Analyzing the "GTA-Likes" of the Early Naughties
In Kirby’s next game he can turn into a car.
This abomination reminded me of the strange years of the GTAfication of games, a historical moment I rarely see people talk about. People remember the tail end of the fifth generation when everything was, at its core, a 3D platformer, or the early days of the seventh generation when everything was brown and gray and had some ridiculous light bloom, but the GTAfication of games was a much more subtle proccess that, I believe, few people have noticed.
It was a simple phenomenom. By the early naughties (yes, this is how I’ll refer to the 00’s until I die) two things were clear to all game makers about the GTA series. One, it was incredibly popular. Two, attempts to mimick it didn’t go well. Driver and True Crime, the two games that had entered this particular fray, had failed miserably and become fodder for Rockstar to make fun of them. So what was a publisher to do? Try to come up with something else new and innovative and carve out their own niche? Allow their devs to work as they see fit and trust their ability to create? Ha ha, no, don’t be ridiculous. The solution was to add GTA-like elements to series that already existed and had their niches, hopefully combining them and devouring the GTA franchise like a fat amoeba. The most likely result, though, was to create a poorly-designed Frankenstein of a game that would alienate fans of the series while gaining no new market share whatsoever.
A GTA-like usually has some or all of these elements:
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It’s a new entry on an existing franchise, but…
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Now you can drive cars (or, if you could drive cars already, can get out of them)
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Now you’re a criminal
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Now the central activity in the game is being done in an illegal setting
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The game either no longer has levels and has instead a big open world, or (more likely) there are still levels but they are meant to represent nearby places for a poor man’s open world experience
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The tone of the game is edgier and there are fucking swears
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There’s now a story, which lets any number of the above elements be included
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The name of the franchise changes to indicate this new direction, quite often by the addition of the words “Underground”
Let’s look at some of the contenders.
Tony Hawk’s Under Ground
This is, quite possibly, the poster child to this movement. Tony Hawk’s game had always been well received and well liked, but the previous game in the series had already been the eighth in the franchise. Ideas were getting stale and new improvements had been minute. So what better way to shake it up than to now create a game with a story in which you are a SKATE CRIMINAL?
Well, it turns out that maybe having made a boring Tony Hawk 9 game might’ve been the better call here. THUG was a massive step back for the franchise. The car-driving sections, of which there were many, were boring and controlled poorly, and of course they were obligatory. The story didn’t fit the tone of a game that had until then been a collect-a-thon, and it meant most of the game’s levels were a variant of ‘US city’; the most bizarre level was in Russia, but remember that early games had the Bermuda Triangle, and even something as simple as Downhill Jam would be out of tone with these game.
But probably the most egregious change was that you were no longer able to play as a female custom skater, since the newly tacked on story had you falling in love with a girl, and we all know riding skateboards and kissing girls are two things women have never done.
It’s not all bad, though! For instance, uh, the acronym was pretty good? THUG?
Need for Speed: Underground
THUG’s distant Underground cousin did a lot of things in common. It also added a story mode, changed the tone, and shook up what the game meant. Up until then, the Need for Speed series was about driving in exotic locales in super cool, super fast cats, and you’d likely start with a Camaro or something and drive your way to an European supercar. NFSU changed the setting to illegal street racers, which means that the whole game took place in a single US city, during a perpetual night, and you’d maybe drive your way to a Camaro and your starting car was a fucking Dodge Neon - but you put a purple underlight on it!
People loved NFSU. It’s one of the most beloved games in the franchise. The open world in a single connected city and the addition of lower powered ‘street’ cars were things that, to some extent or another, remained in the series for ever - as did the police chases, which (for honesty’s sake) actually started in the previous game in the franchise, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.
Anyone who, like me, played the next game in the series THUG2 first, knows it is objectively better, even though it is much less liked.
007: Everything or Nothing
Don’t look at me like that. This game absolutely belongs to the list. Pay attention.
