You take your girlfriend out for a night at the bar, and you get a little tipsy. It’s too far to walk back, and you can’t find a cab, so you get in the car and groggily drive around, drunk. Along the way you run over a prostitute, kill a cop and eventually crash the car – smashing through the windshield as the police shoot you to your death. Moments later you emerge at a hospital with no weapons, less money and no car.
This is Grand Theft Auto IV, perhaps the most realistic video game simulation ever, sans the whole consequences part. Since the game’s release on April 29, GTA IV has sold 6 million copies totaling $500 million in revenue inside the first week. Its $310 million in first-day sales alone broke the $170 million record set by Halo 3 in one week last year.
The game couldn’t have come out at a worse time for university students, though – right before finals.
“Me and my roommate [have] been playing it, so we’ve got some time racked up,” junior American studies major Max Davis said. But he added that he was having a hard time finding time to play because of the end-of-the-year crunch.
At a total cost of $100 million, what GTA IV producer Leslie Benzies estimates Rockstar spent on the game, it was the most expensive in the history of the medium. The massive sales sparked a 54 percent increase in sales of the Xbox 360 console, according to Microsoft.
This current incarnation centers around Niko Bellic, an immigrant and war veteran from Serbia, as he moves to the United States to join his cousin, Roman, who regaled Niko with tales of the great riches he enjoys in America. Despite the luxurious claims, those “riches” involve a flea-bitten studio apartment and a job with a boss who treats him like crap; not exactly the American dream.
His chase for the American dream doesn’t fall into the typical pattern of working your way to the top in a traditional job, as he makes his money doing odd jobs for various mafia and drug-related gangs.
Junior journalism major Chris Carey, who is new to the GTA experience, with this game being his first foray into the franchise, said the game’s graphics are simply amazing.
“You start up the game – my jaw just dropped,” he said. “It was awe-inspiring, almost. To me, this is like the first real next-generation video game. It’s not even just the graphics; it’s the amount of detail they put into the storyline, the cut scenes.”
Carey pointed out the features of the new multiplayer addition – the first time GTA has had multiplayer on a console – as a major selling point, citing the ability to play with friends over the Internet via Xbox Live as a great add-on.
“That just adds that much more on top of everything they’ve already brought out,” he said. “I’ve been running through that with friends. … It’s just crazy … I’ve played with friends and random people. I haven’t had any slowdown; I haven’t had any lag. It’s just been a perfect flow.”
As another touch of realism, GTA IV includes television stations you can watch in your apartment. The mock shows include stand-up comedy acts from comedians such as Ricky Gervais and Katt Williams. Such creative wrinkles add a dimension unheard of in the video game world – users can sit and watch television or spend time surfing the web on various sites created for the game.
“I can sit down and watch stand-up comedians talk about life in Liberty City,” which is the game’s fictional name for the city subbing in for New York City, Carey said. “It’s legit funny! Me and my roommate were watching it the other day – we were just laughing at this one guy who just kept talking about life … how it was so great because there were so many drugs and prostitutes. On one level it was like, ‘I can’t believe they put this in a video game,’ [but] it’s funny.”
Others found some of the game’s basis in a real environment – the fictional Big Apple – to be the cause of the success.
“[I like] how close to New York City it actually is,” junior criminology and criminal justice major John Reyes said. “I’m from New Jersey, so I used to go there a lot. I’ve got friends who are from New York who are like, ‘Oh, I know that place!'”
You don’t have to be a native New Yorker to enjoy the game – it offers much more than just impressive graphics, adding in sidebar games to occupy time beyond picking up hookers or accompanying drug dealers as the get-away driver.
“Even the missions are so varied – you can do so many different things,” Carey said. “I don’t even have to play the main game. I can go bowling or play pool or date someone. … The possibilities seem so endless, it’s almost overwhelming.”
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