Grand Theft Auto Plays Us

Oh, joy! Oh, ecstasy! Oh, gamer-geek nirvana--my sister brought me, miracle of miracles, a Playstation 2 for Christmas. Out with the coveting, in with the incompetence. This is us playing trying to play Grand Theft Auto: Vice City:

"Hey, check me out! I'm driving!" I drive down a relatively deserted stretch of road at a snail's pace. You could count the hairs on the pedestrians' heads, at the rate I'm going.

"Drive faster."

"Okay. Hey, there's a hooker there!" (Screaming noise, lots of crashing.) "Well, there was. How do I reverse? I can't find the brakes. