he meant “I hope they elaborate on the core concept and give the player lots of way to enjoy the basic premise of the game” then he might have been on to something. If he said “I hope they innovate without ripping the heart out of what makes fighting games great” then maybe he’d be on the button. But I don’t think he understands what makes a great fighting game.

On his new Mortal Kombat game - “it has dual storylines - we tell the story from the perspective of the MK guys and from the DC guys.”

FUCK YEAH, STORY!

Idiot.

“It has new fighting mechanics, transition combat, freefall combat - so you’re actually punching and kicking as you fall to a new area. So it’s going to be a completely different feel.”

OMG FREEFALL COMBAT! TRANSITION COMBAT! I can’t wait to see how the game becomes interesting as they (presumably) change the basic rules of movement for each character mid-battle.

“It’s not going to feel anything like MK Armageddon.”

Ah well, maybe there’s hope yet. After all, we don’t care how your game plays. We just want to be able to do fatalities and we’re good. Cos that’s what kids in focus groups say, right? That they’re cool. So you better have them. You do have them, right? Right? Hello?