Month: February 2023

Under the Mayo and How NOT to Review Games

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Hot takes taken to an absurd extreme

When it comes to video game reviewers and YouTubers, I bounce between creators for a time. One of the recommendations I made a few posts ago about Tactical Bacon Productions is one that I firmly believe is in his element enough to get the traffic he needs, even with YouTube jerking him and other YouTubers around with arbitrary strikes and claims due to a screw up that happened on their part. The channels I’ve been recommending for the month of February (and others to come in the future, especially at the end of this post), have been consistent to the best of their ability regarding content. They know what they’re talking about or what they’re doing and few of them have anything controversial surrounding them. The same can’t be said of the subject of today’s video: Under the Mayo.

I came across this channel while looking for content for God of War 4 last year and his controversial review on the game opened up Pandora’s box. Several other YouTubers had come to defend the new Norse era of God of War and call out Mayo for his contrarian viewpoints. And these viewpoints were very contrarian. The video below has a provocative title:

Controversy definitely sells and if it was just a hook to reel in viewers, I’d leave it alone. But viewpoints within the video sounded too ignorant, as if Mayo hadn’t payed any attention to the story of the previous games in the lead up to 2018. Gaming journalists tend to do that a fair amount with the countless number of know-nothings who’s exposure to the old God of War games is surface level or they just forgot. And to lend a straw to Mayo, this isn’t about him misunderstanding the difference between Greek Kratos and Norse Kratos. Hell, this post isn’t unique in what it has to say about him.

On YouTube and select Reddit posts, he’s taken hits for sounding like a hypocrite. Five minutes into a review he’ll praise an element of X and ten minutes in the same video he’ll critique it. Or he’ll highlight a feature of one game, wish for it to be taken out of an upcoming sequel if the game is successful enough and all of a sudden wish for it to come back; or conversely want something to be patched out and regret it when it has. You could argue that most people don’t always know what they want and that’s fair. Too much can be said about an indecisive populace making a generation-changing decision and that sentence alone probably gives you an idea from across the pond.

The point of divergence for Mayo comes in the harsh critique of most games in stark contrast to everything he has said about Doom and Doom: Eternal. Here’s where I admit that the rest of this post may jump into speculation. My exposure to Doom is also surface level, even though I played the original games on Steam and I have the 2016 DOOM on Xbox One that I haven’t touched in a while. I’ve got nothing against the franchise or id Software, my preferences lean more towards the action-adventure variety. I think Doom is an awesomely influential series that most games these days lend an oath of gratitude to, enough that first-person shooters needed a more appropriate genre name than just Doom clone that was the case for it in the 90s and beyond. That being said, if Doom went to court for something (and it probably did, video games that showcase or reference the Devil are gonna get theirs), Mayo is the type of guy that if he were an attorney, he’d drop everything and zoom on over to the courtroom with enough material to sway the jury after boring them to sleep for seven hours, and that’s because even the stenographer wants him to shut the hell up.

id Software’s flagship series has a permanent residence in his head and if his critics are to be believed, if Mayo hasn’t mentioned or shown footage of Doom or Doom: Eternal apropos of nothing, he’s liable to reference it in a review of another game. I’ve watched YouTubers take apart his God of War and Sifu reviews for the flip-flopping, backpedaling talking points, drawing on the conclusion that he says it without sincerity for contrarian’s sake.

Personally, I’ve ventured around this angle before on a few things I wasn’t all that serious about, but Mayo seems determined to die in a bunker with 60 years worth of provisions on his takes.

I hesitate to say that I’m 100% passionate about a singular thing these days, my tastes are subject to change and I could spend my money on things that actually help with survival, hobbies and pastimes coming second. Among Mayo’s critics, he’s come under fire as a hypocritical game reviewer with a singular thing on his mind. With what I know about his review style and what others have said, it seems as though he frames himself as the singular authority on what makes a good game based on only one game and that’s a bad lens to look through.

Speaking of God of War critiques, in GCN’s video on Everything Wrong with God of War 2018 in the style of CinemaSins, one of the criticisms lobbied was one I actually agreed with: games in this day and age need to let go of FromSoftware’s tenets and features of game design. Listing off a round of games that put style and substance front and center like Ninja Gaiden, Onimusha, God Hand, Devil May Cry and the original God of War series, the proof in the pudding there was that FromSoft’s Dark Souls franchise is not the be-all, end-all of game design. In a similar vein, Doom: Eternal isn’t close to revolutionary.

