Tag Archives: GTA Clones

More Redemption?

Incredibly, I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 for something like two years now. It’s not because it’s a damn long game (though it definitely can be.) Rather, it’s a game I decided to play almost exclusively while my partner watched along, owing largely to the fact that she played it a few years prior and absolutely loved it, and was stoked to watch me play through it. In the end, I think I put something like 160 hours into it, and that is with barely touching hunting, fishing, herb gathering, or crafting. Unfortunately, I don’t really think our particular approach to playing a game sort-of together is very compatible with a game so time-consuming. That is, it can be hard enough for one of us to be both in the mood and with the free time to play a game like this, but for that to align for us both? Lessons learned!

Probably my favorite Read Dead Redemption 2 screenshot.
“Probably my favorite Read Dead Redemption 2 screenshot.”

Still, Red Dead Redemption 2 was lauded by critics and fans alike when it launched in 2018, winning various awards and topping Game of the Year lists, so it’s not like I didn’t want to play it myself. I did have a bit of a strange relationship with the first game though – a fan of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series, which of course RDR shares most of its non-Western genre related DNA with, it took me a while to finally get around to playing it, and when I did, I think I found it a bit slow to start, and a bit too mechanically similar to GTA IV. Still, like GTA IV itself, by the time it was over, it had fully won me over owing largely to its characters and its incredible virtual world, polished up with Rockstar’s usual massive production values and an attention to detail bordering on insanity.

Looking back at my impressions of Red Dead Redemption, it’s interesting just how many of my notes on RDR2 align with those of the first game. For instance, while I wouldn’t call RDR2 slow to start exactly, the introduction is still sometimes criticized as taking some effort to get through before the game really begins. I’d also say that, yes, RDR2 can still feel quite “clunky” with its priority for completing its incredible but often rather lengthy animations over player control, sometimes causing some odd object clipping or, more often in this game, characters to sort of slide to locations if they’re close to objects they need to interact with, but not quite close enough to do so. Perhaps necessary trade-offs, but this kind of thing can sometimes shatter the otherwise effective illusion. Just like the first game though, I’m sure most players will get used to the “feel” of the engine after a while, which largely alleviates those annoyances.

The infamous Dutch and our boy Arthur
“The infamous Dutch and our boy Arthur”

One big difference this time around though, is that this animation priority combines with some serious control issues to occasionally result in outright rage inducing moments. The controls of RDR2 aren’t too dissimilar from the first game, or indeed GTA IV and GTA V, yet due to the additional level of simulation Rockstar was going for here, they’ve crammed quite a bit more complexity into them. A button tap versus a longer press here and there, sure, but the major culprit is context sensitivity. That is, having the same buttons do different things depending on the situation. As a relatively mundane example that happened to me right at the end of my playthrough, I’d just saved a “stranger” NPC from being attacked by a mountain lion. I approached him to talk to him, but forgot I still had my gun in my hand. It just so happens that the “focus on a character” and the “aim your gun” buttons are the same, depending on if you’re armed. Instead of having a friendly exchange, or maybe even getting rewarded for lending a helping hand, I pointed my pistol right at the poor bastard’s head and threatened to kill the man, resulting in him understandably fleeing in sheer terror. Whelp… This is far from the worst case of this happening to me, and wacky anecdotes of a similar nature abound all over the Internet. It’s less about not knowing how the controls work, and more about them not always doing what you want or expect them to do in the moment, and that perceived loss of agency over your character’s actions is far more aggravating. Couple that in with getting trapped in a long, unbreakable animation, and doing something you didn’t mean to do can be incredibly frustrating. There might have been some damn difficult moments in previous Rockstar games, but I don’t recall ever being as controller-throwingly angry as I was several times throughout my playthrough of RDR2.

Dutch giving one of his speeches around the campfire.
“Dutch giving one of his speeches around the campfire.”

You know, with a lesser game, that could have killed it for me – rage quit, uninstall, move on, right? Thankfully, RDR2 is not a lesser game. RDR2 is a masterclass of building an incredibly immersive and detailed virtual world. With its enormous map representing huge swaths of the United States for a variety of beautiful and believable climates, flora, and fauna, plus towns and even a legitimate city this time around. As with my time in the first game, I rarely ever used its fast travel, preferring to ride between locations, which provided more opportunity to enjoy the amazing scenery, as well as organically experience its excellently implemented random encounters and side quests, helping the world feel a bit more alive than in previous games. When my parents stayed with us recently, it was the first game I whipped out to show them, and they just watched me travel around randomly, as enthralled as if they were watching a good movie. It’s one of those games. While nothing is perfect, RDR2 is a technical and artistic masterpiece, definitely snatching the crown from GTA V as the next evolution of Rockstar’s “RAGE” engine, if not the entire genre they helped create.

