2008 Game of the Year, Day 3: The CG Awards
And on the third day Uncle Crispy created a winner, and he saw that it was good.
12/23/2008 6:14 PM | 2 Comments | Page 2 of 13
Scott Jones
Status: Coffee makes me feel 4-percent sexier.
Third Place: Grand Theft Auto IV
(Rockstar North)Order Now
Gus Mastrapa: Make no mistake. This is the best outing in the Grand Theft Auto series. Rockstar reeled in the scope and sprawl, which made its last GTA game daunting and generally un-fun. This more focused game didn't offer all the free-wheeling kicks that some craved, but it made up for its more straight-laced playground with insanely good writing, stellar acting, a startling recreation of New York City and a soundtrack so hip that the tunes flew right over the heads of most of its audience. Time will show
Grand Theft Auto IV to be the moment that the sandbox grew up.
Scott Alexander: To grossly oversimplify, games are often heavy on scenario and light on plot and character development.
GTA IV found a very interesting balance between these poles, with an immense amount of character development and a story that packed in genuine uniqueness and legitimate narrative resonance instead of merely aping genre clichés from this or other media (an alarmingly widespread behavior). It offered up a serious narrative amid an atmosphere of parody, had incredible music, and did an amazing job of bringing an open-world New York City to life. And it moved an obscene amount of copies. There were other games this year that were technically on par with
GTA IV, but none of them even came close to it in terms of cultural importance.
Niko Bellic was the new bad boy in the best GTA to date.
Harold Goldberg: It's hard out there for a pimp/game critic such as myself. Much as I don't want to give kudos to a franchise, I keep thinking about the attention to detail in
GTA IV, and the humor, and the writing. I liked walking with my date on the ocean-side boardwalk in Brooklyn almost as much as I do in real life. Smell the sea! And when I was driving along and the radio station featured a Dr. Laura satire in which the macho caller had the tables turned on him in an S&M way, they had me, hook, line and sinker. Walk on the wild side, just like Lou Reed said. New York City, baby, just like I pictured it, too.
Blake Snow: It's sandbox fun evolved, and it's the best integration of story, cinematics and gaming I've ever seen.
Read on for Second Place...
