There's a snake in mah boots

I’ve never been a huge fan of westerns.

I don’t know why. I guess the setting never really appealed to me. Maybe the landscape of the old west wasn’t as much of a draw to the younger version of me as the notion of barrelling down the Death Star trench. I had no understanding of the freedom it represented – the lawlessness and the excitement. I grew up in a bungalow in Wigan, a million miles away from Cowboyland.

All that’s changed now. Well, since I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption anyway.

I’m not saying that I now know just what life in the old west was like, due to me simply playing a game, but I’m starting to see why kids are expected to like “cowboy stuff”.

The multiplayer version of Red Dead Redemption is great fun. It contains all the iconic elements of life as an outlaw, without any of the boring stuff, like eating or resting or having to face the law if you shoot someone. I realise this semi-review arrives a good few weeks after everyone else’s, but it’s finally starting to hit home just how appealing the cowboy life can be.

The game world affords a similar sensibility to the old west, in that there are no real consequences for your actions. You can choose to help, befriend or shoot anyone or anything you happen across. And in an online multiplayer world where strangers inhabit the same space as you and your friends, this presents so many opportunities for fun, it’s unreal.

Last night I rode out across the plains of New Austin with three friends in my posse. We chose a simple mission and headed across land to our destination, only to find a group of other players had already arrived before us, intent on taking the loot we wanted so badly. What followed was an astonishingly enjoyable massacre that saw us ousting the bad guys, taking the swag and riding off into the sunset.

I never left my comfortable seat, but I had a storming time with a bunch of friends, playing a classic role in a guilt-free environment. Finally, I understand why the old west is such an enticing prospect.

I walked out the room last night with a little bit more of a swagger in my step.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Bet you I can jump ten flags on this

For weeks now, GTA IV hasn’t left my Xbox 360. I’ve played nothing else. To be more specific, the “Free Mode” Multiplayer element of GTA. I’ve hardly scratched the surface of the single player game itself. I realise that a lot of people cottoned on to the pleasures of Grand Theft Auto a long time ago, but my habit of waiting for most games to come down in price has made me a late starter.

Something about the freedom of a sandbox game has always attracted me. Assassin’s Creed, Just Cause and now GTA IV (my first foray into the realm of GTA) seem to be the games I’ve enjoyed the most in recent years. They all stand up as solid, fun games based in a world that the player can explore at their own pace, and even revisit again and again. But something about my recent spate of hurtling around Liberty City had me stop and wonder why I’m drawn to it so much… Then one night, a few weeks ago, giggling to myself as my brother suggested we “try jumping a scooter over a helicopter and into a river”, it struck me.

This is the closest thing to “playing out” I’ve done since I was a kid. A huge virtual playground – and one that you have complete control over.  Open that world up to your gaming mates, and suddenly, all the old memories of the playground come flooding back. The key element that keeps me going back is that there’s no direction to our meeting.

As a kid, my friends and I would aimlessly wander to each other’s houses, with no plan of what to do with our time, just knowing that it would be better spent in the company of friends than alone. This is what it feels like to open up a game the size of GTA IV to multiplayer. I can start a game, sit and wait, and watch my friends leave the game they’re playing and drift into mine. I can lose hours at a time to my friends’ pointless suggestions:- driving around the streets of Liberty City with no predetermined destination, flying a helicopter as high as possible then leaping out of it into the sea, trying to jump a car onto a passing boat…. all frivolous wastes of an adult’s time, but unabashed fun, for one good reason – it’s a shared experience.

I know everyone’s gaming tastes change all the time, and that the next big amazing single-player experience is just around the corner somewhere, but for now, GTA’s free mode is gaming perfection. It’s like the developers have handed me and my friends the keys to an entire city, and it’s brought out the kid in me.

Why don’t developers do more of this? Why don’t they open up the worlds they create to multiplayer free mode? I understand that game developers want to develop ‘games’, but sometimes, just giving a group of friends somewhere to hang out can be just as rewarding. I’d love to roam the islands of Just Cause with my mates at my side… Or have access to a landscape as beautitul as that in Assassin’s Creed, just so I could see how many market stalls I could clear by jumping off a roof.

Developers of v.2 of these games – take note. “Pointless mode” could be the reason I buy your game at full price.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.