What’s the worst part about writing these opinioned retrospective editorials? Well, burning material. I know that at some point in the near future I’m going to write a review of one of these games. Do I want to burn my jokes about how poorly the handling of the bikes are in Grand Theft Auto IV? Do I want to want to use up my jokes about the handling of all vehicles in Grand Theft Auto IV and Chinatown Wars? No. I’d rather use those for a long self-congratulatory piece where I shove in with all the big boys of the time, saying, “I’m one of the gang!”

Yes, it has been a little over ten years since the last installment of a Grand Theft Auto game was set in Liberty City, and ten years since I’ve played GTA IV. One of them is a game I love and adore, having never gotten past the first few missions; the other is a game I gave up on halfway through, having only now gotten back to it this past weekend. Yes, the former is my little Tom Nook style drug empire, Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars; the latter is a trip down Max Payne 3‘s suicide lane. I would apologize for the suicide reference, but it is just that depressing.

The number one criticism for Grand Theft Auto IV over the years has been the character being about as fun as a pensioner coughing blood over your face on their death bed. Niko really is the antithesis of “fun gameplay.” It is almost as if Rockstar had made a name for themselves by doing the most controversial thing. Then in a bold act of courageousness that they went for the depressing former Soviet war child looking for a better life in America. There’s one issue with that characterization: The player is about as forgiving as a meth-addicted psychopath ramping off a child’s face into a crack house, then everyone yells “Norm!”

That’s not to say that Huang Lee is a loveable every-man either. In fact, I had to look up his name. I played Chinatown Wars for a short time; about the time it takes Walter White to go from down on his luck high school teacher to unkillable meth empire god several times over. I had never cared for the story all too much. Maybe it is the fact I’ve thought reading a game’s story is as well-paced as a kitten clawing its way down Andre The Giant’s back, or I had several grand’s worth of coke in my pockets and needed to offload on the other side of town, immediately.

Let’s call it about even on the main character front. So let’s move to the side characters, to which Niko has all the usual annoying Grand Theft Auto characters around him; as does Lee, I’d assume. If you’ve played a Grand Theft Auto game for the story you are either a JRPG fan finding out why everyone else is on about this GTA nonsense, or you’re a parent. Very few Grand Theft Auto games have good stories, with the exception of, San Andreas, V, and Vice City. However, even those follow the same “fresh off the boat” after a long stint away or jumping forward to you once you’ve moved to the town.

A Grand Theft Auto game would never win an Oscar for writing is what I’m saying. Though with “Boss Baby” getting a nod for the best-animated feature in 2017, it could give the Housers some hope. A game about gangsters that’s meant to be silly and fun falls at the final hurdle when it is not; scraping itself across the line with uncomfortable gravel sliding up the genitals making it worse. One of the side characters in IV is the campiest man in entertainment (Well, next to me and Alan Carr) and none of it comes off as a joke.

This isn’t the moral high ground of “you can’t make gay jokes,” the difference is there’s no subversion or wordplay to be had. He’s gay because he’s gay and nothing more. The only thing exaggerated is how much he flaps his wrists about like a squawking cockatoo. Roman literally says after being called fat, “No more fat jokes,” when there are no jokes. Grand Theft Auto IV thinks comedy is throwing your hand up, and yelling, “Heil Hitler,” in the middle of Auschwitz (also known as Reddit rule 337). It tried too hard to be ultra-realism in the time of ultra-realism.

While there are moments that don’t make you want to run to Dark Souls for a story that gives you hope for the universe, it doesn’t come off with such grace in retrospective. At the time, reviewers were ingratiated with so much hype they wanted to take Niko out of dinner, stating him as likable, while fondling him on the bus ride home. My question would be to whom? The protagonist of Hatred? He, much like Max Payne, would rather be hit by a bus in the middle of Time Square than be the one in the bus ramping off an old person’s new hip replacement.

The issue I’ve had with many Grand Theft Auto games up until V (which is the seventieth GTA to my count) is the characters acting differently in cutscenes than they do in-game. Give me a sports car while playing as Niko, I’ll make him ramp off pedestrians like it is Twisted Metal. If you gave cutscene Niko a sports car he’ll sit in a sealed dark room, listing to Linkin Park, and revving the engine until he poisons himself to death.

All this results in a breakneck shift between Niko agreeing to chaperone several hundred people across the city and me ramping off the mountain of corpses to get over the traffic. This is one of the best parts of the PC port, might I add. Which brings me to the city itself, another thing praised in the initial reviews.

