A few decades ago the masses believed video games were a waste of time for lackadaisical youths to pacify themselves while ignoring their responsibilities as both kids and young adults. As more and more people started understanding the benefits of gaming so too did the perception of what a video game is and, most importantly, the benefits gaming can bestow on a person’s life changed. Hi, my name is James Bullock and I am a gamer who has spent the better part of his existence testing the laws of physics, exploring the vastness of a world ruined, and been a champion inside various arenas courtesy of digitized worlds both driven by reality and created through pure unbelievable ingenuity unlike anything seen by human eyes. And as a gamer I’ve discovered something else video games provide: life lessons. Today I examine the game that convinced me to buy an Xbox 360, “Grand Theft Auto 4”.
Revenge Kills Both People
2008 was a turning point in my life as a gamer. Thanks to the greatness Sony’s Playstation 2 library offered for yours truly, the need to upgrade didn’t feel necessary until 2008 for one simple reason: the release of “Grand Theft Auto 4”. After becoming a fan of the “GTA” franchise like so many other gamers during its Playstation 2 era, it was imperative that I owned the fourth numbered installment even if it meant spending all the money I had from selling back the books from the college courses I had taken that semester on both the game and the “Arcade” Xbox 360 bundle.
It was only a week after “GTA 4’s” release and subsequent gaining of critical acclaim by both gamers & reviewers that I purchased an Xbox 360 & “Grand Theft Auto 4” from my local Gamestop – the first game console I purchased on my own. Though each “GTA” offering released on the Playstation 2 had a sense of heaviness & believability, a majority of each experience felt majorly absurd in nature. For every moment like CJ lamenting over the murder & loss of his mother there were times when the player would have to steal a jetpack from a military base while seeing proof of alien existence. “Grand Theft Auto 4” took things further into the realm of reality; forgoing a lot of the wackiness that made the previous games so unique while emphasizing the character-based drama that was slowly becoming the norm in regards to video game storytelling.
At the center of “GTA 4’s” narrative is the protagonist and the character every player takes control of, Niko Bellic. A man of Eastern European descent persuaded by his cousin to come to Liberty City in search of the American Dream, Bellic enters Rockstar Games’ re-imaging of New York with an ulterior motive: to find the man who betrayed his unit in an unnamed war from fifteen years earlier. Niko, in an effort to avoid an existence of debt like his cousin Roman and potential poverty, takes to a criminal lifestyle while slowly working his way toward the man who ruined his life before the game begins. Unfortunately, Niko’s quest for revenge brings him into contact with untrustworthy individuals who have no qualms with doing to Bellic what Niko plans to do to the man he’s hunting. Though the player has the option of killing or forgiving the person who could’ve ended his life all those years ago on the battlefield, Niko’s actions & intent beforehand leads to the revelation that a quest built on revenge is one of eventual ruin. Niko’s decisions that follow can’t stop the train of death he put into motion – a painful reminder that bloodshed always begets more bloodshed.
Have you learned any major life lessons from playing “Grand Theft Auto IV” or any video game for that matter? Leave them in the comments below and, as always, thanks for reading.
