“City of freedoms for outstanding people” – considerations by GTA 4

I never loved GTA games, although he played in childhood like many. It was the 3rd part for urban grayness and the depressiveness of the surrounding space that was pretty to me. Then of course I would not formulate this, but the “three” brought me the mood of the gangster thriller, like those domestic series about the bandits, which then turned along our TV. Perhaps this is all that I loved in this game, well, except for aimless driving around the city under the local chill rain in search of something remarkable. By the way, I almost did not perform tasks, they always seemed boring to me, and because of a bug with fonts that turned any text into yellow stripes, I still did not understand what they wanted from me. Vice City with his sunny western coast was no longer interested in me at all, since this game did not resonate with my associations, and I still did not offer anything interesting by the okre of the police from the police.

I carried these impressions through my whole life, and to this day I adhere to them. And, in fact, if it were not for the Epic Games, who had not made an attraction of unprecedented generosity with the distribution of GTA 5, I would never have discovered this wonderful video game, which has become one of me my favorite. GTA 5 is difficult to praise, how difficult it is to speak with objective criticism. You can only wish for the “five” more, and then in the game there is almost everything that I would like to see in it personally. In addition to reigree, except, but this is a feature of all the large plot games-the already told story, no matter how charming and funny it may be, with a repeated story will no longer cause previous impressions, and almost most of all the advantages of GTA 5 are connected just with the plot-distant component, so I will return to this remarkable game only after a couple of years, when the emotions are overshadowed and the memoirs and the memoriesCloudly.

But the GTA 5 is such a grandiose game that, in addition to the painstaking work as such, it was based on the many years of development of ideas and technologies that originate from past projects, and on enthusiasm for the completion of the “fifth”, I ended up with the idea of ​​looking into the past, evaluate the predecessor and trace some evolution of the series, so to speak, so to say. But to observe there there is something.

The first impressions of GTA 4

I must say, the first impressions of the “Chemits” were extremely bad. The situation was the opposite of the one that took place in my childhood consciousness – after bright colors and the general pictures of GTA 5, the prequel is perceived by the triumph of the inexpressiveness and fading of the environment, where even sunlight does not revive the panoramas of the city, but kneads them to a mass of gray and brown halftones. This is not that the problem of the game, and, in fact, the “four” from certain angles and at the expense of the chosen setting looks very realistic, recreating the despondency of city landscapes most accurately, but you still need to get used to such visual condition. Yes, and personally I wanted something more similar to the 3rd part, a little of this dense gangster noir, pouring rains, the feelings that this city was rotten, and so on. In addition to the general colorlessness of the game, I had to twist the drawing range and the depth of sharpness of more than half, because the 4000 FPS, which I first admired, did not slow down to turn into 40-20 at the next road turn. You can also live with this and the game does not visually lose much, but the very fact that the “four” works for me worse than the sequel is somewhat funny. But what is much more funny, in the future, in order to be able to pass the game, I will have to mercilessly crush all my FPS, but more on that later.

On the graphone of suspicions as the game do not end, in terms of driving by cars, at first there are also big complaints. It must be for the sake of general realism, but a significant part of the cars is felt here like ironing, especially as for maneuvering. You feel how difficult this iron coffin returns from the drift to the direct trajectory, and how hard it enters the turn, almost falling apart on the move. Moreover, the game will also have full-fledged cars, those to the management of which I managed to get used to GTA 5, but up to half of the vehicles in the game are low-speed clumsy carts, and their separate percentage, in principle, is not suitable for use due to unbearable in small. And, as in the case of the color palette of the game, I don’t want to call it a disadvantage, because this is a conscious design solution to achieve a certain realism of the world and environment, and it cannot be said that the decision is unsuccessful.

Appearance and content

I myself have never been in New York, but from what could be seen in various films, and what I watched myself through Google Cart, Liberty City from GTA 4, if I do not copy the manner of developing my prototype, then I definitely seek to endure separate architectural features of the famous metropolis-these are not only a low-memory Times Square and Liberty Island, but also various iconic oscillatorsareas planted with brick low high -rise buildings with these characteristic fire departments at the ends. In this sense, it is quite interesting to be in Liberty City due to the emphasized reliability that has a dive into the game, although there are no memorable places in the GTA 4 and there is still nothing to catch on the eyes.