I also really enjoyed the narrative this time around. The way it tied in the characters and events from the first game was wonderfully effective. It might be one of the best prequels of any sort I’ve ever experienced, to the point where I had to wonder if a great deal of the context and backstory RDR2 provides to the first game wasn’t already written. In fact, it really makes me want to go back and play RDR again. Still, I suppose the fact that our protagonist, Arthur Morgan, wasn’t mentioned at all in the first game probably settles that though. Speaking of which, Roger Clark did a bang up job as Arthur, as did Rob Wiethoff and Benjamin Byron Davis as John Marston and Dutch van der Linde. Really, as a whole, the VA performances in this game were terrific, and the soundtrack, while a bit different than what we got in the first game, was also great. I mentioned the more serious tone in my RDR review, and I’m happy to say that with the exception of the occasional silly side mission, RDR2 is perhaps even more tonally consistent this time around, and while there may still be the odd Western movie stereotype here and there, the vast majority of its characters felt much more realistic to boot.

Charge!
“Charge!”

So yeah, there are still some other gripes to be had, like the game save and the fast travel systems, the way the game always wants to put my weapons away, or force me to use certain ones, and the fact that missions still feel oddly derivative of the good old Grand Theft Auto formula (though they’re a bit better obfuscated this time around) plus it’s definitely a bummer that we never saw any DLC released for the game, and that Red Dead Online seems to have been something of a failure, but overall, despite all of these complaints, I think Red Dead Redemption 2 is a triumph, and its existence elevates the already brilliant first game. If there is ever another Red Dead game, I hope it’s with a whole new cast of characters rather than another prequel (maybe showing the Van der Linde Gang at an earlier stage) or a proper sequel following Jack Martson. I’m happy with this story where it is, personally.

(I just might make an exception for a Sadie Adler bounty hunting spin off, though… 😛)

Grand Theft Auto V

Well, what I’ve actually been playing for the last few months is Grand Theft Auto V. I’ve been a fan of the series since the first game, and even dipped my toes into GTA V when my partner would occasionally recruit me to help her with her playthrough years ago, so I knew I’d be playing it eventually. Despite owning an Xbox 360 copy of it for years now, it showing up on Game Pass at just the right time inspired me to finally take the plunge and install the Xbox One version. Of course, it was removed from Game Pass well before I was finished, and by then purchasing it was incredibly easy to justify. Congratulations Microsoft, your insidious plot to make us buy games by giving them to us for free totally worked! *shakes fist*

Back behind the wheel again!
“Back behind the wheel again!”

I’d say it should be no surprise to readers of this blog, but honestly, my game logs from GTA IV (along with The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony) weren’t really as positive here as they are in my head. Perhaps I focused a little too much on my criticisms? To save you some reading and myself any further explanation, let me just summarize by saying that I loved GTA IV. It wasn’t without its flaws, not by a long shot, but it was an amazing game. Thinking back to almost 10 years ago when I first played it, here are the prevailing impressions it left, in no particular order: the absolutely incredible job Rockstar did on Liberty City and its various simulated systems; the numerous improvements and additions to the series’s core gameplay systems (the cell phone, the GPS, improved combat, better mission checkpoints, etc.); the brilliant Niko Bellic and the noticeable “Ludonarrative Dissonance” around his story; the weird, weighty physics to everything, particularly when controlling vehicles; and the busted pacing of the story, which sometimes felt a bit aimless and certainly seemed to fail to really push most players through to the end. Obviously, those aren’t all positives. There I go again!

Well, I’m happy to say that it’s follow-up addresses or otherwise enhances every single thing on that list, and much more. I think that Rockstar might have literally bulleted every major complaint people had about GTA IV and used that list as the foundation for their design documentation. Really! It would be incredibly blatant if they weren’t improving what was an already great game.

GTA V's San Andreas is a technical and artistic achievement.
“GTA V’s San Andreas is a technical and artistic achievement.”

Going back through my list, to start, GTA V’s San Andreas is just as incredible as Liberty City was, and for every one of the simulated systems that’s been slightly dumbed down, another has been added. Plus, we have the expansive desert area to the north of the city, and even the underwater areas of the map (and keep in mind San Andreas is a coastal city) have been fully fleshed out. It definitely takes some cues from Red Dead Redemption, with more scenic outdoors areas, better natural lightning, and more wildlife than ever before. While I wouldn’t call it perfect, it is without a doubt an astounding technical feat. While I may not end up having the same long term emotional associations with San Andreas as I do with Liberty City, I’d chalk that up to my personal connections with the real-life locations those in-game cities are based on and not any fault of the games themselves.

