Adults openly adored it, while kids sent their moms to buy it for them, so they could adore it in secret.Rockstar Games has broken its silence over the messy launch of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, the remastered games that, to many fans, weren’t up to the level of quality expected. With its profile boosted by the controversy-press, GTA strode on to become one of the biggest-selling PSone titles of the year. My 12 year-old son, who has played it, assures me he is not motivated to go out and steal cars.” Could it be that criminals are not innocent victims of games, but criminals? That ordinary gamers will remain just that after playing GTA? The debate raged - the moral minority had clung to an anti-GTA bandwagon without actually seeing or playing it, setting a strong precedent. “Is the Government now ready for computer games on burglary and mugging, bearing in mind it is mostly young people who play these games and not the adults who bought them?” Lord Avebury replied: “Demonstration copies of Grand Theft Auto are being distributed with magazines. “Should criminal offences be allowed to be presented as games?” He ranted. Lord Campbell, still piqued, would not be swayed from his moral course. Retirement, perhaps? The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office (Lord Williams of Mostyn) replied at some length to Lord Campbell’s excellent question, and basically said: “No.” Lord Campbell also didn’t mention what age people should be assumed to be adults, if not at 18. An outraged Lord Campbell of Croy asked whether: “ propose to modify the system of classification under which the computer game Grand Theft Auto, which allegedly involves thefts of cars and driving at excessive speeds to evade police cars, has been granted an 18 certificate?” The word ‘allegedly’ implies Lord Campbell had not actually played GTA and was irritated by his assumptions rather than directly annoyed by its often indistinct mayhem. So great was the hoo-ha that GTA’s seediness even became a topic for discussion in the UK Parliament's House of Lords, where crusty peers questioned its impact on impressionable youngsters. Despite itsmature rating, there were protests against it in Britain and Australia, while other countries - such as Brazil - banned the game altogether, imposing fines on anyone who tried to sell it. Inevitably, GTA’s degenerate gameplay (killing cops, murdering passers-by, stealing cars) stirred up an international controversy. But at the same time, it was also irresistibly immoral, allowing you to live a cartoon life of crime complete with Bullitt style car chases and Heat-style shoot-outs. It was easy to ignore the fact that GTA’s gameplay was actually all-too-repetitive. To play this game with any success, you needed to spend time learning the layout of the city to avoid the police, perfecting Micro Machines-style driving on the wide freeways and narrow side-streets. Pedestrians wandered the streets, cars obediently halted at traffic lights, ambulances and fire engines responded to death and fiery destruction. GTA gave you entire cities to act disgracefully in, cities that felt real and alive. You could even rampage through crowds of Saturday shoppers with a machine gun. You could steal cars and sell them at the docks - there were over 20 different vehicle types in each city (all drivable) or set fire to drum-banging groups of Hare Krishna worshippers. Instead, GTA’s strength lay in the vast scope of its gameplay and in the freedom it gave you to stray from the guiding mission structure. The game was functional rather than fancy, using a top-down 2D perspective and crude sprite-based graphics. The appeal of GTA wasn’t the way that it looked.
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