Played a bit of GTA V.
 
I have not ever played a GTA before aside from messing around with them at a friends house. But sandbox games always comes off as "big world, less concentrated" when you have a straightforward linear action game the levels are designed to suit the mechanics and thus you're more likely to do things with expectations and where movement is more refined. But I decided to give the best of sandbox games a shot, idk to try something new.
 
I ended up doing a lot of the story missions. And a lot of the GTA humor is kind of revealing itself intent wise. A lot of the events in the game come off as blatant parody of crime culture and media. There's even an advertisement of a game called Righteous Slaughter 7 where a tagline says "the same damn game as the last one" or something.. The characters so far are hard to care about they each have their own personalities but come off as exaggerated caricatures of crime people. What makes GTAV a step above the other crime games is that it's aware that crime is bad and really stupid, but for the sake of the gameplay there's a point where a retired bank robber like Michael is like "ahhh fuck it LETS HAVE SOME FUN" There's really no way to make a relate-able character who sees death as a horrible thing with these types of games. But characters will have conversations about life choices and what they want to do with themselves. It's a strange area of writing.
 
I guess I'm surprised GTA V does have a self awareness to it, that it's probably inspiring or forwarding crime in some pop culture way like bad rap music. I don't think media really KILLS PEOPLE but it does give a weird empowering want or identity. But at the same time it makes efforts to make itself immature and rather trash culture. Kinda like Robocop's depiction of TV "I'll buy that for a dollar" It's just weird. As for the game itself I'm kind of enjoying it, the story missions have a lot of variety to them and they never feel too "fetchy" most of the time the character is doing a mission on his own accord. But yeah I will follow up or something.
 
edit: I forgot I had something to say about... spec ops the line
 
It felt really forced to me. Like the whole you're the real monster kind of message and how dumb shooter games are just dumb shooter games. I mean I thought some aspects were clever but I think MGS2 did it way better. The whole thing about MGS2 is that it actually had an impact marketing wise. Everyone was expecting a Snake saves america in a bigger and better fashion instead they were treated to a very feminine in nature main character that was "emo" or "whiney". Which caused a lot of reactions and a lot of people took the VR thing as confusing and dumb. When really Raiden was just the player all along taking orders from a video game telling them what to do. It's very post modern in the way that the game put Snake on the cover and in the trailers only to do a bait and switch all in 2001.
 
Now I feel like I'm just talking about MGS2, but I guess spec ops the line is really only played by people who liked the message, rather than reacting to it. It's supposed to attack people who play military shooters and yet wasn't really marketed or sold to them. I guess in terms of art and post modernism there's a really important point to be made when MGS2 stands out as "that game" Idk I guess it'd be interesting if a mainline Call of Duty game did the same thing as spec ops the line. Is what I'm saying. 

lol stateside shootings happen because of irrational people seeking an irrational solution to their problems, a fucked up subculure, or mental distress, not shit like gta.

Yes gta is a parody of shitty pop culture, crime drama and even itself.