Systems wise, pretty much every last thing I complained about from GTA IV has been “fixed” in GTA V, and even the major improvements GTA IV introduced have been yet further improved. For instance, the cell phone is less intrusive and more usable, the GPS is less finicky and much easier to read, the combat is even smoother, with things like targeting and the cover system being a lot easier to use, and mission checkpoints continue the trend of GTA IV’s DLC episodes (and the later Red Dead Redemption) of being more conveniently placed to make failing and/or dying on a mission way less of a headache. Every mission is also scored and easily replayable, not to mention better integrated into the open world in the first place. Perhaps my only real complaint in this department is that more and more of the side systems have become buried as the series has gone on. As an example, I didn’t even realize I could “hang out” with characters in GTA V until near the end of the story because it simply isn’t a feature that factors into the core gameplay. This has always been a thing in Grand Theft Auto though, and maybe it’s better than the alternative of the game forcing these little fun diversions on you by awkwardly shoehorning them into story missions.

Trevor being... Trevor?
“Trevor being… Trevor?”

While I wouldn’t claim there’s zero story and gameplay segregation issues with GTA V, Rockstar largely solves this problem by giving you three characters to play with their own personalities, backgrounds, and motivations, all of which can, to some degree, justifiably engage in those classic Grand Theft Auto open world rampages. This certainly helps avoid situations like Niko complaining about how he just wants to live in peace and start a new life sandwiched in between the massacre of hundreds of cops and the slaughter of half of Liberty City’s gang population. Hell, the infamous Trevor Phillips seems to be largely designed to represent that most chaotic side of player tendencies, and they even brought back the old “kill frenzy” system in the form of side missions for him. These new player characters are a little divisive it seems, but I can’t really relate to most people’s criticisms of them and their particular parts of the story, as I found them all perfectly enjoyably, even if Trevor’s violent insanity sometimes slips from being hilarious to feeling genuinely disturbing. Hell, you’re introduced to him brutally beating Johnny from The Lost and Damned to death in probably the series’s most WTF moment, at least for fans of that story.

GTA IV’s weird take on “realistic” physics are, for all intents and purposes, totally gone. The game still feels a bit more grounded in reality than previous GTAs which is probably necessary to maintain Rockstar’s priority for strong player immersion with this engine, but driving feels more like an arcade racer yet again, and it really seems like everything has been repurposed with a focus of being, you know, actually fun, in mind. What a concept! Speaking of which, planes are back! There’s even submarines!

But there's still a bit of moody crime drama too...
“But there’s still a bit of moody crime drama too…”

Finally, the story definitely meanders a lot less than GTA IV and doesn’t run out of steam before the end despite being around the same length overall, if not a tiny bit longer by the time you throw in a healthy heaping of side missions. No, it’s not flawless. Everything you’d been doing in San Andreas comes to a screeching halt as you end up in a new setting and with a new cast of characters when Trevor’s first introduced, for example. Still, it didn’t feel like it dragged on anything close to as badly as GTA IV did. Despite being able to swap between 3 protagonists at will, the mission structure is more linear which helps a lot with this, and the missions themselves tend to be much less linear as a nice trade off. Tonally, it feels a lot more like The Ballad of Gay Tony than GTA IV proper, which is to say a little more action movie than moody crime drama, though, in keeping with that similarity, the missions are a lot more over the top (and a lot more fun) as a result. Besides, Rockstar has Red Dead Redemption for that mature, serious storytelling stuff now, right?

In the end, GTA V feels like a great summation of the entire series, with the best overall versions of almost all of its systems, a ton of throwbacks and references to earlier games, and quite a lot of fun to be had. I could go on and on about this game. I mean, I haven’t even talked about the new first person mode, the excellent soundtrack and radio stations, all of the new side activities, or hell, GTA fucking Online, but I’ll just finish up here by saying that I absolutely love Grand Theft Auto V!

PC screenshots car jacked from random Steam Community users! Braaap braaaaaap!

Ruffian

Over 10 years after my interest was first piqued by it, I finally loaded up Bully: Scholarship Edition for Xbox 360. While yet another GTA 3 style open world game, I thought the unique tone of Bully would offer me a nice change from what I’d been playing lately. After researching it a little, I decided to play it using Xbox One’s backwards compatibility which I’m happy to report worked great, suffering no performance issues and only a single freeze up (which was likely unrelated to backwards compatibility, though who really knows.) Anyway, on to Bullworth Academy!

Our hero, Jimmy Hopkins. (Yeah, don't ask!)
“Our hero, Jimmy Hopkins. (Yeah, don’t ask!)”

