Greater Satellites

I was prompted/inspired to write this blog after having read a little piece called “Confessions of a Grand Theft Auto Virgin” by Chris Kohler over at Wired News blog.  Basically, up until a month ago he had never played a next gen (GTA3+) Grand Theft Auto game.    In the weeks leading up to the eminent release, he played through each of the games and reviewed each on a variety of factors, years after the fact.  Sound like a fun idea?  It did to me, too, until I read the articles.  Come on a journey with me. You can find the original article here: http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/04/confessions-o-2.html

How many of those (21.5 million) people have actually beaten the game? How many have even gotten past the first few hours of missions?

Maybe we should start a poll and find out.  Anyone game?

I’d heard it thrown around that “nobody ever beats a GTA” or “nobody plays the missions.”

“I went on a few messages boards and the first couple threads said nobody plays the missions, so I didn’t either.”

…by trying to actually play through the Grand Theft Auto games without giving myself invincibility, infinite cash, or a never-ending supply of rocket launchers, I might have been getting a vastly different experience than the majority of the series’ biggest fans.

The biggest fans of this series are not the people mashing cheat codes, they’re the people who were in line on the release day waiting to tear into the game and get knee deep in the story.  They were the people who were excited to hear that you could fly planes and ride bicycles in San Andreas.  Basically, these were the people you’re not.

The approach of a casual gamer like Chris (perhaps just entering the series) would be to just put in some cheats and rampage the day away, but it seems a little silly to paint all of the other players with the same brush.  I’ve successfully completed both Vice City and San Andreas and admittedly got pretty far (to the fabled third area) in GTA3.  What shines the most in these games is, hands down, how they tie incredibly fun missions into the twisted web of story.  Sure, Vice City was almost a direct rip of Scarface, but who didn’t love the mission where you goal was to get a spotlight shining “Candy Suxxx” across the side of a building.  Who didn’t like cruising down The Strip of Las Venturas in San Andreas or earning the Jetpack / Fight Jet combo on your own personal hangar?  What about the awesome final missions of the game where CJ inevitably goes home to find the whole city rioting?  These are moments that you’d otherwise never see or experience in the game if you just sat around blowing up the same cars/trucks the whole time.

If anything, a lot of people who’ll be picking up a copy of GTA4 along with myself on the 29th will be playing through it all so they can add to the mythos behind the story.  They may not get anywhere near 100% completion (I mean, who has?) but they could very well beat the game, regardless of how many hours it takes. If people are willing to take their time with a RPG on the caliber of a Final Fantasy or Suikoden, surely it can’t be so different for fans of the GTA series.

Riding the el everyday affords me a lot of interesting opportunities other than power naps, watching couples fight, laughing silently about the wacky clothes people dare to wear in public, people watching, and power naps: displays of unadulterated Irony.

Take no offense if you’re reading this and you are one of the people I mention, I simply find some of the following things laughable; they’re things that I quickly forget about until I feel the need to blog about them just to point out the hilarity.

1. Insanely obese woman (we’re talking 300+) carry a set of Tae Bo tapes (happened only once, in her defense)
2. White guy with horn rimmed glasses and tear tattooed just below his eye (not a solid, filled-in tear, which usually indicates you’re a murdering mf’er, this was the outline of a tear, which usually means you were someone’s bitch in prison… neither seemed likely in his case, but the latter more probable)
3. “Bums” with bright, white Nikes on their feet
4. Big girls wearing sweatpants that read “Hottie”
5. People listening to music so loud that I can hear it outside of their headphones (we all know how I feel about that), dressed in a manner that is inappropriate for said music.

For example: Today I got on the el absurdly late for work. I believe the train arrived at my stop at 9:51 and I had to be in work at 10:00am, roughly 12 stops/6.6 miles away. Regardless, it was still well before noon, and keep that in mind because it will all come full circle in just a few minutes.

So I sit in my usual seat and swing my leg up onto the one next to me so no one can sit next to me, or touch the merchandise, so to speak, when I see a well-dressed business man (probably mid-to-late 30’s) come strolling thru the door from the car behind mine. I write him off as just another business-like-person going to coalesce into the sea of other business-like-people in the hearth of the city. He happens to sit down across the aisle from me and one row up, so I can keep an eye on this guy with a Jason Bourne-esque attention to detail. He pulls out a pair of, no surprise here, white earbuds followed by his iPod. Nothing at this point is setting off sirens or any kind of weirdness thus far. I see him scrolling around his playlists as I take in the people shuffling around to finding their seats and the urban sprawl passing by the windows at 60mph.

Bingo! Guy must’ve found what he was looking for all along since the iPod is going back into the pocket now. It just so happens that what the guy found was Metallica… and not good Metallica like Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets. We’re talking St. Anger. Yeah, I know, right! The not-so-good-but-better-than-riding-on-the-wake-of-shitty-ReLoad-Napster-era Metallica. How did I know this? Because I could hear the song pretty clearly over the hum of the ventilation system, the chatting of people around me, and last but certainly not least: the fucking loud sound the el tends to make simply by staying in motion!

So here’s this business man. Hair slicked back, black suit, leather courier-type bag, shiny shoes, the whole nine. Could be a lawyer on his way to court. Could be an employee at City Hall. Could very well work in a bank or something. Rocking out, pretty much publicly, to Metallica. He was tapping his toes and hands (though I could tell he wasn’t a drummer… takes one to know one I s’pose), nodding his head up and down, and mouthing the words at key points… namely the choruses.

I don’t care that you listen to Metallica. If you’re the age I guessed you are, you were probably headbanging to Damage Inc at a Metallica concert as a teen as opposed to headbanging a gay guy at a Flock of Seagulls show. Who wouldn’t want to relive the music of your youth every now and then? Especially if it’s as good as old Metallica. I get it, but man… Do it in the privacy of your own home or at least be discrete about it. For God sakes, it was before noon! No metal should be listened to before noon… It’s just not a healthy way to start your day. It is, however, a great way to unwind if you had a particularly tough day or you have an especially long drive home.

I try not to talk too much shit on people, because I’m sure someone out there hates me for the fact that I consistently take up two seats on the el, but then again I look like an asshole in the mornings, mainly due to my hostility towards everyone who gets to sleep late, so I’m sure people don’t expect too much from me. There’s our keyword for this blog: Expectation.

I don’t expect Joe Businessman to be rocking out to Vivaldi (if that’s even possible), but Metallica on the el loud enough for everyone to hear seems like a cry for help. If he was wearing jeans and a hoodie, no prob. In the comfort of his own car or home, no prob. But if you have an image to maintain, which you clearly do, try to play the part. Unless you’re just such an individual that you can’t be contained by the strictures of society… Then I guess it’s cool to listen to Metallica in a business suit, but for God’s sake, at least pick a decent Metallica album!