Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes - GTA IV

Episode Date: July 15, 2023

From gaming hosts Josh, Paul, and Ryan we're bringing you even more gaming content each week.  Gaming Quick Takes are a short series of game recommendations, funny moments, off-topic chat and more. A small dose of gaming to brighten your Saturdays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and we'll be releasing these Quick Takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public. And these Quick Takes are a little more laid back, and they're hosted by just one of us. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this Quick Take episode.

Shazam! Boom! Hello everybody! Welcome to another Quick Take episode here with Paul. You might notice that my voice sounds a little bit different. I have actually been quite sick here over Christmas break. And I did not want that to stop me from recording this episode though because I just finished another playthrough of Grand Theft Auto 4 and I know that I've talked about it a couple times on the show but wanted to spend a couple more minutes now that the game is fully fresh in my mind and I did want to say thank you to all of

you out there who help support the show we really couldn't do this without you and we know that everybody has limited funds so the fact that you have chosen to help support our show really does mean the world. All right. Now, if you haven't played GTA 4 in a long time, or if you have never played it, it's hard to believe how old this game already is. This released all the way back in 2008. I was kind of shocked to see that. I feel like it's only been five or six years, but it's actually 13 years now in the rear

window. And this is the one where you play as immigrant Nico Bellic, who is one of my all-time favorite protagonists slash antiheroes in a game. And he has basically immigrated from Eastern Europe, and he is seeking out the American dream. His cousin Roman had moved to America several years prior, writes Nico lots of letters about how he's living it up and he's rich and he has all these american women and uh that he has all this fame and fortune and nico very quickly realizes that it's all just smoke and mirrors roman actually runs this very beaten run down taxi cab business. He owes a lot of debts to multiple mobsters. And so Nico basically starts working with Roman trying to amass some kind of fortune in America,

while he is also trying to seek out a person who had betrayed his military unit back when he was in the homeland when he was serving in the military during a war. Someone had sold out their unit. He believes he knows who it is, and he is trying to track that person down as well. And you end up either working for or tangling with the Russians, which is like Dimitri and Faustin. Also the Irish, who are the group of brothers and the sister that you work for those are the McReary's also the Italians and also the Jamaicans uh now I will say if there's one that I don't really like working with it's Little Jacob uh I it's kind of funny in the beginning where you don't really understand very much of what Little Jacob is saying but by the end of the game I was

kind of like all right I'm kind of over that. I kind of wish that I could understand him a little bit better. But, you know, a couple things that are interesting in GTA 4 is that they did add Nico having a cell phone, which is very neat because you're able to take phone calls and make phone calls. You don't always have to go return a mission or go back to the person who gave it to you. You just get to make a quick phone call and that'll end it or you'll get extra information. The one thing that's absolutely hilarious that cracks me up in GTA 4 is that you do have your email address. There are some missions that include things like either dating someone online or applying for a job online in

order to go get an interview somewhere. And in order to use the internet, you have to drive to an internet cafe, which for our younger listeners, they may not even know that these things used to exist. But if you did not have a computer or the internet at home, you could go to an internet cafe and it was basically just rows upon rows of computers. You would pay for a certain amount of time. You could go access your email, game online, do whatever you might want. And of course, later in GTA 5, you can just access the internet through your phone. So in that case, GTA 4 does feel very ancient just by way of internet cafes. But one thing that's really neat that I did not really

remember because it had been so long since I played it is that you actually do have quite a few choices to make over the course of the game. And in the beginning, I didn't think that it would really matter. But I did realize later in the game that some of the choices you make do impact future missions. So you do have certain opportunities to either kill somebody at the end of a mission or to let them live. And so like one example is where I'm working for a guy named Dwayne, and his girlfriend's been cheating on him. And I go and I kind of investigate what's going on. And I chose to, you know, spare his girlfriend and to let her live. You know, whenever I play games, I try to make the most and to let her live. Whenever I play games,

I try to make the most moral choices possible, even as I'm playing as a criminal. And I end up running into her later in the game and she's dealing with a boyfriend who's abusive to her. And it gave me the opportunity to talk to her, see what was going on in her life. And then I was able to go teach her dirtbag boyfriend a lesson by just beating him down for a minute or two with my

fists and telling him not to you know touch his girlfriends so it's kind of neat that you get to make some choices in the game that i forgot about and there's a couple of like tentpole missions over the course of gta 4 that are very. They are among my all-time favorites. One of them is when your cousin Roman gets kidnapped by Dimitri. And in my head, I remembered this taking place later in the game. It's actually pretty early on. It's probably about a third of the way into the game. But Dimitri basically backstabs you you had previously been doing missions for him he kidnaps uh roman and tries to lure you to then kill you and roman in a trap and that's a really neat mission because you get to see nico and just how much he loves his cousin and how desperate he is to save him

especially since nico knows that he got roman into this mess and so you're running through uh taking these stairs and you're fighting these Russian mobsters. And he's just screaming out, you know, Roman, I'm on my way. Roman, I'm coming. And that's just a very memorable mission. A lot of gunfighting. Very cool scene. And then also later in the game, you get to do Three Leaf Clover, which is my all-time favorite mission when you're working for the Irish Brothers, and all of you decide to rob a bank. And I've talked about that plenty on the podcast, so I won't talk any more about that. But the end of the game does give you another major decision that I did not remember. Basically, at the very end of the game,