If I may get controversial for a bit, Doom 1993 was a phenomenal influence on the gaming industry. DOOM 2016 and Doom: Eternal are not special. Within the franchise and within the gaming industry, these FPS’s are always welcome to let players partake in the carnage they have to offer, but they don’t have anything new to offer that other games already have for better or worse. Fighting demons on Mars with high tech weaponry? Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III all did it a year and change prior with sliding and jetpack mechanics for better and worse. Setting the story aside to focus on ramming a demon horn into said demon’s own throat? NetherRealm Mortal Kombat, Black Ops IV, and God of War either did one or both of these things before that.

For the record, I’m not saying that I think Call of Duty beats Doom; I’m saying that mechanically Doom doesn’t do much to make a difference anymore. The lack of weapon reloading gets back to the style of shooter that literally gave you a gun so you can blast away unimpeded, but beyond that Doom is just a more extreme, more based shooter. And you don’t need me to tell you this. Get the game or watch a Let’s Play and see demon limbs flood the next level in Viscera Cleanup Detail.

Don’t get the wrong idea from this. Everyone loves what they love and hates what they hate, but it’s never a good sign to go hard on one or the other, especially at the expense of the opposite. Mayo clearly has a boner for Doom et al, and he has the right to voice his opinions, but there’s better ways to do it. I don’t want to sound like the internet police and say being an asshole on the Internet is wrong when most people do it, ideally with little consequence to them in the real world (better pray no one knows where you live), but if you’re going to say something, have evidence, write down your thoughts, and if there’s a contradiction somewhere down the line, correct it and try again.

The last channel recommendation for the month of February 2023 is TheMythologyGuy.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheMythologyGuy1/featured

Since this post mentioned a product caked in mythology, it seemed fitting to mention a channel where that’s the specialty on display. TheMythologyGuy talks about various mythologies from Greece to Egypt to Japan to Norse just to name a few. Several of my favorite videos of his are about the mythical inaccuracies in the God of War games, followed close by movie reviews concerning other myths and franchises, notably that of the Percy Jackson variety. The link to his channel is up above and his about page will have links on where and how to support him.

This will be the last of the channel recommendations until April. Look forward to their return.

Boruto: Timeskip Prospects

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The sequel series with a ginormous precedent to live up to

I was originally going to speculate on what the timeskip in the Boruto series would entail, but thanks to leaks provided by Twitter user @Abdul_S17, which have also been passed onto r/Boruto on reddit, this may be a brief post with not as much to say about what happens going forward, or rather, the unpredictable nature of the series makes this very hard, so I’ll try my best with the informaton given. Though I think there’s a few elephants to address regarding the Boruto series. In support of the sequel to Naruto, there’s loads of details that Naruto fans often forget or throw by the wayside. When the Boruto anime debuted in 2017, I recalled a detail that was mentioned in passing, but nonetheless mentioned the death of a major character, and so when it came to it, binging all of Naruto and Shippuden up until that point provided as much context as I could need to make sense of this seemingly unimportant line. This probably gives me the best understanding of the Narutoverse as a whole, the internal politics therein, etc., etc.

That being said, it’s not like Boruto doesn’t have it’s criticisms, and picking apart the worthless drivel from the valid points, Talk no Jutsu or not, if it was Naruto becoming Hokage instead of Konohamaru under the hood of a Transformation Jutsu, rest assured the Orange Hokage would’ve had a way more heartfelt ceremony. Also, regardless of all the money that comes with being affiliated with Naruto, if the Boruto manga was planned better, there probably would’ve been less filler even if the writers can magic it into the plot all the same. The showrunners seem to have fallen for one of the few things that can happen when a manga and anime run concurrent, as explained by a genius in the link below:

A problem inherited by Naruto and other anime adaptations beginning in the early to mid-2000s. And the worst case scenario would be what happened with the Fate franchise, but at least the Big Three have a consistent timeline.

Anyway, the Boruto manga’s next chapter is scheduled for release on February 20, and the leaks tell us how Boruto got the scar that his older self will have in the big brawl against Kawaki. All that’s missing now is the cloak and the sword. If you’ve been reading or watching or both, you know that Boruto has become Sasuke’s pupil and over time gets his old scratched headband as a memento. During the story, a mission to transport a Leaf village scientist to a research facility changes halfway and the new Team 7 is rerouted to assist with a zeppelin crash in the forest transporting autonomous puppets. As it turns out, this was the property of the dangerous group known as Kara and a couple members were sent to intercept.