But, however, this is not necessary, because it does not intend to entit the game with views of the city. In the 3rd part, and in Vice City, the plot also existed more nominally, acting as an occasion to go somewhere and kill someone. However, maybe someone sincerely worried about the relationship of Claude and his rushing bitch, and for the fate of that corrupt cop from the public toilet, as to know. For me, the plot component of the “fourth” looks like a real revolution of the genre, not only because by 2008 it was no longer possible to make such games in the old way, without a scenario structure, but also because the story in GTA 4 is extremely good.

Within the framework of its own genre, of course. But you need to understand that video games are an independent media, and the plots are written primarily with an emphasis on the gaming process itself, and that no matter how deep and ornate there would be a story, first of all they play the games. Here we have a full -fledged, albeit very mundane, the story of a simple Serbian guy named Niko, who arrived in Liberty City to grab a piece of famous American freedom and success for himself. Nico is not that a very complex character, he is more likely to characterize the actions and reaction to events around, but in this hypostasis he looks quite a living person, behind whom you can even see a certain moral depth, God forgive me.

What is the peculiarity of the plot-creative side of the game? Nico, he, like Hawk from Dragon Age 2, came out of nowhere, being nobody, and began to do what he could best solve problems. What is curious, in the case of NI this happened almost spontaneously, because the first missions of the game almost do not encourage us to participate in criminal affairs. Just settled down, we are peacefully as a romance for our cousin, who turned out to be at all as successful businessman as he colorfully outlined in letters to his homeland, but at least having an extra bunk in a wretched apartment. And so the life of another disenfranchised hard worker in the country would have subsided if the novel had not been a gambling player who owed the wrong people. And now our cousin disrespectfully bends under himself a local Russian mafia in the person of a small -caliber mafia named Vlad, who also offers us to work for a relative.

Here you need to understand that the plot in https://ninewincasino.uk/ the Four is fascinating not at the expense of the plot, although interesting events are also happening here, but it is precisely due to local artistic and emotional coloring. That GTA 5, that the fourth part has very peculiar humor and mood – I would call it an expressive criminal comedy – a kind of theatrical expression, coupled with caricature violence, where all the characters are a kind of participants in the game, the games where they can kill, yes, but most of the time to everyone has fun. Something the same happens in Tarantino’s films when what is happening both funny and seriously at the same time. And, as in the case of Tarantino, the event in the GTA 4 goes into the background, yielding to performances of characters. That the ever -scolding panic of Roman, suffering humiliation from the fear that he will be taken by the eggs, that this same Vlad, mocking the rustic fools who came up and rolled his eggs to his beloved novel, then Mafiosi Mikhail and Dmitry – one hysterical paranoik, the other just a treacherous bastard – up to Pigorino – a caricature of the gang.Makaronnikov, selfless old asshole. All of them are very memorable and amusing characters, while a sufficient threat comes from them so that what is happening does not turn into a final farce. Let Nico and the protagonist, and therefore protected by the plot armor, but still deal with dangerous people, which they will remind him of.

And, in general, the turning point happens almost by itself. A frustrated novel knocked out a cousin that the vile Vlad unceremoniously undertakes his lover, ready to get drunk and forget himself with a dream when Nico with his amusing Serbian accent answers “well, let’s go and punish him”. And yes, to the horror of the novel, he does it – he comes and shoots the scum in the head. Although the soft -haired Nico is difficult to suspect in a hot disposition, he never adheres to a half -dead manner. Nothing goes unnoticed and now Niko appears to the owners of Vlad, Mikhail and Dmitry, who are not very upset by the death of a fat woman, but are interested in the potential. And from this moment it is already possible to confidently conclude that the main character, who was only trying to start a new life, was again bogged down in the criminal path of an alien country for him, which is not very sorry for the gift that the work of the hired killer is his calling.

I won’t describe further development of the plot, I will only say that Niko is as talented as the unreliable performer and a considerable number of his tenants he will shoot personally, which for some reason does not spoil the reputation of the Serbian immigrant in the criminal world of Liberty City-professionals can be forgiven for professionals.

I will share a spontaneous consideration. The plot function of Niko as a hired killer and anarchy incarnator in the city of freedoms, coupled with the fact that the “four” meets the player with the Zapilium of the migrants, and the Slavic nationalities, a couple of times and encouraged me to think that everything that was happening in the game is a certain metacronage on the destructive influence of cosmopolitanism and the destruction of the American lifestyle from the inside. But in fact, in the GTA series there are no positive characters at all, local, that visitors, that power, that robbers are all bastards.

