GTA5 - not love at first sight, but love did come

 

At some point after getting the newest model XBOX the other year, I picked up Grand Theft Auto 5. I had seen game play at friends' houses for years and knew I would try it sooner or later. I mean, I was long used to being years behind on my games.  But had gotten into playing with others online in other games, especially with my old friend "T." She had been a Skyrim nut for a handful of years, and I had suggested we try Elder Scrolls Online as a thing to do together, since I had been playing ES since the original Morrowind. Though we could still play together, little dungeon delves and fishing and such, she had been putting much more time into it on her own. She is now in guilds and in far off lands, while I sort of futz around when I play alone. Since she is playing ONLY ESO, and I like to diversify, we will never be anywhere near equals in that game. 

Imagine her as Valeria from the Conan movie. 
Now imagine this is me..

As I was trying to keep up with T for several months, GTA5 only got a little play here and there. Maybe an hour every weekend or so. Though much of it is intuitive, it is also hard at times for a noob. Driving was bad enough, but driving and shooting? Yeesh. Fairly early on there was a mission for main character Michael that had you chasing crooks on a big rig that had stolen his yacht (don't ask), and you drove your sports car on the equivalent of the 405 Freeway, shooting at dudes on the yacht who were trying to kill your buddy Franklin who had climbed aboard. Man, it was hard. Must have played out that mission a dozen times before being successful. 

I figured that even harder missions would follow, and that was intimidating. It may have kept me from playing it as much as ESO. But man, this game setting did appeal to me. So much of it was not just based on Los Angeles, but even parts of my home town Venice Beach (Vespucci Beach in the game), the side streets and alleyways, was spot on. Buildings I had been in and neighborhoods I grew up around were recreated, often in loving detail. My favorite was the Venice Canals, my birth place. Having a gunfight in my childhood neighborhood was mind blowing. 

And this familiarity with Los Santos/Angeles was super appealing to me. But what else to keep me involved? I mean, every time I got in a car to drive I ended up rear ending other cars, and accidentally running over pedestrians. You see, if you don't drive crazy, you are pretty much just stuck in traffic. The main reason I actually Left Los Sant...uh, left Los Angeles. So even just tooling around you are blowing street lights and driving on sidewalks. Otherwise its an LA traffic simulator. Yeah, fuck that mess. Then the cops chase you, and you crash and get out to run as bullets blast into your body. 

Yeah, a bit disappointing at first. But in the last couple of weekends I suddenly went from "meh" to "omigawd I love this shit". Here are some reasons why:

Maybe some 10 or 12 hours into it, I get it. Understanding has come to me. You see, you spend 10's of hours putzing around, driving and walking around nice areas, getting into occasional fist fights and gunfights and wondering what the hell is the point. Well, it finally dawned on me. As I started getting better at driving and other activities, I realized that the game has a grand plan. It is training you for what is to come. Basically, this is the prelude for you putting together your gang of bank robbers. The game is letting you fuck around so you can get familiar with just being alive. The physics of your world. It knows you will be a bad driver at first. It knows you will be bad at shooting people. And it wants you to get better by just plain experiencing the school of hard knocks in Los Santos. It knows that no setback is permanent. You die or get caught by cops, the just try again. 

When I turn the game off and go to bed I imagine
myself as that Mayhem insurance guy walking
away leaving this behind..

I started regularly going to the shooting range to be a better gunman. I started driving at high speeds around the city to be a better driver. I stopped worrying about being a better driver, and just drove at high speeds through the city. And suddenly I was exponentially better at that.  School of hard knocks.

 

Suddenly I could feel the improvement. Not just in my personal skill, but the game engine itself eases up on you, steadies you. A sort of smoothness starts setting in. 