A familiar face shows himself to keep the secrets from getting out. When that fails, Boruto, Sarada, and Mitsuki, learn that amongst the precious cargo was a boy known as Kawaki whom Kara planned on using as a vital tool. Now that he’s in Leaf Village hands, he’s under the sworn protection of the Hokage, and the troubled kid becomes utterly attached to Naruto, enough that the immediate threat of the Ohtsutsuki clan and its still living members is still felt even close to home.

Multiple attempts and failures to retrieve Kawaki become progressively destructive. Meanwhile, the karma seal on both Kawaki’s and Boruto’s palms begins to resonate and even strengthen at imprecise moments. The flashback in the beginning show that they can both activate it on command, but Boruto as a kid isn’t there yet. The more recent chapters show that whenever Boruto spends most of his chakra or loses control, his karma seal which has the memories of the Ohtsutsuki that Boruto defeated, Momoshiki, activates and Momo’s memories take over his body. Kawaki attempted to remedy this condition with entropy, but Momo, not content on losing his vessel, repairs Boruto’s body.

A cryptic message he gave to Hokage’s son about his blue eyes taking everything he cherished from him starts to come true. At the same time, one of Kara’s worst members, Code, is hellbent on living up to the Ohtsutsuki name by carrying on the will of its old leader Jigen, who was really the vessel of Isshiki Ohtsutsuki. So to summarize it: Code is in one corner hoping to become an Ohtsutsuki with all that comes with it, Kawaki seeks to destroy all Ohtsutsuki, and Boruto wants to get rid of the karma seal on his hand, and these goals all stand in the way of each other with progressively destructive consequences to boot.

I remember being floored by the destruction showcased in the first episode flashforward scene. Until we see the extent of the damage, it’s likely not on the same level as Pain’s Almighty Push.

Then again, them being the only two in the scene on the destroyed Hokage faces says quite a lot doesn’t it.

Now that the scene is set, I want to get a few predictions for what might happen. Spoiler for the leaks shared online, Kawaki gifts Boruto the scar, and is apprehended by Sasuke, Mitsuki, and Konohamaru. After that, I can expect Kakashi to come by as he too lost his eye in his youth and was given a teammate’s notorious Kekkei Genkai lost in the aftermath of the Fourth Ninja War.

In this case, the same may be true for Boruto as he has an ability known as the Jougan. It was originally meant to be the Byakugan, but Kishimoto forgot about that even though there’s a sketch of him with the Hyuga clan’s signature eyes. In the world of Naruto, when a nonmember of a specific clan’s Kekkei Genkai, it’s active for good. There’s no way to turn it off whatsoever, else Kakashi and Danzo wouldn’t have had to make use of eyepatches when they both had theirs.

The jougan activates immediately and the last page shows a glimpse of Momo taking another W for his predictions coming true. Going forward, extra training from Sasuke with some of Kakashi’s input can be expected as both do or used to live with only one normal functioning eye. One thing I didn’t mention was Kawaki trapping Naruto and Hinata in another dimension so that they don’t stand in his way when goes for Boruto again. Soon after being placed under the strictest detention possible, most likely at the behest of Shikamaru, the Leaf Village is gonna demand he release Naruto and Hinata and then keep him under wraps while they deal with Code, and two more Kara members, Eida and her brother Daemon.

As for Boruto, if Kawaki doesn’t comply, then it might fall on Boruto to do so and with less experience than his adoptive brother. The extra training might be signs of a timeskip, but with Kara showing off it’s most overpowered members and keeping them around for a fair bit, it might result in something different. Maybe another flashforward is in order, but again, can’t really tell all that well.

That aside, I recall that Boruto claimed he wanted to be a ninja like Sasuke is in the sense that he protects the village from afar while the Hokage spot goes to Sarada in the future. He seems to be turning into his idol though of course not precisely. Scarred headband, special eye jutsu, currently missing his parents, bearing a curse mark awarded by a pale-skinned enemy, and also under his possession at times, and set to gain a cloak and sword. Holy shit, Boruto is becoming his idol. Let’s have a look.

Of course, Boruto will still have both of his arms, but my point stands: Boruto, by accident or intent, is going to turn into Sasuke, a different type of Shippuden Sasuke. At least that’s what I see, and if it turns out to be true, then awesome. If not, then I’ll wait for Ikemoto and Kishimoto to keep going while I eat a bag of Ligma.