Dimitri, who kidnapped your cousin and he tried to kill you and you're trying to seek him out. Basically, you are given an opportunity to complete a deal with Dimitri while you're working for the Italians. And so basically, they say, if you go through with this deal, you're going to work for Dimitri again, you're going to make him richer, but you're also going to get rich in the process. And that's what Roman is really pushing you to do. He tells you, you know, Nico, we can get the greatest apartment. I'm getting married to my girl Mallory, and we're going to be able to have a better honeymoon. Please go do this deal. Who cares if Dimitri backstabbed us? We're going to get rich. Or the other option is to go get your

revenge by trying to kill Dimitri. And so in my playthrough, I sought out revenge. It was really the only answer. You know over the course of the game, any deal you try to make with Dimitri, he's going to backstab you. It's not going to work out anyway. And so I decided to go get my revenge. Seemed like what Nico would do in my playthrough. And basically, regardless of which choice you make,

you do end up having a person that is very close to Nico dying. So ironically, if you follow Roman's advice, and you do the deal with Dimitri, of course, Dimitri backstabs you. And then as you go to Roman's wedding, Dimitri sends an assassin, and they do not successfully kill you, but they do kill Roman. And it's such a sad ending to GTA 4 if you go that route, because you find out that Mallory is actually pregnant. And so they were going to tell everyone at the reception, and now Roman's died. Mallory is going to have to raise her son. Nico even says, your son's never going to want for anything. I'll make sure he's cared for. And Mallory is going to have to raise her son. Nico even says, your son's never going to want for anything. I'll make sure he's cared for. And Mallory says, thank you, but he's not going to

have a father. And so that's like a really dark ending. If you go seek out revenge, then you do end up killing Dimitri. But then since you backstabbed the Italian mob, they do a drive-by shooting at Roman's wedding. And Roman does live in that case, but they do shoot and kill the person that you brought as a date to the wedding, which is Kate. Now, in my playthrough, I kind of just ignored Kate. You have the option to go out and to date her, and I just didn't really care. In this game, I never cared about the socializing, whether it's the dating or going bowling with Roman or whatever it might be. So to me, that felt like the better ending. I didn't care as much that Kate died. It was definitely a lot worse if Roman died,

especially knowing that he has a child on the way. And so I went with that revenge route at the end of the game and i gotta say i was just so impressed by the storytelling of gta4 it is not like the previous gtas that so heavily relied on either being a parody or paying an homage to previous movies or tv shows you know vice city is basically just a mashup of Scarface and Miami Vice. And that's exactly what it is. GTA 4 is completely written from scratch. I felt like it had an awful lot of nuance that the other GTAs don't have. You know, Nico has an aversion to drugs. And he talks about it. He doesn't like working with drugs. He does not take drugs. But if that's what he's hired to do, then he'll do it

for money. But there's several scenes where someone will take an illegal substance and every time Nico looks away. And they never comment on it. It's just a choice that you notice after three or four times. Nico just doesn't want to look at it. He doesn't like to stomach having to watch people's lives ripped apart by drugs. Or when people are really at their weakest state, he'll always turn and look away. Or if someone says something hateful or racist or bigoted, Nico always says, well, whatever you say. And it's very dismissive, but he doesn't want to be disrespectful to them. So it's really interesting how you really get to know Nico's character and morality. And I thought that that was really,

really well done. The game doesn't really address any themes that are uncommon to other games or to other media, like movies and TV. it explores things like seeking revenge does not ultimately give you any kind of contentment you know nico is able to get his uh you know he's able to track down the person who betrayed his unit you have a choice whether or not to kill that person ultimately nico just kind of learns that it's this endless cycle where he can just keep seeking revenge but it's all hollow. It doesn't actually lead anywhere good. The game also teaches that if you live a life of crime, it does hurt those around you.

You know, we see how his actions led to Roman being kidnapped. We see how his girlfriend or his cousin die in the end because of his choices. So I feel like the game, ironically, is very anti-crime, despite the fact that GTA is always so controversial for the content. If you actually play GTA 4, you are left just seeing how broken Niko is. We see that just the self-seeking to amass fortune and fame is just hollow. It leads nowhere good. It's really an interesting game that kind of just shows that if those are the things that you're seeking for, you're actually not going to find joy in those things. There are things that are more important in this world than just having that material success.

So, you know, GTA 4, it's very old. It's still a blast to play. I will say that I ran into a terrible bug that I ended up being able to work around. But at the end of the game, I had jumped off a motorcycle and grabbed a helicopter. And the game says to tap spacebar repeatedly. Now this is at the end of having to fight dozens and dozens of guys. You're running around. It's about 10 minutes of mission play, and then you get to that point. And I was mashing the spacebar, and nothing was happening. And then he fell from the helicopter, and then you fail the mission. And so I did that three times. And then finally, I googled it. And sure enough, it's a known bug for Windows 10. You have to go through a whole rigmarole of setting your Infinity through Task Manager.

And you have to turn off using all cores. And you just select one processor. And then sure enough, it ended up working just fine. So it does have a little bit of bugginess trying to play it here in 2021. But what a fantastic game. It's an absolute blast i do think i'm going to jump back into gta 5 uh which is not does not have as much nuance as gta 4 let's just say that it's certainly a little bit more over the top uh almost feels like a saint's row game but i do still love it

although gta 4 is my favorite in the series all right right. Well, that's it for today. Hope you guys all had a great holiday season. And we'll be back with another episode here in just a couple days. We'll see you guys then. Happy gaming.