Gameplay and game situations

From the artistic side of the game again to the gameplay. The conventional deficiencies of the “fourth” include some console of battle and shooting. If we go, then be sure with a target-lick, if we shoot, then more often from shelters. Enemies have something like a Hels-bar, which also strongly spoils the impression after GTA 5, in which the opponents died much more naturally, but at the same time, an automatic weapon in the hands of Nico shoots opponents quickly enough. The rest of the enemies do not behave very smartly, but they are folding and reliably dying under the shots of the protagonist, therefore the overall impression of shooting is more positive.

By the standard of a series of difficulty levels in the Four is not provided, but I would say that it will be more complicated than the sequel. At least there are no skills like a slowdown in time, and the enemies, although blind, but from close distance, take out the main character quite swiftly. It is also not easy to get away from the chase, although police cordons on bridges break through with cinematic lightness.

What is interesting, if the police kills the player, he retains all the weapons, but if she arrests him, then say goodbye to all of his arsenal of the little banana republic, Nico. Money in the game, of course, with an excess for many years to come, but the amount is still too large so as not to resort to the latest preservation. The fact that at that time I had already left the chases of varying degrees of difficulty a couple of dozen times, but they arrested me at the moment when I and my friend, who were killed in the trash, walked homely home. And the opposite situation, when the delivery of a friend home after the drinking dumps from Nico the entire criminal rating, and four police cars, who stubbornly raped me in the ass, no longer understand what they are doing here.

Among other amusing situations, only in GTA 4 I had a situation in which law enforcement officers were packed right on the spot. And in general, do not care that he is angry with me because I drove him on the hood a moment before. Nice, however. Not like in the old parts where the police will break your spine hand in hand with gangsters.

Tasks in the game, I must say, are a very solid amount, and they all try to be as diverse as the in -game scripts allow without a difficult plot production. In half the cases, this is still a schematic “come and kill everyone”, but there are also very sensible instructions. As, for example, one beautiful morning in Liberty City needs to shoot a typical Gangste, but the trouble is that he sits in the apartment and does not lean out. The young man is busy watching the TV, that he opens several options for actions, the most obvious of which to bang on a television plate so that he leaned out to see where his favorite television show about Naruto suddenly disappeared. Or another story, where, at the request of our extraordinary friend of Bryusi, we are trying to make an appointment on the dating site a metro -industry native of the neighboring countries, then to deal with him right there.

Innovations and the nature of the game

Exploring the game, to my surprise, I found that there are not only a huge set of developments for the subsequent part of the series, but also original ideas that, unfortunately, did not receive it. I say, of course, about the social interaction of Nico with the inhabitants of Liberty City. If in GTA 5 Michael, Franklin and Trevor were not interested in friendship with anyone except their small circle, and even women were not very interested in them, then Nico in the course of the plot has full-fledged friends and romantic ties. In general, the “four” realized more social elements than any Fable-Nico makes friends and girl, periodically spends time with them, visiting some entertainment institutions, and as such relations grow, new comrades provide some help to the protagonist.

In fact, it sounds much more interesting than it is actually. Help from friends is quite modest, although there were prerequisites for much more. For example, a bastard named Jacob, to whom we helped to deliver nonsense, is harnessed for us and we will storm the warehouse where we kept the novel. Jacob’s participation was, of course, symbolic, but from the point of view of interactivity, how cool the gameplay element, the help of friends could be. I could, but, unfortunately, did not, it was a screenshot moment. Otherwise, friends constantly require attention, offending the absence of one, and at least through every task you can take one of them to have fun. I think that a third or quarter of the whole game time in GTA 4 I was only engaged in hanging out with a novel, Jacob, Bryusi and other Hawmi, not to mention the first romantic interest in the form of a michelle. And yes, it took me a lot of time and there was no need for it, but I had fun to spend time with these heroes, beat the cables with Dwayne, feed the novel with elite burgers and get drunk to a complete state with Bruce.

Bryusi, by the way, is a reckless and hyperactive egocentric, orgaming from himself, and at the same time he is another example of how well “Rockstar” writes out similar caricature images in his games. In life, I would hold on to such an uncontrollable Zhivchik at the distance of a cannon shell, but in the game to communicate with him is just a delight.

Michelle is generally a wonderful girl, she is satisfied with absolutely everything that the main character does and how he dresses, only a drawback – she is an agent under cover. So the honest immigrant heart breaks.

