PixelVixen707

We gamers crave the respect of our moms and dads. How else to explain the obsession with the “maturity” of Grand Theft Auto? We’re no longer begging for Mario under the Christmas tree, ‘rents. We’re full-grown, we’re worldly, and we can pay a digital ho for a handjob, if that’s how we choose to game. And Grand Theft Auto IV is our badge of post-puberty. It holds a mirror up to life, and has the guts to spill what it sees.

Except it doesn’t. The only mature thing about it is its rating. And in reading the coverage of Grand Theft Auto IV, I’m troubled by my colleagues’ insistence on playing it like adults, and not kids.

For one: it falls short of what the cineastes call “realism.” I live in New York City, the blatant basis for the game’s Liberty City. Gunplay aside, more life goes by on just my block on a Sunday than in the entire length of this game. Liberty City gets by on a few restaurants, a handful of bars, and next to no clothing stores. The bums are just there to start missions. And there are exactly 200 pigeons – and once you shoot them all, the city … runs out?

Heaven forfend that I say Liberty City is dull. But it’s busy in the same way as a Richard Scarry book – full of pics and action, but at the same time, constrained to what the author thinks you can handle. Yes, the pedestrians give you sass. Yes, you’ll find hours of dialogue tucked in where you least expect them – like when you’re drunk in a cab but the cabbie won’t shut up, or you sneak into a comedy club to find none other than Ricky Gervais as the headliner. But this is still a top-down, scripted creation, and as Jane Jacobs (were she alive) could tell you, a great neighborhood is generated procedurally.

Grand Theft Auto takes shots at the American dream, mainly through its parody radio spots. But ladies’ night at a gun shop? A reality show to pick the nation’s best hooker? A right-wing news channel named, not Fox, but “Weasel”? This is Mind of Mencia-rank satire, suitable for the thirteen-and-under set, but hardly subversive. And while the corrupt authority figures and underhanded backstabbers – the dirty cop who says his sins make the world “one percent” cleaner, the gangster who betrays his own brother to chase the dollar – give the game grit, that ain’t the same as depth. Tap me when they learn subtlety.

Now, hold your tomatoes, fanboys and -girls: I don’t hate Grand Theft Auto. Truth be told, I haven’t stopped playing since I knocked over three boys and a bodybuilder in line at Gamestop to secure the last copy. (That’s right readers: I risk life and limb for you. Though the bodybuilder settled for a wink and a smile.)

But let’s be clear: this is not a great game because it’s sophisticated. It’s great because it’s fun.

It’s measured on the same yardstick we’ve always used for games, ever since we were kids: it’s an engaging and repeatable way to obtain goals and meet them in pixel-tacular fashion, with buckets of blood for frosting. This city is a great toy, not a toy version of a great city. There are exactly 200 pigeons in the Naked City – no less, no more. Forget about the bottomless depths of the soul; even the vermin have a limit.