Working Title 10.2.08: The GTA Killers

Posted by Jordan Williams on 10.02.2008

You hear it almost every year, the game that's going to "kill" the current king of the genre. Just how successful are they at what they do, and how does it make the genre better as a whole? Let's find out.

Welcome to the #1 Column to think that Advance Wars will eventually be the downfall of all of mankind, WORKING TITLE. I recently picked up Advance Wars: Days of Ruin from EB and the game has been eating my fucking soul. I think I still like Dual Strike better because it's easier to play, but Days of Ruin gets rid of all of the super cheap instant-win tricks like Dual Strikes and actually has you think, which is a good thing.

Also, just to give you a heads up. I'm still in the process of getting over a WICKED staph infection on my shoulder (which is why I missed last week) so I'm typing a majority of this with one good hand and the column is going to be short. I do apologize for that but ANYONE who has had a staph infection knows they are just not fucking fun to work through.

But speaking of a good thing, what happens when a good thing is good for too long? Does it always improve or does it hit the point where it thinks that no matter what it does that it's untouchable? It's happened to some of our favorite video game franchises and it's always going to happen as long as developers are around.

Of course, every couple of years there's always that game that comes along and tries to do what no other game has done in well, it tries to take on the giant that's currently dominating that genre. How often are these successful? How have they held up, and more importantly...how do they stack up to the game they try to dethrone? Let's find out with this weeks look into the phenomenon that is...

The Killers

No, this isn't that band that sang that damn Brightside song; these are those games that are often promoted as being ____ Killers. You see them almost every year at the Conventions; they are the games that look so good that they might actually end up doing better than the current leader of that genre. In the last few years we have seen a lot of these games come and go, some have won, others have failed, and some are actually still around. The question is which ones are worth it and which ones are worthless?


The GTA Killers

How about we start this shindig off with a game franchise that's never short on potential threats or controversy, Grand Theft Auto. The game now is currently in its fourth storyline incarnation with close to 10 games as a whole under its belt. The storytelling and the gritty atmosphere and the sheer "Holy shit, you can do this in a video game?" feeling of the series made it a quick hit and arguably pioneered the 'sandbox' style of gaming that a lot of games have used today. But with its rampant success you just had to know there would be imitators, knock offs, and no doubt killers.

GTA Killer #1: True Crime Series



True Crime was one of the few games to actually openly say that it was looking to kill Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar is has never been shy about taking shots at anything and everything, and up until now it was always a bit of a one sided battle. Rockstar would always take shots at various things but they would never fire back, but Activision wasn't going to let that trend continue anymore because they finally took a shot at Rockstar.

Sort of.

It wasn't a necessarily well aimed shot but it was still good enough. The thing is that they wanted to put it out there that they were the new GTA on the block and that Grand Theft Auto was on notice. For a while it actually had everyone fooled because early reviews and videos showed that True Crime was actually a formidable opponent to the GTA crown. It had a new take on the style in which you were actually on the right side of the law instead of the wrong side and according to some it had a deeper and more action packed story. Sadly in the end it still feel short due to the fact that it just wasn't long enough or didn't feel nearly as epic as most GTA games tend to feel. The use of the WORST GAMING MAIN CHARACTER EVER (Nick Kang) also kept TC: LA from impacting too much on GTA's current fan base and sales. Fans of GTA didn't really take onto TC as well as Activision hopes, especially due to it's relatively 'small' world and linear and limited gameplay, but the few that did like it noted that it seemed to improve on things that GTA was lacking in, such as movement controls and shooting.

It seems liked TC: LA was going on the right path to being a GTA Killer, a game rarely does it on the first try but maybe a second try would do the trick, right?


Wrong. Dead wrong.

Rockstar popped out another game (San Andreas) which broke all of the boundaries that they had before and became the biggest GTA game ever. Activision wasn't far behind and wanted to get a piece of that pie, so they dropped True Crime: NYC on us. A big...big mistake.



After GTA:SA came and blew our collective faces off (it's my personal favorite of the series) what we got in realization from the so-called GTA Killer was a broken, buggy, laggy, poor excuse for a sequel that managed to do everything WRONG that it did right the first time. This is one of those cases where the Killer became the killed, because TC:NYC didn't even register as a blip on the radar after the critics got through with it. Almost thee years later we haven't heard a peep from Activision as far as the True Crime series goes, meanwhile Rockstar has released two separate GTA games since that have continued to raise the bar.

Sure, it looked like GTA couldn't stop. When it came to crime action-dramas with original stories, it looked like no one was going to take that crown. While San Andreas was slowly falling out of the spotlight the generations changed. PS2 was on its way out and the Xbox 360 was beginning to be the new hot shit on the block. People were waiting for a true Next-Gen GTA game and it was finally on its way.

The catch was...it wasn't a GTA game.