New York, or this Grand Theft Auto reproduction of a West Side Story, is dull. Two of the greatest Grand Theft Auto maps have been of San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto‘s facsimile of the western coastline. The reason San Andreas (the in-game state) is so interesting is the variety, verticality, and freedom you have within it. Thanks to something that happened right before Grand Theft Auto III‘s release, that everyone has clearly forgotten about, you can’t fly planes in Liberty City. Thus verticality and freedom are lost.

The only thing left would have been a varied world, but once you’ve seen one building with a grey-brown filter you’ve seen them all, and it all goes to pot. The only thing that has kept the world so alive for me has been the traffic. Their AI might need a bit of re-writing as they hurl themselves into me on the Algonquin bridge, but the volume is what makes New York what it is. Sitting in traffic listening to the radio made the game’s lighter side shine through the brown fecal matter filter splashed across the screen.

To return to Huang Lee and Chinatown Wars for a minute, this is also echoed in the Nintendo DS (or 3DS) and PSP ports as well. Truth be told, they are working from a top-down view making it easier to render six or seven cars to fill your screen. However, isn’t this the point of New York? An overcrowded clump of human flesh, metal sweat boxes, and the “concrete jungle” as Alicia Keys one sung. Cars as far as the eye can see?

This is where I’ll return to kicking IV with heavy boots on, like a Russian mobster. I had killed all sincerity Niko had of shooting the campiest man I spoke about a few minutes ago. With the PC port of a GTA game, you can import your own music. So when Niko is yelling he’s going to kill someone and I’m blasting Paramore or Babymetal, the moment is slightly undercut. I’ve also done so to the DJ too, who is much like myself and a curmudgeon at heart, claiming, “This one is crap,” or “This is about divorce,” to be followed by Meryl Streep singing ABBA tunes about love. It made it funny, but to inadvertently do so isn’t the point.

Then the question is, does the gameplay hold up? Not really. This goes for either IV or Chinatown Wars. Both games driving mechanics make driving feel like you are two hippos trying to copulate missionary style on a thin layer of ice. Every sports bike might as well be a merry-go-round for all the sliding and spinning you’ll do. Tap the handbrake and you’ll find you’ve ramped off of three policemen by the time you’re ’round the 90-degree turn because New York doesn’t understand what a road is.

Gunplay is like firing little mints out your genitals during sex. It is satisfying to pop a gangster with a sniper rifle from one hundred paces. However, because there is no real incentive to go on anything more than a Raoul Moat style mass shooting, it falls flat. Then you have the mound of bodies that twitch, speak, and crawl away once you think you’ve killed them, giving it a real sense of a horrific high-speed chase down on the corner of Gritty and Realism.

The last of my gripes for both games would be the lack of things do to in the open world. I can’t role-play with misery guts or topographical Walter White, and because IV doesn’t allow you to buy cars, houses, interesting clothes, or anything, your money piles up for the number of times you’ve been killed. At least halfway through the main campaign, I’ve died once because I shot a rocket launched into a support column I was standing behind. Lee, on the other hand, can buy lots of interesting things. Mostly drugs and houses.

This is the only “side-activity” that is interesting, and I turned it into the whole game. Chinatown Wars (and Vice City Stories) both feature this mechanic where you’ll find lots of drug dealers around Liberty City selling a whole host of methamphetamines, marijuana, and Coke-a-Cola. Of course, to get to this point you have to drive and fire guns when the cops bust you for a gram of weed in your pocket. Sure, you had several tons of acid in there as well, but it is the weed they care about. They don’t want to be caught buying from you.

However, it is this little mini-game that is the proving ground for something in a later game (GTA V). As it is based on commerce there is a whole faux-economics system in place to raise and lower the prices at any given dealer. One would assume this is the basis of the “Bawsaq” trading site in Grand Theft Auto V in some way. Though with a system so simple and well-done I’ve abused it so much I’ve gone from a simple bit of drug dealing all the way to the levels of racketeering, buying guns, homes; cars, you name it I’ll have made the money for it from drugs. Or shall I say, Lee has?

In conclusion, both Grand Theft Auto games of the 2008-09 period are still fun little sandboxes to play around in. However, if you are looking for the silly “ramping off a child’s face” gameplay without the morbid reality of human life weighing you down, I’d suggest Grand Theft Auto V or IV‘s fellow 2008 crime-sandbox, Saints Row 2. However, I will say CD Projekt didn’t do too well with the PC port of that one as it requires a mod to be playable. If you are looking for a silly little drug empire to run with an excellent Grand Theft Auto attached, I’d suggest picking up a 3DS and a copy of Chinatown Wars.