For some reason, the plot of the game bowed me to the fact that the daughter of pasta Kate is a romantic object for Nico, although as for me she is quite nasty, she always did not suit dates and my manner of dressing, she did not feel a gentle Serbian touch on herself, and generally to her damn, Michelle is our woman. In addition, by the end of the game, I had an affair with a lawyer from a dating site who always called me a kobel, but at the same time I was unrestrained to meet with me. Because when Kate is killed in my ending, I could not divide the suffering of the protagonist.

Yes, in the game, after all, there are two ends. And a few more plot forkholes smaller. In a global sense, they are expected to affect anything, but it’s nice to make a choice, all the more so as it regards the characters, which one way or another leave some emotional imprint on the player. They are furnished, of course, stupid, as when Nigga Playboy and his prison Hawomi Dwayne, on the basis of all kinds of tension, decide to kill each other ahead and at the same time ask the player to help in this. In general, the choice was obvious to me, and Penthouse Playboy then became mine. Again, the mission from the category of “come and kill everyone”, but how much such instructions are ennobled by context.

And so the game is held, in communication with extravagant characters, performed by their instructions of varying degrees of ingenuity, and in conducting leisure with friends and friends. Almost normal life. But Nico passes according to the classification “Romantic Hero” and life always prepares him a challenge, at least in the person of the former employer Dmitry. This evil Russian, one might say, is obsessed with the idea of ​​getting to Nico, although there is hardly a sound reason. In addition, Nico also has his own plot arches, because he simultaneously runs from the punishment of a certain Mr. Bulgarin, and at the same time he is looking for a traitor, because of which the entire detachment of the protagonist was postponed during the war in his homeland. All roads lead to Liberty City.

At least in the game and two endings, but their epilogue is common, only circumstances differ. You can kill Dmitry and then, by virtue of certain events, Kate will die, or to agree with him, and then the novel will die. And the ending is directly the worst thing in the whole game, because today it is broken, and you do not know this and is honestly sure that you could not do it or did something wrong. Its essence is that at some point the player, having killed thirty people in a rather dangerous shootout, pursues a boat with a killer of Kate on a moped, after which he should soak into the air with a springboard and grab the helicopter. The problem is that Niko does not want to grab a helicopter. I hollowed how not in myself by the Quick-Tem-Event button, but everything is in vain, Nico falls into the water. What other attempts follow, many attempts, because jumping to the helicopter is not too simple, scooters and motorcycles are controlled in the game extremely lousy. Fucking from a helicopter five or six, I finally realized that something was wrong here. And really. They write on the Internet that in order to climb into the damned helicopter, you need to kill your FPS, best with the video recording program. And yes, I got confused for the last 5 minutes of the game, installed this program, unscrewed all the settings at the maximum, and already at 15-40 fps began to drag an unhoken moped on the sandy beach in the hope that everything will work out now. And really it happened. And it would be a great ending of a completely decent game, if she had not decided to break exactly 5 minutes before the final credits.

Actually, this will come up for the final impression – a game that at first made the most repulsive impression both graphically and play -mechanically, ultimately carried me so much that I wished to make an effort in excess in order to finish it properly. GTA 4 is inferior to its successor in all key aspects, but this does not make it a bad game, it is only played differently, at a different pace, in a slightly different plane. At the same time, the “four” itself has gathered a lot of wonderful innovations, which enormously transformed the once primitive and meager, as for me, a series, and of course was the impetus for the development of concepts of the excellent GTA 5. Moreover, the game over the past years has not lost its uniqueness, and it is really a pity that the idea of ​​the hero’s personal life in the future did not receive its development.

Not without its problems in managing and working capacity, but the game looks acceptable today – at least everything related to the image of people, it fluctuates from “pretty” to “monstrous” – and playing the “four” is also quite exciting by today’s standards, although not least due to the plot and dialogue side of this video game. Yes, and Niko Belllik himself, although a simple to disgrace, a protagonist of dubious moral qualities, but he is a charming hero in his own way, and the passage of the game in his skin was far from the most nasty gaming.

I myself certainly got what I wanted, and I do not regret the time spent, whether even 15 attempts to jump on a helicopter or completely, as it turned out, unnecessary social lights. It is only sad that they did not apply subtitles on television shows, in the GTA 5 I laughed as finished with a sorting-sarcous humor inherent in the series as a whole, but it did not work out here.