A 007 game with a driving section isn’t, by itself, a giant change: even Rareware’s beloved N64 game Goldeneye had not one but two levels in which you could drive a tank, and of course cool cars are a big part of the parent franchise. EA’s previous two 007 games for this generation, Nightfire and Agent Under Fire, both had quite good driving sections - being reportedly made by the Need for Speed teams. Everything or Nothing’s driving sections had, well, walking sections, and while they weren’t full-on hybrid levels (while on them you couldn’t use guns or the vast majority of your moves, not even running) it did mean the game’s car levels were more varied than “drive fast, fire missiles”. There were also different cars to drive: the first vehicle section actually was a “drive fast, fire missiles” affair, but you started the game on foot, and a little bout of fucking around would let you find out a motorbike as an alternative vehicle for the mission, which allowed you to take alternative routes.
Of course, describing this as the major change in the game is a kind of tunnel vision. This is the first 007 game to switch to a third person shooter, which was in my opinion a very fine move for EA, allowing them to get out of the giant shadow of Goldeneye and make a niche of their own, focusing on the Bond part of the Bond game (since Goldeneye remains unassailable on the game part). Of course, shortly afterward they’d make a first person shooter in the 007 universe named Goldeneye because every corporation is a Greek tragedy on hubris.
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts ‘n’ Bolts
OK, this one came out in 2008, which doesn’t make it ‘early’ naughties at all, but it ticks so many boxes. It’s a new entry on a franchise that threw away its core concept to be about driving now, very obviously due do corporate meddling. And it was pretty much reviled.
Which I kinda think is unfair? I mean, it’s not good… but it’s one of the most creative approaches in this list, allowing the player to create their own vehicles instead of choosing from premade ones. The vehicle creation is nothing spetacular, and I bet everyone just tried to make the simplest vehicle possible for the job, but this is also a kind of puzzle that can be enjoyed, creating a kind of Mad Max motorbike with just a seat, an engine, a fuel tank and a gun, or using the pieces to a helicopter to create a “jetpack”.
Super Mario Sunshine
In this 2002 game, Mario starts the game being arrested by the police, the levels are all connected, and riding Yoshi is possible for the first time in a near decade.
Mario has never recovered from the thug life.
March’s Link Roundup
People hate their jobs. But, like, for real now. Possibly because the pandemic wiped away all the fluff that surrounded work - the conversations at the cooler, the after hours commiseration, even the commute - and showed everyone what work truly is, and it has been found lacking. I’m not sure this is the case, but you can be sure I hope it is. The basis of modern work is busywork, and the more people realize this, the more likely they are to seek work that causes true change in the world.
Epic v. Apple judge rules Fortnite’s Peely can appear naked in court
Perhaps sadly, perhaps mercifully, I haven’t been keeping up with the Epic v. Apple trial that recently reached its conclusion (on first instance, so there’s likely more drama to come). This means I missed the moment when the lawyers, due to their 500IQ legal moves, decided that the court had to decide whether it would be inappopriate for the banana man to show up naked to court. While part of an important move (that might have chilling results for the Itch game site) it remains, on its own, brilliantly silly.
Was ‘World’s Largest Log Cabin’ Oregon’s Forestry Building?
Even though some people have valid reservations about their work, Snopes remains one of the finest fact-seekers and truth-finders on the internet, having switched seamlessly from your grandma’s emails to your grandma’s whatsapp chains. Which is why I find it hilarious that at least one of these fact seekers had to dive deep into the history and definitions of what a log building is in order to answer this query. Even funnier is that, usually, the answer to a Snopes query is either “ha ha, not even close” or “actually, yes”. In this case, Oregon’s Forestry Building is the world’s second largest log building, which means that, in order to exclude to actual largest one, someone either created a very specific lie or concocted a very specific meaning to the word ‘cabin’.
This month’s video is an analysis of a painting which appears on the background of a 1950’s TV series. This rambling story that goes from moose head props to Salvador Dalí is fascinating, and also kind of the way my brain works.
