das müffin mann
04-22-2008, 03:57 PM
the original article can be found here:http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10037&Itemid=59
It’s not a new point to make, but if Grand Theft Auto’s greatness can be boiled down to any element, outside of the mechanics, the style and the feel of the game, it’s the stories you create as you play. But though the stories you’ll make playing GTA 4’s singleplayer might be exciting enough, it’s those spun during time in its multiplayer that could rival some of best game stories ever told.
There are a few flat notes in its various forms, mind. GTA isn’t particularly suited to straight-up team deathmatch, for example – the mechanics and arena are simply not a fit for such competition. GTA 4’s world is simply too interesting: during most deathmatch games you’ll be wishing you could go and explore that alley or simply drive a car into the sunset without someone shooting at you with a rocket launcher.
Better is Team Mafya Work, which has all players receiving a mission at the same time via mobile, and racing to assassinate someone or collect an item. It’s easy to imagine this becoming a firm favourite when players know the city intimately – rather than the map-following lottery our inexperience made of it. GTA Race is throwaway fun, a partial resurrection of the Midnight Club series through backstreets, forgiving with its markers but dedicated primarily to the comedy value of getting people out of their cars and running them over.
But it’s in Cops ’n Crooks that GTA 4’s multiplayer really takes off, a mode that offers a twist on the VIP/Marked Man genre and that grows organically from the singleplayer game. Two teams of four start: one team of cops in a patrol car, and one team of robbers on foot and a short distance away. One robber is the boss who must reach a designated point on the map and escape on a speedboat. The robbers can see where the escape vehicle is, and the police can see where the robbers are. The setup is the foundation for gloriously emergent chaos as plans form and go awry by the second. The stories we experienced included a pursuit over a bridge that ended as, bumper-to-bumper, the robbers managed to make the police car smash headfirst into another vehicle. The cops could have restarted the engine and only lost a few seconds – except the collision had sent the driver through the windscreen, over the edge of the bridge and into the water below. Score one for the crooks. In another chase, the robbers reached their boat with no cops in sight, got out of their car and were promptly sniped. In another, the cops cornered the crooks who escaped with a death-defying leap over a ramp and into a nearby alley – the cops tried the same, and fell agonizingly short as their laughing quarry drove off, waving goodbye.
Cops ’n Crooks hooks a classic multiplayer mechanic directly into the way all players engage with GTA 4’s world, and that’s why it’s such a riotous success. If it seems to overshadow GTA 4’s other multiplayer offerings, that’s not to say they’re by any means failures. It’s simply that Cops ’n Crooks gets GTA multiplayer right in one fell swoop. Next to that achievement, almost any other option the game could offer seems irrelevant.
cops 'ncrooks looks like so much fun now i wish i had a ps3....
It’s not a new point to make, but if Grand Theft Auto’s greatness can be boiled down to any element, outside of the mechanics, the style and the feel of the game, it’s the stories you create as you play. But though the stories you’ll make playing GTA 4’s singleplayer might be exciting enough, it’s those spun during time in its multiplayer that could rival some of best game stories ever told.
There are a few flat notes in its various forms, mind. GTA isn’t particularly suited to straight-up team deathmatch, for example – the mechanics and arena are simply not a fit for such competition. GTA 4’s world is simply too interesting: during most deathmatch games you’ll be wishing you could go and explore that alley or simply drive a car into the sunset without someone shooting at you with a rocket launcher.
Better is Team Mafya Work, which has all players receiving a mission at the same time via mobile, and racing to assassinate someone or collect an item. It’s easy to imagine this becoming a firm favourite when players know the city intimately – rather than the map-following lottery our inexperience made of it. GTA Race is throwaway fun, a partial resurrection of the Midnight Club series through backstreets, forgiving with its markers but dedicated primarily to the comedy value of getting people out of their cars and running them over.
But it’s in Cops ’n Crooks that GTA 4’s multiplayer really takes off, a mode that offers a twist on the VIP/Marked Man genre and that grows organically from the singleplayer game. Two teams of four start: one team of cops in a patrol car, and one team of robbers on foot and a short distance away. One robber is the boss who must reach a designated point on the map and escape on a speedboat. The robbers can see where the escape vehicle is, and the police can see where the robbers are. The setup is the foundation for gloriously emergent chaos as plans form and go awry by the second. The stories we experienced included a pursuit over a bridge that ended as, bumper-to-bumper, the robbers managed to make the police car smash headfirst into another vehicle. The cops could have restarted the engine and only lost a few seconds – except the collision had sent the driver through the windscreen, over the edge of the bridge and into the water below. Score one for the crooks. In another chase, the robbers reached their boat with no cops in sight, got out of their car and were promptly sniped. In another, the cops cornered the crooks who escaped with a death-defying leap over a ramp and into a nearby alley – the cops tried the same, and fell agonizingly short as their laughing quarry drove off, waving goodbye.
Cops ’n Crooks hooks a classic multiplayer mechanic directly into the way all players engage with GTA 4’s world, and that’s why it’s such a riotous success. If it seems to overshadow GTA 4’s other multiplayer offerings, that’s not to say they’re by any means failures. It’s simply that Cops ’n Crooks gets GTA multiplayer right in one fell swoop. Next to that achievement, almost any other option the game could offer seems irrelevant.
cops 'ncrooks looks like so much fun now i wish i had a ps3....