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Number Eleven:
Just today, I played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City with my brother. We were taking my helicopter for a spin on the beach, freaking people out.
We filled my condo garage full of motorcycles. I love doing that. I drove one of the dirtbikes into the North Point Mall. I drove it all the way up the escalator, and got the "Casual clothes" from the Gap-wannabe store. I got the samurai sword from the fake Starbucks, and ran around killing gang members.
My God, you wouldn't believe it. We killed 266 people in that mall. Every time the "Wanted meter" reached two stars, we'd change clothes at the Gap, and be safe. Then it was back to cutting off more heads.
We made $2,000 in a half an hour. Sure, I already had close to a million.
It didn't occur to me until I looked at the clock that I'd just wasted an hour running around a videogame shopping mall with a samurai sword. What's more, the act was totally useless.
The fact that I'm still able to yell "Dude!" whenever I cut off someone's head in the game: that means something.
In this day of angry parents lynching game producers (I saw it on the news), there's a certain something wickedly wonderful about a game that lets you kill hundreds of people who all look exactly alike in a shopping mall without being detected because you "change" into an outfit that looks exactly the same as the one you were wearing.
The ceiling in the North Point Mall: it's totally black.
Suffice it to say, a month and a half has passed, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is starting to lose its luster. It surely didn't hold up as well as Metroid Prime, that's for sure.
It's okay, though. I don't mind so much that the cops are all the exact same white guy, or that there seem to be more police officers than ordinary people, or that there's just too much litter and too few sunbathers on the beach, or that the traffic lights are placed in a manner that suggests the developers hail from the United Kingdom (. . . uh . . . ), or that the pill that throws everything into slow-motion -- what the hell is that thing for, anyway?
Because the game stands as an improvement over its predecessor. Many people moaned when, recently, Rockstar announced an upcoming sequel; I was not one of these people. The Grand Theft Auto franchise is not Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. One game is limited to a skateboard and all the things one can do with it -- the other is about creating an immersive world in which everything can be fine-tuned in later versions. Yes, I feel a bold statement coming on: Maybe, in Grand Theft Auto 4, you'll be able to walk inside a building without getting your elbows caught in a wall!
I have lots and lots of hope for this series, and I mean it. That it supposedly has a "story" and is full of "vulgar language" and that it's pure "sensationalism" is one way to attack it; that you can pick it up and play after not touching it in a long while, just to savor the vehicle mechanics -- that's one way to enforce its brilliance.
Whereas Metroid Prime is genius because each of its little rooms and chambers is an obstacle course as inspired as those of Super Mario Bros. 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is genius because its whole world is accessible from the moment its too-long opening load screen ends.
It's genius because even in its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto III, which lacked the more realistic -- and more fun -- vehicle physics of its sequel, a Japanese high school dropout with a slightly schizophrenic streak can run out into the middle of a street, steal an ambulance, and drive around until she explodes.
That's how it was one day in January. Me and my bandmates -- we're called Large Prime Numbers, and don't you forget it -- were sitting around at my friend's apartment in Tokyo. I was working on a novel I was writing at the time. I had my computer at the table. It was a bright, sunshine-y day, and it was cold outside. We were waiting for the night's upcoming acoustic-punk-duel, and eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches while we did so. So the guitarist asked me, "You got anything else American that's fun?"
I dug out GTAIII, which amounted to digging out a monster. It bred obsession. I reduced two otherwise insanely intelligent girls (and I do mean insanely) to conversing only in fragments of conversations about stealing fire trucks.
Senseless violence was the universal language. Just as screaming was the universal language when it came to the music these girls liked -- you think these Japanese girls who spoke no English understood and/or cared about what Eminem has to say about "White America"?
I'm sure, if I show these girls Vice City, they'll care more for the motorcycles than for the fact that "That's Burt Reynolds who's talking!" and "That's a prostitute whose head you just chopped off with a machete!"
And that's saying a lot. More than senseless violence, it was fun. And you know what? It still is. And it still will be, when the sequel comes around.
At the end of 2002, I salute Grand Theft Auto, a game that goes somewhere and will keep going places.
Minus ten joy points for Electronic Gaming Monthly's running of a complete list of cheat codes in the same issue as their Grand Theft Auto: Vice City review. Whatever happened to sitting around, wondering: are there any codes for this game? Whatever happened to codes being a big mystery?
Whatever happened to that Law of Miyamoto that says "Codes suck"? Grand Theft Auto: Vice City allows aspiring players to purchase real estate assets that slowly generate money; the effect of this is dulled by the fact that, from day one, the option to use a code to grant a near-instant million dollars is there. Sure, I'm not a code-using person; still, that this option exists, and that others are using it . . . it saddens me somewhat. Much as it saddens me when I look at my garage full of motorcycles: even if I lose them all, I always say, "I'll get another."
If indeed an online Grand Theft Auto is coming, then maybe the joy of purchasing real estate will be more realized; maybe there will be, once and for all, a car that takes me a long time to earn, that I like above others, and that I don't want to lose for anything.
[next: number ten: the dark and stormy revelation machine]
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