This week’s channel recommendation is TheAlmightyLoli. If you’re looking for a pop culture reviewer with a slice of edge coupled with a passioned understanding of the material at hand look no further. Loli’s style of reviewing and comedy can hit you in the mouth, and his style is an acquired taste, but for those who stick by, there’s never a dull moment. This channel dedicated hours of content to recounting Berserk in honor of Kentaro Miura who sadly died before he could finish the work, though one of his assistant’s, Koji Mori, is picking up where Miura left off at.

If you can sit through days’ worth of content on a single dark fantasy manga that continues to influence the industry to this day, sprinkled in with some other stuff, TheAlmightyLoli’s YouTube channel is linked down below along with the ways to support him on his about section.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAlmightyLoli/featured

Forgotten GTA Games: Part II

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Finishing off with the second round of underrated GTA games

Last week, I brought attention to the likes of GTA: Vice City Stories, one of two games that I think should receive a remake, flaws notwithstanding. Even a PC port if able, and I don’t mean by way of emulation as it’s been my only means of playing the game. By the way, I want to quickly update and say I found a mission that may be worse than Supply Lines in San Andreas. The second half of the mission Unfriendly Competition ramps up the difficulty right quick. The second half of this mission can fall off a bridge. Anyway, we’re moving onto Liberty City Stories.

Liberty City Stories is set in 1998, which is three years prior to the start of GTA III. So to outline the timeline of the 3D era: Vice City Stories starts in 1984; Vice City takes place two years later in the mid-spring of 1986; San Andreas begins in 1992; LCS takes place in March of 1998, and GTA III being set in the modern day at the time takes place in mid-Autumn of 2001, and the real-world politics of its real-world counterpart were felt during the development of the game with all the content that was cut.

As a side note, I want to make a post about the uncanny references to 9/11 prior to the actual 9/11. See for yourself, it’s unreal.

Anyway, LCS centers around the character of Antonio “Toni” Cipriani. After lying low for a few years on the orders of Don Salvatore Leone, Toni is called back to do more mob work and help the Leones put the city under mob influence, fighting gangsters, cartels, and the Sicilian Mob itself across the map.

If you ask me, forgetting this game and VCS doesn’t make a lot of sense. You could argue that since they both feature one-off characters and GTA III itself (whom Toni appears in) is the last game chronologically, the point remaking LCS and/or VCS wouldn’t be worth it. But I argue that one-off or not, Victor Vance from VCS and Toni Cipriani from LCS have both been influential even if it’s not all that felt in the games that they serve as prequels too.

No, no one really honors Toni in GTA III and Victor Vance doesn’t appear again, save for the intro to Vice City while other characters like Maria Latore and Phil Cassidy et al have more screen time and became mainstays, but this highlights further problems with prequels. The lack of foresight that can often accompany them. If RockStar thought ahead, they would’ve had Phil Cassidy age properly from gun nut (like his appearance in VC) to drunkard (as shown in VCS) to old man heavy weapons dealer (as seen in GTA III and LCS).

Further, LCS has inherited the water puddle death that made seafaring so nerve-wracking in GTA III and Vice City. The three cities repeatedly lampooned in the GTA series (LA, NYC, Miami) all have beaches, but if you splash a little bit of water on Claude, Tommy Vercetti, or Toni, straight to the hospital. Though, after 2002 and until IV in 2008, motorcycles would make a permanent appearance.

As a sidenote, RockStar got around the lack of motorcycles in GTA III by stating in-universe that a petition to get them off the streets of LC pulled through. So bikers were essentially outlawed. Personally, I grew up in the Bronx and having seen a fair share of bikers growing up, they don’t play a very large influence, but biker gangs in NYC would still show up from time to time.

Thankfully the absence is quickly remedied following 2002’s Vice City, though the 3D era games have showcased several design flaws of the time. In the case of Liberty City Stories, at first glance it was structurally similar to III and Vice City, just asset flipped and this time making use of the map in-game as opposed to hoping the player could memorize from the mini-map in III. But like those games, swimming was against the law. Bikes and bikers were given an appearance, but aircraft would still take a backseat until the pilotable helicopters after 2002.

