My brother’s been playing Grand Theft Auto IV, which I asked him about because the vidogame takes place in a thinly veiled version of New York City and I was curious what the experience was like. Here is his emailed report from yesterday, which amused me greatly. For the record, I’m unaware of any mini-golf courses in New York City; then again, it’s a big city.
My GTA IV apartment is terrible and I’m under some sort of rail tracks. Plus I went out on a date with this chick and I accidentally sank her car into a mini-golf course lake while trying to take a late night shortcut to the bowling alley. Needless to say our date didn’t end well. You can totally spend a shit-ton of time just looking at stuff, not to mention shopping for pants! The craziest part is that you can watch TV in your apartment in the video game, which is almost a little TOO meta for my liking.
I hardly ever know where I am in this game. Jess makes fun of me because my sense of direction and lack of driving savvy really carry over into the video game world. Without the built in GPS, I would probably always be lost (a real problem I had in earlier GTA games). [. . .] Obviously, I really need to study the map that came with the game, because I’m as confused as I would be in the real NYC. Another awesome tidbit: you can hail cabs and actually look out the window and make small talk as you ride. There’s even an option to yell at the cabbie to “hurry” if you need to be somewhere fast. The details in this game are mind blowing. At one point, somebody ran into me with their car and I lost my $8 Russian hat.