The other night I was playing the main character, Michael. I decided to go down to "Santa Monica Beach" at the California Incline (his psychologist lives down there), and ran into a jogger lady. You know, one of those older, cut, kinda pretty but hard jogger ladies you see who are way serious about it. She challenged me to a race down the incline stairs to the beach, and though I was wearing a suit and dress shoes, I took her up on it. I was doing OK for a middle-aged guy dressed up, but I kept faltering. I clearly did not have the stamina to keep up. So another activity goal; do some jogging to get better at running. I'll probably need that for bigger missions later anyway. And to eventually beat that lady. Oh, sensible shoes probably don't hurt.

The boy from the hood character, Franklin, gets in a street race. All the other racers seem so much better than me. I try and try but just can't win it.  I keep crashing into poles or houses on tight corners. Then around the 6^th try I remember that Franklin has a special ability to go into "slow time" when driving. Boom, I win that race. Again, this will likely be important skills during a heist. The game is prepping you. School of hard knocks. 

OK, also, for whatever reason playing Tennis was unlocked. Michael's big Sunset Blvd house, surrounded by office buildings, has a tennis court. Wandering over to it, the choice to play is activated. Michael's alcoholic, cheating wife shows up to play. I quickly get my ass handed to me, while she chides me and insults my manhood. Ugh. My vow to get better at tennis happens. And there are other tennis courts around the city where I can play other people to get better on the side. And this isn't for nothing. I looked it up, and playing tennis makes your character all around stronger. Hell yeah. School of (kinda) hard knocks. 

Now that's my kind of hard knock school 😍

As an aside, an encounter happened to me playing Michael last week that just blew my mind. I was tooling around downtown, and saw a question mark in the courtyard of some big office building. I got out the car and walked over to see what was up, and some guy had a marijuana legalization table set up by the fountains. After his speech he gave me a doobie. And when I hit it I realized it was clearly sprinkled with some stronger drug, because ugly aliens suddenly appeared in the area. A ray gatling gun appeared in my hands. Suddenly here I am, in the heart of downtown, being charged by weird aliens as I gunned them down one by one with my Buck Rogers blaster. It blew my mind. This was truly when I knew I loved this game. Anything can happen. School of hard knocks.

They have mental powers. I have a Sci Fi
gatling gun. I like my odds.

But yeah, the improvement of mechanics and physics as you go along is something I always loved in games.  The Elder Scrolls seems to have lost that, but I remember loving it when it was present in Morrowind and Oblivion. But it is so obvious in GTA5. I can actually feel myself getting better as I do things. Yeah, the feeling has won me over. 

So Michael's old geek buddy Lester has a jewelry store heist in mind. We staked out the Rodeo Drive jewelry store and everything so far. But before the mission I think I need to maybe put a few more hours into practice to get prepared for the big time. More driving around the city. More time in the shooting range. And of course, more tennis and jogging. For the job. And of course to be able to beat my nagging, ball busting adulterous wife at tennis, and to win a race against that mouthy jogging bitch down by the beach. School of hard...well, you get the point. 

I predict I will be playing the campaign mode for a long time to come. Hell, I'll probably mostly be jogging and playing tennis around the city for the next month. Just driving around there are always nice things to look at as you level up your skill set..

And testosterone level

Cheers

Call of Cthulhu Friday: Princess Tasha

During the 90’s I had a long running CoC campaign that I called “Canal House.” The character home base was in a small, two story house on the newly built Canals of America in Venice Beach, California. The house was owned by a mysterious, well-travelled man named Mr. Troy (sort of a chubby little Truman Capote type guy) who filled the house with antiques, many of which had an occult background. It was set up as an antique shop, appointment only.

In the very first game Mr. Troy, who had a lot of Hollywood friends and associates, held a party at Canal House that included the new player characters. They came from diverse backgrounds, but for one reason or another were at that party. There was a Texas cowgirl who was coming to California to try to be a star in westerns, a big heavyweight boxer who was looking for his big time break, a New York gin mill torch singer who had survived a previous CoC campaign I did, and a private investigator with a heavy military background.