As a fan of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, Bully is an interesting title. Coming out between GTA: San Andreas and GTA IV, it runs on the same RenderWare based engine as the GTA 3 series and definitely shares a lot of its design aesthetics as well, from the wacky character designs to the loading screen artwork and even the UI. In fact, having been a while since I’ve played any of the three games in the GTA 3 series, I was taken aback by the familiarity of being back in that engine again. Even keeping in mind that the Scholarship Edition is a remastered version of the original Bully from the end of the previous generation, it was a bit like stepping into a time machine, despite being a totally different game.

Gameplay-wise, it’s obviously a different coat of paint on the same old GTA 3 formula. While there’s a valiant attempt to change its scope a bit by focusing more on smaller areas and more on-foot interaction, the structure of the storytelling, the missions, etc. are all pure GTA 3. I recall more than one person referring to Bully as “Grand Theft Auto: Schoolyard” or something similar back in the day, and that doesn’t feel too off the mark, honestly. Sure, you might be running around on foot, or riding a BMX or a skateboard around the relatively small town of Bullworth instead of stealing sports cars and gunning it through the streets of Vice City, and of course you’re giving wedgies instead of mowing down your enemies in a hail of sub-machine gun fire, but it is GTA 3.

Welcome to Bullworth Academy! It only gets worse from here...
“Welcome to Bullworth Academy! It only gets worse from here…”

Therein lies the charm of Bully, though – by taking the parody heavy humor and oddly jaded worldview of Grand Theft Auto and moving it into the much smaller world of private school drama, the game manages to capture a lot of the real (and much more so, totally fictional) nostalgia of growing up, all with a wink and a nod that feels very, very Rockstar. This really is Bully’s main strength and what sets it apart from GTA, and likely why many people rank it above any of the GTA games. Maybe if I had played it back when it was released I’d feel the same way. I did enjoy the game, overall, but I can’t say I absolutely loved it or anything. My issues?

Well, first of all, as mentioned, the gameplay and mission design is absolute GTA, but this is pre-GTA IV GTA, meaning many of the mechanical improvements that occurred throughout the development of the franchise are either absent or in a very early form here. Most notably, the inability to quickly retry a failed mission drove me just a little crazy the handful of times I failed a mission. What can I say, I suppose I’ve been spoiled by more modern, friendly game design…

The load screens also get the GTA 3 treatment.
“The load screens also get the GTA 3 treatment.”

Then we have the whole “school day” structure. At first I found this to be an interesting and even appealing mechanical twist, but after hours having to keep an eye on the clock to make it to classes, having to take note of the nightly curfew, having to devote half of my day to attempting to pass classes, and of course, having to sleep, it felt more restrictive than anything else, and it did nothing to help the feeling of repetition already present in the GTA mission formula. I guess feeling limited by school hours and a curfew, and the repetitiveness of school life, are quite accurate to the experience of being a high school kid, but it’s not exactly fun (again, like being a high school kid.) I also found the mini-games that represent each class largely more interesting of a concept than in reality, sadly.

Another difference from the proper Grand Theft Auto games that I found to be a negative was the soundtrack. I had noticed at some point during my playthrough that the lack of GTA 3’s awesome radio stations was noticeably detracting from the experience but when I went online to see if others had similar complaints I discovered that Bully’s soundtrack seems to be almost universally lauded. Some of the tracks are kind of neat, sure, and it’s definitely unique, but largely I found most of the songs on the original soundtrack to be a little simple, overly repetitive, and often didn’t quite fit the tone of the game. I guess I’m alone on this point?

Well of course there's racing!
“Well of course there’s racing!”

I also had some issues with the story. I appreciate how concise it is, that was one of the selling points to me in fact, but it felt like there might have been some missions and cutscenes left on the cutting room floor. In the fifth and final chapter Jimmy’s attempts to win over (and thereby take over) the school have progressed very nicely resulting in Jimmy ending up on top. There’s a major tonal shift, as all of the sudden everyone loves him and everything is going according to plan. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, everyone hates him. Like, really hates him. I almost got whiplash from that alone, but some of it can be explained away easily enough by pinning it on Gary manipulating everyone and general resentment from your peers, but then who the hell are the townies and why are they going through such extreme efforts to screw with Jimmy? Surely the original version of the script had several more missions, or maybe even another entire chapter or so to flesh this transition out. Maybe I’m blowing this particular issue out of proportion as I found only a few people discussing this issue online, but it really stuck out to me regardless.

Gym class!
“Gym class!”

Admittedly this is all a bit nitpicky. Overall, I’d say if the idea of a nostalgic journey back to the mid 2000s era of GTA appeals to you (or if you can stomach, at least) and you like the idea of playing a mostly likable teenage troublemaker raising hell in a stuffy private school, it’s likely you’ll enjoy the experience. I certainly did even if it did fall a bit short of my expectations.

All screenshots stolen from users on the Steam Community, which means they’re obviously from the PC version rather than the Xbox 360 version. Close enough!