Three reasons why Liberty City isn’t as good as it could have been
Ok so the new GTA game has come out and everyone has had a good chance to play it. Like GTA 3 before it, GTA 4 is set in Liberty City, a replica of New York, but instead of the vibrant colourful worlds of San Andreas and Vice City, Liberty City is a bit more down to earth, which, in my opinion, limits its potential. Here’s three reasons why:
1. It’s based off New York.
So Liberty city is a replica of New York, and a fairly accurate one to, but this immediately limits the game world. Instead of going crazy and creating large countryside expanses, deserts and mountains, Rockstar have had to tone down the crazy and put on their serious caps. By trying to recreate a place, Rockstar have limited their creativity in the environment. Instead of trying to build a city that has the sole purpose of being fun, Rockstar have modeled New York with the primary focus on realism and likeness to the actual city.
2. It’s all grey!
When your driving through Broker, can you honestly say you marvel at the vibrant, colourful landscape? Nope. I know Liberty City is an urban area and isn’t going to have green rolling hills, but they could have done something to make it less monotonous and boring. As you look out across the city in a helicopter all you see is grey, grey and more grey. Apart from the downtown strip, with colourful neon signs, the only colour in the environment comes from traffic lights. Games are meant to allow you to escape from reality, not extend it. I don’t want to be trundling round grey office blocks - I can do that in real life. I’d much rather be driving a camper van off Mount Chiliad into the lush forest below. I’m so disappointed that GTA 4 doesn’t have any countryside: it makes it unnecessarily mundane. Instead of creating a city for fun gameplay, Rockstar have created a city for realism. Who needs realism when you could be jumping across a canyon on a motorbike?
3.No satisfaction
When I unlocked the second island in GTA 4, I didn’t even notice. I only found out that a new area was available when I paused the game to set a waypoint and saw that I was on a different island. The same happened for unlocking Alderney. Where’s the excitement from San Andreas, of unlocking the next island? When you were finally allowed into a new area on San Andreas, you knew it would be completely different from what you’ve seen so far. In the previous games I would spend hours trying to survive a high wanted level, just so I could see the new area before I’d unlocked it, but there’s no chance of this happening now. Likewise, in the previous games I learned my way around the city, just by playing through the game. That’s not gonna happen with GTA 4. In Vice City and San Andreas, each area had its own sense of character: the desert area, the country side area, Las Vegas (or Las Venturas if you prefer) etc. What characteristic or theme separates Alderney from Broker? Nothing, there all the same!
Don’t get me wrong, GTA 4 is an incredible game, which I’ve had a lot of fun playing. While there are short comings in the environment, they are not major enough to detract from what is a truly excellent game. The involving story and missions make the game what it is. While driving around New York at 100 mph can be cool, it’s not as fun as some things I’ve done in previous iterations of the series. Hopefully we’ll see something new next time around, not a recreation of another city.
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May 19th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
All of these are actually disadvantages of New York, not Liberty City. If the city was more colourful, interesting and had some “countryside expanses, deserts and mountains”, LC could have them as well. I personally think that creating an in-game replica of New York was a brilliant idea and I hope the future cities in the GTA world will be based on real ones too… not necessarily American ones, though.