But a move RockStar made that would change the face of GTA going forward would be non-silent protagonists. Claude in III literally nods and sets forward blasting. Without a single word of dialogue, Claude portrays himself to be one hell of a sociopath. Employers and allies who stay by his side are left alone, but give him a briefcase of cash and a target and he’ll pursue it to the ends of the earth. This serves as a vague spoiler, so those of you looking to emulate it should be on the lookout.

Speaking of III, Toni debuts as an employer in that game and trying my best not to spoil, the character models in both show a difference. Unlike what became of Phil Cassidy, more attention was at least paid to Toni’s model.

See the difference? I want to say RockStar doesn’t focus on progression all that much with characters from previous games quietly retiring or outright dying (Johnny Klebitz deserved better.), but within an established universe, and with the right amount of dedication, they can do good with a before and after. This isn’t related to anything plot wise between games, but at times in LCS Toni will be told that he’s remarkably, almost skeletally thin. In 1998, he was lightly mocked for being underweight, and over the next three years and change, he became overweight. A bit like Nikocado Avocado, except even with the extra pounds, Toni can still move around a lot faster.

Actually, if you’ve ever seen weightlifters, bodybuilders, or the most recent incarnation of Thor, packing on the weight helps plenty for those guys. Toni turned himself into an ox when you think about it. The way the GTA games are written gives away a sense of a Hollywood influence, and mobster movies get the most spotlight depending on the setting. Vice City combines aspects of shows like Miami Vice and any mobster movie set on the East Coast, and III and LCS both give me more New York Five Families vibes. Pick your favorite movie, but for me it’s Goodfellas, with a hint of Godfather, and maybe also Miller’s Crossing with these wise guys dedicating themselves to the mob from birth, the lot of them being mobster brats as kids.

That tends to be the case for both Tommy and Toni. For Toni, his mother doesn’t make a physical appearance, but more of a vocal appearance. Pushing him to step it up, bust his enemies’ teeth in, come back with at least five severed heads or don’t come back at all; admittedly, this feeds into stereotypes of both Sicilian parents and the Sicilian mob. I’m not Sicilian and I don’t know many Italians (save for the many pizzerias and Italian restaurants within walking distance of my apartment), so I can’t say how true to life this is for someone of Sicilian ancestry growing up. The Sicilian mob on the other hand gets a fair amount of media coverage in pop culture if not news outlets in and around Sicily and Southern Italy, and if Sicilian or Mediterranean-based journalists are worth their salt, the Sicilian mob isn’t one to trifled with.

Groups like Ndrangheta can and have done serious damage to people who’ve wronged them, and it’s far from pretty. Of course, works of fiction need to take liberties in case someone is dumb enough to imitate what happens in real life or for dramatic effect, but if RockStar pulled some stories from real-world headlines featuring the Sicilian mob in action, then perhaps it’s as close to accurate as can be short of interviewing an ex-mobster or watching an interview or documentary of such.

Toni Cipriani goes about doing much of what can be expected of a mobster with the strong-arming, enforcement, bribery, political meddling, malicious destruction and all that the mob was accused of doing or charged with. All this being said though, the asset taking and developing in the VC games and San Andreas are absent. On the one hand, it would fit with the narrative of the game, but it’s a bit unrealistic as several mobsters — real and fictional — operated front businesses to keep the police from sniffing around or at least bribe them with “get lost” money.

Grand Theft Auto is an ultimate in parody, but more realistic elements existed in movies and shows and funny enough JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind. Golden Wind takes place in 2001 in Naples and briefly explains that many capos and even the Don’s consigliere (advisor) may have a side business if not an umbrella’s worth of them, sometimes with evidence. Mr. Pericolo (pictured above) is an example of mobsters continually hiding their identities and getting one up on the law or their enemies.

Disguises and shell companies and whatnot don’t feature in LCS. This would probably take away from the video game aspect of the video game and probably feeds into a misconception that a mobster can’t have a side hustle, which I can’t really believe after what happened to Al Capone.

And if that were the case, then the misconception is broken by way of Tommy Vercetti himself gaining assets and collecting regular payments for the latter half of Vice City. Recall that he’s from Liberty City originally, and the game follows much of the plot of Scarface 1983.

For LCS, one of the hidden perks of being an asset flip of GTA III and Vice City is that some of the problems and mechanics in SA and VCS make a comeback. This being Liberty City, the radio stations from III are all intact, albeit with different music and radio shows to listen to (Chatterbox FM is a hidden gem), mobster characters from III show up along with a few one-off characters who don’t appear in III, this being post-VC, there’s more weapons variety and I think the game fixes a minor anachronism.

