Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink Grand Theft Auto V in a special live episode with more than the usual digressions.
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I heard Mel Brooks say in an interview about 15 years ago “A cat. That’s a good thing. It sits in your lap, it purs, it makes you feel good. Success? That’s stress. That’s headache. Who needs that?” or something to that effect. Dude has his priorities straight.
If you want to bask in the glow of Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner’s friendship, you can do so here: http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/carl-reiner-mel-brooks-i-want-sandwiches-i-want-chicken
Originally the plan for the GTA segment of this episode was to share some of our fondest memories of causing mayhem in these games. We went another direction, so I wanted to share mine in the comments:
The only GTA game I played at length was the fourth edition, the one that takes place in a thinly disguised version of New York City, “Liberty City.” I live in NYC, and I loved being able to use my own daily stomping grounds as settings for murder and mayhem.
My favorite thing to do was driving up to the High Line (in this game, still a derelict elevated rail line instead of a fancy schmancy park), launching off of it, passing by the huge rotating aerosol can, and crash landing onto the West Side Highway.
(fast forward to the last 15 seconds or so of this video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=440kFPFHkNM
There was something just…delightful…about being able to do that.
You know what I just realized the world needs? GTA: Baltimore. Where you alternate between playing as a corner thug and a major crimes detective.
I mean, if Vice City can be so clearly inspired by Scarface, surely we can have a GTA that is a thinly disguised adaptation of The Wire. Bonus missions as Omar…
This needs to happen.
Found this by googling “Grand Theft Auto Baltimore”:
LOVE IT
As for the gradations of video games, I think an interesting question is raised when you look at something like Pokémon. For each generation there have been two initial games followed by a successor – Red and Blue + Yellow, Gold and Silver + Crystal, Ruby and Sapphire + Emerald, Diamond and Pearl + Platinum, and then finally Black and White breaking the pattern by being followed by a pair of games, Black 2 and White 2. In each case, the “.5” generation game offers strictly more gameplay options and often a *considerably* extended endgame adventure – and each, crucially, is for the same hardware that ran the initial titles in its generation.
With the exciting Pokémon X and Y coming out next month, you have to ask the question – if one is going to spend MSRP and ~100 hours on this video game, ought they to hold out a year for the potential/inevitable Pokemon Z?
When Fenzel was joking about giving Mario the option to kill Luigi, my mind immediately jumped to a vision of a giant open-world sandbox game set in the Mushroom Kingdom. Picture it–you can steal go-karts, get into turf wars with koopa gangs, take Princss Peach on dates, or just spend hours setting various castles ablaze with the fire flower.
You mean like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Kk9oa_PiXAk
Two quick notes, Hungary is a republic (but just to make it difficult, our coat of arms does include the Holy Crown for political reasons after the fall of communism)
Also, the British English voice for Siri is, as far as I know, a male voice, the one that coincidentally did the voiceovers for the Weakest Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUsW6LNuPaQ