The Buzz: Bad Behaviour
This week, The Bee talks GTA IV and DS delinquency
Now it is more than one week since GTA IV came, and of course the blog o' sphere is babbling nothing else. The Bee has been playing GTA IV too much. It is lovely! The graphic is incredible and already Niko seems like an old friend.
His name is Andelko, and he has also made unfortunate choices.
Anyway, GTA IV provokes to think. When The Bee first started to play with video games, the graphics with games were more primitive than the LED display on his mother's microwave cooker. And video games were also very short. Karateka by Jordan Mechner (later he also made Prince of Persia) is 20 minute to finish. GTA IV is more than 20 hours. It is so real that when Niko's phone rings The Bee feels like in real life: Oh no, it is Andelko! Speaking to him is boring but I must be his friend!
Don't worry, Andelko cannot read English.
When The Bee finishes a mission sometimes he thinks, "I haven't banged Michelle for days so she will be upset, unfortunately I must call her." When The Bee thinks to go and play GTA IV it is in his mind like a place that he has been going in and not a game. It has tedious obliging that is also fantastic!
But that is one problem. It is realism but when for example I am dating with Michelle in a car and we are talking nice and then I cut on the pavement and a man rolls onto the hood of my jacked ride and leaves blood painted onto it, Michelle still makes the small talk. That is incongruous. GTA IV is like life perhaps, but if The Bee destroyed a man with his car and Mrs Bee was in her passenger seat... BOOM!
No more Bee. Even Andelko would probably say something.
Never mind, because it is still fun, especially to shoot a driver in the face and they nod on the horn. Beeeeeeeep! Fantastic!
In its week one, GTA IV broke records for selling. In the UK it sold 631,000 in the day one and 926,000 in the week one. It sold 3.6 million in the day one worldwide, and by now it has sold more than six million copies.
Of course as The Bee buzzed last week many conservatives say, "This game is to children, and it is about decapitating sex workers." Neither is true, but it is a fact many children will play with GTA IV. (If The Bee was still less than 18 years, he would get a play.)
It is sad and inevitable. The Bee only hopes the children of right-wing Daily Mail Rosie Millard do not manage a copy to themselves or they will probably murder rampage! See for yourself.
Ms Millard has written a moving article, of it the title is 'How I watched my children turn into monsters the minute I bought them a computer game'. That is all you must know. Poor Ms Millard makes a complaint that her children are badly behaved and with no respect. Here is an excerpt.
"The 'toy' caused endless rows, sessions of screaming and increasingly regular parental punishments.
"It was removed and placed in my desk. The children found it and hid it in their bedroom. I put it into my bag.
"They discovered it again. I devised a daily Nintendo rota.
"Then we lost the charger. What a great week that was. The musical instruments were resumed, the real dog was walked, the argument quotient in the house calmed down.
"Then we found the charger again. The children wept with joy. 'You'd better behave with it this time,' I warned. 'Otherwise...'
"'Yeah, yeah,' they shouted."
Poor Ms Millard! The Bee is glad he doesn't have these children. The Bee expects Ms Millard feels as a weak parent, but I have some words of wise from ancient Greek Socrates. "Children today are tyrants," he has said. "They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers."
So Ms Millard is not extremely to blame. Children have been bad for thousands of years (although the Millard children behaviour would not be tolerated in The Bee's country). Heart-feeling wishes to Ms Millard!
By the way, after I last week invited lunatic director Uwe Boll to make my film Grand Borrow Car, Mr Boll has still not respond. Maybe it is because he is too busy inviting film director Michael Bay to fist him in the ring!
The Bee is an industry insider who has fed on the nectar of over three decades' worth of gaming. All opinions expressed are the author's own.