Occultists looking for an artifact in the house assaulted the party with clubs and knives. They were dressed in white robes and skull masks, and as most guests ran in terror the player characters stepped up and fought them off. Impressed, Mr. Troy hired them on the spot to stay at Canal House and work for him in occult investigations. In return, he would use his contacts to help them with their desires. A few adventures were had, including fighting more occultists in the Santa Monica mountains, fighting off attacks by Deep Ones that swam right up the canals to Canal House, and facing a fire God on the Santa Monica pier (on the same date as the pier burned down in real life).

Several games in one of my regular D&D players, Planet Janet, decided to give Call of Cthulhu a try (she fell in love with the game right away after hemming and hawing about playing it). She came up with Tasha Romanoff, a sort of Anastasia type who escaped from her mythical Finnish kingdom when her evil satanic uncle killed her family and took over in a military coup. Hiding out in Venice Beach, Tasha was attacked by agents of her uncle, and was saved by the players. Tasha joined the house group and adventures continued.

One great scenario was in a New Mexico mining town under sway of Mythos forces. A pair of evil mine baron brothers ran the place, and some cool encounters took place, including a cowboy style shootout on a dark street in the middle of a rainstorm. At one point the big boxer and Princess Tasha were stripped and tied up by a weirdo brother who intended to molest them both. But the other brother, a fast draw revolver fanatic, demanded a fast draw between him and the naked and bound boxer. The boxer was untied, and with an amazing roll on his to-hit percentage shot the gun toting brother dead, and knocked the other one out. This was actually one of a few times the boxer had saved Tasha, and he became sort of a bodyguard for her. You will see the irony of this at the end of the story.

Eventually it became time for Tasha and friends to go to her kingdom, “Midgardia,” and wrest it from the clutches of her evil uncle. She had gotten word that a rebellion awaited, so off they went to Europe to infiltrate the land. Hooking up with loyal soldiers of her family, Tasha and friends stormed the castle, fighting their way in. Tasha was separated, and ended up in a chamber with her uncle and some monks. She was tied up naked on an alter ready to be sacrificed to uncle’s dark gods.

The party and soldiers fought their way to the sacrificial rooms, and it was the boxer, Tasha’s protector, who burst in first. Now, boxer was a rough and tumble dude, but at this point in the game he was relying on his now trusty elephant gun more than his wits or fists. You know how over reliance on guns can backfire in CoC. Even though there were some of uncle’s soldiers with rifles in the room, boxer shot his elephant gun at uncle, although his focus was suddenly on the invaders and not Tasha.

I told the player “Gary, you know that there is a chance you’ll hit Tasha, right? Her and uncle are pretty much in the same hex.”

Gary was just all “Gotta do it. Gotta.” He was always the combat hog who wanted to take out the bad guy.

So ‘click’ ‘boom’ Gary’s boxer shot his gun, and rolled a 00. Now, CoC had no crit or cruddy, but in any game I run I ask my players before a campaign if they want crits and fumbles. They almost always say “yes.” So it was with this game, and a 00 is going to mean a malfunction, or a hitting another target next to the intended target. Sooo…Gary misses, and I tell him to roll damage. It ended up being something like 16 points. Tasha, with 9 hit points, leaves this veil of tears in a violent way as her young, lovely dark haired head is blown into a hundred bits by a gun designed to take down mastodons.

The soldiers open fire and kill the boxer. Soldiers and the other characters come in and after a bit of shooting fun take out uncle and his men. When the PC’s fully realize what happened, there is some nice sanity loss all around for all. Young Princess Tasha has come home.
In the campaign wrap-up, the PC’s take train and boat home. On the long trip, they lay their heads down at night. They dream of the horrible things they have fought together and overcome in America all the way to Europe, and the dream usually ends with visions of beautiful Princess Tasha’s head turned into red, oozing oatmeal on an alter to dark entities.

Nice, eh? Could you ask for a sadder and more horrifying end to a campaign? Well, it is Call of Cthulhu after all.