The best way to play GTA4 these days is with DXVK and several mods to fix things which never worked in the PC version, or have broken since, and to make the graphics less bad. Is that the way I just played through the entire game? Haha, no! I set all this up and then played through it on the Xbox because I wanted to be on the couch.
The most interesting thing about playing GTA4 for me now is how particular it is to 2008.
The phone’s not a smartphone. It was the very last year before they got everywhere and started changing everything. You use the phone to make calls and hold numbers. You can dial 911 to bring cops. You end up with no missions to go to so you flip through your contacts and call people to see if they have work, or (I guess) want to hang out. That’s not even a way people use a phone now. It must seem like such a weird random video game contrivance if you’re a few years younger than me.
Smartphones showed up and became ubiquitous in such an overnight way that the game doesn’t even know about them to make fun of them. Instead it makes fun of expensive ringtones, which weren’t even supported on the first smartphones, so those jokes stopped working almost immediately and now barely feel like jokes at all.
GTA5 still has the phone, but it’s smartphone-era and it’s shit, it doesn’t feel good. Smartphones are too complex and unwieldy for it to work. It’s weird: the phone felt like a stupid cumbersome over-simulation when the game came out, when for about a year it was a depiction of a contemporary phone, but now it feels like a fun, nostalgic little thing you can be fond of. You have to remind yourself that this wasn’t on purpose.
It’s bizarre to think what a different world 2008 was. This game has you going to Internet Cafes and doing online dating that isn’t through apps, because there’s functionally no such thing as an app until next year. I remember leaving a movie ten minutes early in 2008, because I had to catch the last bus home, and I didn’t have money for a taxi, and there was no way to send me money in a way that would arrive the same day, so if I missed it I’d have to call someone for a lift, and they wouldn’t have GPS, because nobody did. Which would never happen now, because it would have been a cheap Uber, and if I didn’t have the money PayPal or something would let me do it anyway, and if it didn’t, someone could instantly send me money, or my phone would tell me where to walk to find a bus that was still running.
I’ve never thought GTA succeeds on any level as a satire, being firmly on the “contributing to that which it intends to criticise” end of that spectrum, although I don’t particularly credit it with even intending to criticise anything, which would require more thoughts than I think you can fit in a Houser. Even in the most generous read of their awkward-preteen-level broken-record “satire”, it’s a satire of a culture the creators aren’t of, and is therefore cowardly as shit. But it does at least observe the state of the world and try to depict some version of it, and that makes GTA4 interesting, because smartphones changed everything so drastically and suddenly that this is now an Artifact, accidentally significant, quirky and charming in ways they could never have managed on purpose.
in reply to @joewintergreen’s post:
Interesting analysis of GTAIV, a very odd game… though why would it be “cowardly” for an outsider* to satirize American culture? The US needs more outsider commentary, frankly (most of the best insights come from people with a fresh perspective, even if I agree GTA is not particularly insightful). Really, the USA forfeit any right to be upset about jokes at their expense as long as they impose their culture and politics on the entire world, by force or coercion.
I mean, American culture is popular and a lot of it (films, games, music) is quite good, but it’s not like we (the rest of the world) have much of a choice in the matter. Historically, if you deviate from the American model of doing things, you get coup-ed, sanctioned, pressured, bombed, invaded or some combination of all of the above. Heck, the US even has a law that says the country I’m from can be invaded if an American is ever charged and tried here (in the Hague). “All means necessary” is the exact wording in the American Service Members Protection aka Hague Invasion Act. So, yeah, colour me skeptical.
- I wasn’t sure about this so I looked it up but according to Wikipedia the Housers are dual nationality American citizens so it’s debatable to what extent they even are outsiders, certainly part of the culture.
Says here they grew up in the UK and didn’t move to America until GTA had already been a success, so very much outsiders by any measure that matters imo.
I think it’s cowardly to “satirise” American culture interminably for years, in such basic and uninsightful ways, without ever venturing to say anything about yourself or your own country, and I think it comes from having genuinely no interest or conception of satire other than as a cover for saying mean shit. If they had anything real to say, they could choose a target and mix it up a bit, but they don’t. They can only repeat the same shitty early-2000s not-really-observational humour forever – the GTA6 trailer has the same “americans are overmedicated” jokes they were doing 20 years ago.
So it’s not “making fun of America while not an American” that I have a problem with; it’s doing only that, so badly as to not really be doing it at all, instead of saying anything real, forever. We’re talking about 20 straight years of being considered a satirist while only ever targeting a vague imagined version of the easiest possible target. Cowardice baby
I would strongly suggest that someone who adopts a new country and sticks around long enough to earn citizenship there is very much now a part of that culture regardless of where they grew up or when they came to said new country. Such a person is absolutely NOT “[an] outsider by any measure”.
As someone with two nationalities myself (though not in or from the US) I can tell you cultural identity is not mutually exclusive, so this is very much irrelevant to whether or not they have the ‘right’ to make these jokes. They DO. Why on earth should they need to satirize their country of origin before they are ‘allowed’ to criticize or make jokes about their new country like it’s some kind of trade? That’s absurd.
As to the quality of their jokes or commentary, that’s all fairly subjective – personally not a huge fan of GTAs misanthropic brand of humour, I do agree it’s a bit one-note – but I cannot agree at all there is anything ‘cowardly’ about that. Cowardice would be not daring to say anything against their new home – if they stopped satirizing America the moment they moved there – for fear of offending local sensibilities or indeed the game’s biggest audience, though I don’t think most GTA players are especially offended by any shots taken, cheap or otherwise.
This whole comment is replying to stuff I didn’t say, so I’m gonna leave it
Fair enough. I may have been reading too much into it. I guess you were talking more about the cowardice of not digging deeper, but I was mainly reacting to linking this to identity.
It’s really an indictment of these games that what I find most enjoyable is inhabiting the game after I’ve completed the campaign and missions and driving around for hours. All the writing and “satire” really detracts from the game world. The shooting mechanics haven’t improved in like 20 years.
but it’s fun to… wander around on foot. It’s fun to find a random car and aimlessly drive around. The environment detail and world ambience is second to none, and it’s such a shame that it’s wasted on writing that doesn’t even get above South Park levels of satire.
if i’m going to reinstall gta 4 it’s going to be to do the same thing I always do: wander around and do nothing. It’s why I bought GTA 5, and probably the only thing i’m looking forward to in GTA 7 if I can be arsed to play through it.
i’ve considered downloading a 100%’d San Andreas save file for exactly this purpose.
“More thoughts than you can fit in a Houser” is a great line
Going back to Need for Speed Underground and getting messages on a pager elicits some of the same feelings
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