Gun nuts reading this will notice that ever since the M4A1 was made famous by the U.S. military overseas, RockStar put it in all the 3D games after III despite it not being manufactured until 1994 and probably being issued to the military a year and change after that. So it makes sense at least to have that as a rifle in a game set in 1998. The games set years prior to that should all have the M16, while III and LCS have the M4 model, though this being early 2000s internet, this is assuming the internet was fast 20 years ago.

Anyway, the dialogue doesn’t sound out of place for a piece of mobster media for the time, the characters’ are all felt (especially Mrs. Cipriani), Toni is an impactful protagonist despite the lack of muscle mass, and considering he’s one of two characters to show up in at least four games, it seems as though RockStar wasn’t ready to part ways with either Phil Cassidy or the character Donald Love until it was time to use that next-gen technology to make LC look more like NY than it did back then. Now, I know I said this was a two-parter, but there’s a third game that probably doesn’t receive as much attention that I also want to get around to. Whenever that’ll be, I’ll have to rewrite the schedule, but it’ll be covered down the line, so be on the lookout.

This week, I recommend a podcast. The Trash Taste podcast is hosted by three anitubers Garnt “Gigguk” Maneetapho, Joey “TheAnimeMan” Bizinger, and Connor “CDawgVA” Colquhoun. All three have their own YouTube and Twitch channels, but I’ll only link the podcast since it’ll have the links provided already. The Trash Taste Podcast markets itself as an anime podcast, but has overtime evolved to encompass more about life in Japan especially as a gaijin/non-Japanese. They also have an After Dark channel that livestreams on Twitch as well. The podcast has a Patreon page, and while the videos are recorded for the YouTube viewing audience, if you can’t find the time to sit down and watch, podcasting apps like Google Podcasts and Spotify have their episodes on audio only so there’s more than one way to support them.

https://www.youtube.com/@TrashTaste

Forgotten GTA Games: Part I

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Looking at a pair of GTA games that deserve as much honor as the others

Gamers of all strides know the gods of controversy at RockStar Games and their most famous series of all: Grand Theft Auto. Developed by Scotsmen in 1997 under what used to be DMA Design, the working title was changed from Race n Chase to that of a motor vehicle theft, even though the games have always featured way more than that.

It wouldn’t be until the game’s 3D era installments in the Fall of 2001 that set a precedent across the gaming industry. Being one of the games that perfects the 3D formula as other games were failing or meeting expectations prior to the turn of the millennium is one hell of an accolade. Future games continued to reinvent the wheel, with a voiced protagonist and ownable assets in Vice City (2002), RPG elements in San Andreas (2004), and by the HD era, the characters got grittier and more realistic with the GTA 4 and Episodes from Liberty City protagonists of Niko Bellic, the Yugoslav War vet, Johnny Klebitz, the biker, and Luis Lopez, the nightclub manager.

That being said, the 3D trilogy protags and the ones pictured above from the HD era, coupled with the three protags of GTA 5, are the most memorable ones which becomes extremely ironic for the GTA III protagonist: Claude, a silent protagonist who can best be described as an amoral psychopath even without dialogue.

But among the myriad of GTA characters, there’s a few that don’t get as much recognition from the 3D era from a pair of forgotten GTA games. This post will focus on the first of these — Vice City Stories — while next week’s post goes to the second in this two-parter: Liberty City Stories. Those titles almost give me the impression upon reflection that there were drafts for a San Andreas Stories that never came to light.

So what’s Vice City Stories about? It’s set in 1984, two years before Vice City’s protagonist Tommy Vercetti gets out of prison and heads to Vice City, Florida (no fake state this go around), and follows the protagonist Victor Vance. He starts as a corporal in the U.S. Army and is sent to do bullshit tasks for his NCO Sgt. Jerry Martinez. Martinez, though, is an outlier of shitbaggery with most of his tasks being especially illegal. And with Vance as the fall guy, he gets kicked out with a dishonorable discharge for being caught with pot and coming to base with a hooker in toe on Martinez’s orders.

