No Game New Year: Finished GTA 5, Cheating and a Week Off

Ado guys, here with my weekly update.

Week Off

First thing's first: Don't expect to hear from me next week or the week after, or if you do, it will be significantly shorter than usual. Reason is my girlfriend's going to be staying with me for all of the week after next so I won't have time to write my blog.

Now, when I put it like that, it makes the relationship seem a lot more arbitrary/under the thumb than it actually is, so for the benefit of the No Game New Year guys who probably don't know this, I think I'd better explain the situation:

First, yes, she is the girl in the photo. Amy is her name. We got together three and a half years ago, and for most of that time have lived 90 miles apart. This means that we don't get to see one another anywhere near as often as we would like; at the moment we see each other once every two weekends. Amy is not a 'gamer' in the usual sense; she'll play some games now and again if she's in to the intellectual property (any of the Lego games, and Lord of the Rings!) but she wouldn't do what I do and sit down with a game for hours trying to finish it. As we see so little of each other, I don't want to take up too much of the time we do get to spend together writing blogs into which she can't have any input. The reason she'll be staying with me all week next week (beginning Feb 17th) is because we both work in schools; we're not usually allowed to take time off during term, but in the UK we get 3 'half term' breaks every 6 or 7 weeks and we generally stay with one another during that week. We might play some games, in which case I'll write about it at the end of the week after - but it won't be anything major.

Cheating (sort of:) Open R.A.

So I've downloaded a new game onto my laptop, Open R.A. which stands for Open Red Alert. I've come across some Open games and they're basically remakes and free downloads of so-called 'Abandonware' - games that you can no longer buy from the publishers. I've also got Open T.T.D, which is Transport Tycoon Deluxe, which I downloaded several years ago and hope to tackle again during the challenge. I downloaded Open R.A. under recommendation from TotalBiscuit, who did a video of it last week. I've really wanted to have a go at Command and Conquer again so this seemed an ideal way to do it.

Now, in the spirit of the No Game New Year challenge, I probably shouldn't have done this, but I think I can get away with it for the following reasons:

1. It was a free download so I didn't spend any money on the game, and I've been downloading games off Xbox Live from my Gold membership since September so it's about as legal as that;
2. I actually already own Command and Conquer: Red Alert, so I guess you could look at it as replacing a game I already owned. Why does it need replacing? Well, the version I've got was designed for Windows 95, so I really can't see it working on Windows 7. It also comes with mods to play Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000, and I never owned either so perhaps this doesn't count - but again, I didn't play any money for them.
3. I'm really not sure for how long you're going to be able to download this. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I thought the rule for Abandonware is that had to no longer be possible to buy the original game for it to count. You can still buy all the Command and Conquer games from the Command and Conquer website, so Red Alert is not abandonware, therefor I'm not entirely sure that an Open version of the game is legal. I may have only had a very limited window of opportunity to get the game, so I took it.

I haven't played the game yet so I haven't got a clue how it works; that will wait for a future video.

Finished GTA 5. Finally!

I think last Tuesday I finally got to the end of Grand Theft Auto V. Or at least, I completed all the main story missions. Didn't quite manage all the Strangers and Freaks missions, and the game reckons I've still only finished 79% of it. Some of it I found impossible; Trevor's missions where he has to locate various people based on segments of the map that are shown in photo-form on his phone are horribly difficult simply because I don't know what part of the form it refers to. But as the plot thickened towards the end, I found myself wanting to play the story missions more and more to see where it was going.

*SPOILER ALERT*

I have conflicting opinions about the last few missions of the game. After being put in a significant amount of danger from the story's main antagonist, the three characters Michael, Trevor and Franklin decided to deal with him once and for all - and also, three other characters that have antagonised them along the way. Interestingly, they decide to kill the characters that have antagonised not themselves, but one of the others, to keep suspicion off each other. So, Michael kills Franklin's antagonist, Franklin kills Trevor's, and Trevor kills Michael's. They then capture the main antagonist and kill him

This was interesting enough given that the three assassinations required different approaches - Trevor has to be uncharacteristically careful, while Franklin has to do his from a vehicle - but given the scale of what the characters get themselves into earlier on in the game, the whole thing seemed a bit anti-climax. The earlier Heist missions, and even the shootout at the foundry that lead to the situation, were bigger in scope and a lot of fun to play out, and given some of the things you can do in Multiplayer mode - air combat, for one thing - it's a bit disappointing to never get to do those things in the main game.

That having been said, story-wise it was the best possible ending for all concerned and the scenes that followed were brilliant; the story could pretty much end there and I'd be happy.

*SPOILER OVER*

So, do I keep it or move it on? Well I'm going to keep it. For one thing, it would be nice to 100% it - however long it takes me. There's quite a bit of mileage left in the multiplayer mode as well and I would be very interested to see how it's developed in the future, I'm up to level 18 now. And I've still only got about a quarter of all possible achievement points, so I could look for some of those if I so wish - I could very well return to GTA V again.

But not now. It's time to move on. To what, I don't know - it's been a long game and I might look for something a bit light-hearted to play next!

See you all soon!

Matt