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

No Game New Year Part 2: Grand Theft Auto 5. This is going to take me a while...

Hi there.

So No Game New Year is going well so far in the sense that I haven't given in to temptation and bought a new game. Early days, I know. But it's rare that we get this far in to new year and I haven't so much as set foot in a game store! In terms of my progress with GTA 5, I wasn't expecting to have much time to play this week due to work/band/Dungeons and Dragons/girlfriend commitments, but an unexpected day off work on Wednesday (I was sick with a cold) meant that I had some time between sleeping and eating to go through the game and I'm up to roughly 28% so far.

Two major things to mention today, and the first is character development. I'm actually really impressed with how this is working out. Michael, Franklin and Trevor (I've now found all three) are their own characters. There is evidence of crime movie tropes within them, but they all have there own different ways of dealing with things and people, and it makes them a lot more believable than characters in video games might otherwise be.

This is quite hard to explain without giving away spoilers, but I think I can say with some certainty that Michael is the character I can most relate to at the moment. In terms of the decisions I've made that have affected the course of my life, I haven't always got it right, and now that I'm 28 I have to live with the consequences of those decisions. And while my personal issues aren't on quite the same level as Michael's problems, it does make me empathise with him. He's well aware of his faults on being too quick to anger, but is desperately trying to make things work with his family, only to have it all blow up in his face because in reality, the damage was done a long time before... and he is forced to follow the only option left open to him.

Contrast this with Trevor... if you've played the game, you'll know what I mean when I say he is at the same time the most and least likeable character in the entire game. Yes, he is an absolute badass. But at the same time, playing as him, or watching his cut scenes, actually makes me feel very uneasy. You've got no idea when he's talking seriously about something or is about to lose it completely and violently murder somebody, or both. He is clearly a very dangerous man, fitting for a GTA game, but not a comfortable or enjoyable character to play. I'll tell you what he's like: He's like the 'hard' people I knew at school, the violent aggressive gang of bullies that prided themselves on nothing but their opinion that they could beat up anybody in the whole school. The only method I had of dealing with those people was to avoid them if at all possible, and if our paths ever did have occasion to cross, I had to keep my head down, my mouth shut, and utter a silent prayer to a God I didn't believe in that they wouldn't decide to mess with me today. That's what it was like when we were all 15. Trevor looks to be around 45, and it looks much, much worse.

And if you're wondering why I'm going in to such depth about the characters... well, that's how good this game is. It actually makes you care about the characters involved. So yeah, well done for that.

My second point regards the missions. If you read last week's blog you'll recall I talked about the missions that, while good in their own way, lacked variety in the ways you might approach them. This didn't change all that much to begin with. Again, the missions worked well as set-pieces, and the Heist missions (of which I have done one) give a choice when planning them of a gung-ho or stealthy approach which was nice, but once you actually get to playing the game, it does sometimes feel like an elaborate game of Simon Says.

This got better once Trevor came in to it. Once this happened, I noticed a lot more of, shall we say, 'classic' GTA missions where far from running and gunning, you actually have to think about how you're going to do it. For example, the mission where you have to destroy the O'Neil farm is an absolute beauty. While I'm sure it's possible to rush the whole farm with the right combination of weapons and armour, I actually prefer sniper rifles, even if I am appalling at using them. The game really did make you think about what group of enemies would be best to take out first, what weapon to use, and whether another option is available to you. In the end, I took out the middle rank of guards first with the sniper rifle, the front two using stealth, and by the time I got to the house, there were few enough left to make running and gunning an impossible task so I got to do a bit of that as well. Now, this might have been the optimal way to do this mission, I don't know. But the crucial point here is that the game let me figure it out. It didn't keep flashing pop-up messages at me saying "Take these guys out with the rifle" or "Stealth-kill these guys." That made for a much more enjoyable experience. I would like to see more of this as the game progresses. As I said before, I am aware that some of the missions were designed as set-pieces and have to play out in a certain way. But it's good to have a little bit of choice in the matter.

I also noticed the 'Skip' button, where if you fail a mission three times you can choose to skip it. I've never deployed this, but I'm assuming it means that the game will continue as though you had finished the mission, even though you hadn't.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I can see why it has to exist. The storyline and character development have been by far the strongest point of the game so far and you wouldn't want to de-rail the whole thing because you got stuck. On the other hand it can take a lot of the challenge out of the game simply by giving you the chance to avoid it. And not in a clever, Metroid-Vania style 'cast-a-spell-that-turns-you-in-to-a-bat-and-allows-you-to-fly-over-the-fight-you-can't-do' way, because at least you have to find the spell that turns you in to a bat and you can give yourself a pat on the back for figuring out that particular strategy. No, this literally allows you to skip the bit you're on, like a level skip cheat on a Sega Megadrive/Genesis game, only this time you don't even need the cheat code.

Well, fair enough, if that's what it needs to keep the story going then that's what it needs. But I'm unlikely ever to use it myself. I'd be depriving myself of the immense satisfaction of either figuring out how to do a tricky mission, or getting past a tough part; that's where the game gets really good and I'm not going to throw it away!

A few additional points:

One of the things Rockstar don't really appreciate - and to be fair, they're not the only ones, I've seen quite a few games do this - is that not all of us have screens the size of classroom whiteboards. Mine is about 16 inches by 9, and due to the layout of my bedroom, this is not likely to change. While this rarely gives me a problem in playing the game, it does make the text a little difficult to read. Particularly in this game where messages come through the cell phone, I've really had to strain to read some of those text pieces. A bit bigger please, guys!

I've had a go with some of the mini-games as well, namely Tennis, Darts, and 'that' section of the strip club. They function well for what they are, but they are far too easy. Maybe it's because I've played Topspin on the old Xbox, which works in much the same way as the tennis game in GTA 5, but it was much too easy to beat the computer, and not that hard on Multiplayer either. Yeah I get it, they've made GTA 5, not a tennis game, but it takes some of the fun out of it knowing there's almost no challenge in there. Then again, maybe I'm just not playing the right people.

I also had a go with GTA Online and I'm liking that a lot better now that it's not just a free-for-all and there are actually some missions involved with it, as well as some more conventional multiplayer modes like death matches and team battles. I'm not awful at this, (I am in some other games) but I'm not great at it either. I think in some cases I have pissed off members of my team, not because I don't know what I am doing but simply that I'm not very good at doing it. But it's enjoyable enough, and probably as good as an online version of GTA is going to get.

We'll see how far next week takes us!