I want to tangent for a bit. If you’ve been in the military, especially the Army, there’s a few things that almost don’t add up very well. It’s an inside joke that Army corporals are very ignored and shat on by higher ups. Specialists are often seen as belonging to a club known as the E-4 mafia. Tons of videos explain what that is, but to my understanding, the shitty details relegated to lower enlisted normally include those in pay grade E-1 to -4, though a Specialist with some time in service knows a few tricks of the trade to get around performing said shitty details. Again, videos can explain it better than an entertainment blog.

Also, there’s a sad reality about the U.S. military that senior noncoms are almost always looked over when they misbehave since they’ve shown to be such an asset for being in for so long at so high a rank, even if their direct leadership (first sergeants and sergeants major) is simply impressed that they can run two miles in under fifteen minutes. Part of that is a joke, but there’s some truth to it. Theoretically, a sergeant first class in the Army or a gunnery sergeant in the Marines can be a total asshole to everyone below him or her and probably face nonjudicial punishment because of something stupid. So it raised a few alarm bells for me that Martinez was a sergeant at the pay grade of E-5 and not E-7 or higher. He probably has more time in service but got passed over for different reasons (the 1980s U.S. Army was a vastly different beast), but who knows?

But enough about military politics. Other outlets can better bitch and moan about that. Back to the game. Following Vance facing the worst of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a few contacts made on the outside help Vic out and get him back on his feet. He explains to Sgt. Martinez that his purpose for joining the military was to provide for his family, though the game reveals how crap they all are with money, save for the one in his immediate family that really needs it, his sickly younger brother.

When you get an honorable discharge from the Army, ideally you have the best credentials because of how great it makes your resume look. Dishonorable discharge is a different story and Vic could generally be far, far worse than a dope peddler. Interestingly, halfway through the game he expresses discomfort for this part of the criminal underworld, sticking mainly with extortion, racketeering, and prostitution. Still morally questionable, but the character arc almost reminds me of Walter White in Breaking Bad, which is interesting as VCS was released about two years before Breaking Bad premiered on AMC in 2008.

I think I may have material for a future post. While I know what happens at the end of the game, having seen gameplay of it on YT, I’m refraining from major spoilers and looking at features lifted from other games. Swimming is here to stay and the era of “touch water equals death” was gone briefly until RockStar’s 2010 western game Red Dead Redemption brought it back because…

The asset ownership returns from San Andreas and Vice City and this time, Vic has a choice over what to turn a newly acquired building into. Rival gangs can attack your shit and if you don’t hustle, you pay out of pocket to fix it. There’s also side missions and upgrades to do and the fiscally conservative of you might sing your praises if the income outweighs the expenses. This was the case for me personally. You get your pay every day at 4:00 PM, and since I barely spent anything, my daily income brought me a fifth of the way to six figures, so paying to fix shit didn’t really faze me. A feature that also shaped GTA games in the future was bribes.

Whenever you get busted or wasted in game in this era, the authorities tending to you take away your guns, but in this game you can buy them all back. Then with GTA 4, only the police took your guns away. Mentioning the timeline in a non-spoilery way, the 3D era blends pretty well though there’s a few inconsistencies. Some characters disappeared from the timeline momentarily to show up in another game apropos of nothing. Sometimes characters aged incorrectly (see Phil Cassidy for more information). But putting aside developer oversight, the gangs within were mostly consistent, with X gang shown to be powerful in X game or Y gang disbanding because of actions in Y gang, etc., etc.

All of these would at least be grounds for a remake or remaster, or so I’d think, but III, VC, and SA get the most love as those were the three to be remade at least twice, first in the early 2010s to coincide with their respective ten year anniversaries, and again in 2021 to coincide with the 20 year anniversary of GTA III, though faceplanting at the first hurdle.

As well loved as these three games are, they scratch the surface of what the 3D games had to offer and leave a few things out of the narrative and timeline of the 3D era. You could piece together everything with just CJ, Tommy, and Claude and call it a day — many have done that — but personally, I like the extras included by these games inclusion. In fact, I’ll probably work on a timeline blog in the future. I’ve played these games a fair bit and I’ve got a solid grasp of the story.

I mentioned in the last post that for February, I would include YouTube channel recommendations. For February 3, 2023, I recommend the channel Tactical Bacon Productions. This channel covers video game content mainly focused on David Jaffe’s repertoire most famously Twisted Metal and God of War. The most common way to support him are through subscriptions and he does have a Patreon for which donations can be made. The link to his channel is below. If you want to hear more about Kratos or the games that were inspired (even heavily) by Twisted Metal, look no further.

https://www.youtube.com/@TBP