GTA Killer #2: Saints Row



Where as True Crimes tried to be a different take on what made GTA so great, Saints Row decided it was going to attempt to be better than GTA by doing exactly what GTA does. Saints Row didn't have you set to be some sort of cop with loose morals and a thin understanding of the law. You were a gritty, hardened gangsta ala CJ from San Andreas and for all intents and purposes, this was a GTA game that wasn't made by Rockstar.

While the game did borrow a LOT from GTA, it did have some thing that set it apart from The King in terms of gameplay and style. Saints Row did away with a 'main character' that was full of witty one-liners and angst and instead decided to let you put yourself into the game as the often maligned silent protagonist. Saints Row to many was also a little bit more realistic.

Yes, Saints Row was more realistic.

GTA:SA had you start the game out as a pretty low-rate thug who somehow manages to take over the entire city, owning a record label, casino, breaking into federal testing base, an aircraft carrier, stealing a get, working for the FBI, working for the Triads, running an underground smuggling ring, AND somehow single handedly toppling a crack empire. All of that from just one guy who came back to town because his mother got killed. Where as Saints Row was a bit wacky, it was grounded in reality. It was a gang war, plain and simple. You were a member of one gang (the arch typical anti-heroic Saints) who wanted to take down the REALLY bad gangs of Stillwater.

Sure, the story wasn't as deep and moving as the standard GTA fare, but it was a bit more grounded and in some sick sense a little bit more believable than the all-to-unrealistic GTA stories that have come out in the latter games.

Another place that Saints Row was aiming to hurt GTA at was in it's gameplay, for YEARS people had complained about Grand Theft Auto's controls, noting that only the driving was the only thing that didn't need improving. Shooting was far too clunky and easy, melee attacking was horrible, and switching weapons was too time consuming. Saints Row changed all of that with the wonderfully convenient and nifty weapons wheel and melee attack buttons. No longer did you have to scroll through what kind of weapon you wanted, you would simply just hold down a button and pick it from the scroll wheel. You also had a plethora of melee attacks open to you which actually meant that mixing it up hand to hand was not only a viable option, but pretty damned fun.

Another thing Saints Row had going for it was that it managed to make it into the Next Gen Era before GTAIV did (which actually came back to bite in the ass, more on that later) so it got to enjoy all of the perks that Next Gen had to offer. Better graphics, bigger maps and less load times. They even got to hop onto the online market which GTAIV eventually did but a lot of people (myself included) think that Saints Row's Online Multiplayer was a tad more fun than GTAIV's.

Just as a note, I'll wreck all of you fuckers at Blinged Out Ride.


Consider this gauntlet THROWN.

But even though Saints Row was shaping up to be a pretty good contender to GTA, there were some mistakes it made that just didn't propel it to that level of AWESOME that GTA had been so used to sitting on. For starters, the story wasn't exactly the best one in the world. It was a bit more believable and realistic than previous GTA games, but all it pretty much amounted to was "Go here. Destroy this gang somehow, move on.", The characters outside of Johnny MOTHERFUCKIN' Gat were stale and while the huge amount of side-quests were great, the fact that the game forced you to do a lot of them took away from the point of them being side-quests.

Of course, there is also the double-edged sword that this game was the first to jump to Next Gen. It was the first to take advantage of the hardware but it also gave Rockstar a bar to surpass. Rockstar got a good chance to look at Saints Row and see exactly what they SHOULD be doing and what they NEEDED to do for GTAIV. I'm not going to say either are the same game, but do you think Rockstar really would've changed the aiming and fighting system for GTAIV had not Saints Row come along and showed them how it's done? How about the more realistic (despite how un-fun it turned out to be) storyline?

And now we are merely two weeks away from the release of Saints Row 2, a game that has very directly gone on the offensive with it's promotion flat out bashing Grand Theft Auto 4. Will SR2 be able to back up it's claims?


God, I love Photoshop.

In the end GTAIV might have very well ended up being a better game because Saints Row came along and rattled some of its cages. The one side effect of a Killer is that when it fails, it can sometimes succeed. It can come so uncomfortably close to actually killing the game that it sends a wake up call to the developers, in which they strive to make their product better the next time out. This isn't the first time it's happened, in fact next week I'll talk about the most recent game to repeat that phenomenon. A game that not only made the game it was trying to kill take notice...it also blew it out of the fucking water.


Skate.


Working Shoutout

I'd like to thank Toddo for taking over a week ago. He was nervous as shit about having to write a column all by his lonesome but he sure as fuck enjoyed the hookers he received. Not too sure he enjoyed the burning sensation he got afterwards...

Working Question

Running in with the theme for this week. The theme being Killer Games, not hastily put together columns from a man with one arm. What game genre do you think needs a good Killer Game to jumpstart it? I personally think Madden needs a game out there to give it a run for its money. It's a bit hard due to the lack of an NFL license but I think if we got a really good football game that pointed out a lot of Madden's faults then maybe we could get a lot more out of the genre.

Backbreaker, I'm looking at you.



What do you think?

Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and The Big Bang Theory is one of the best sitcoms ever fuckin' created.

Oh, and without even noticing Working Title somehow became the longest running column in 411Games. Wow.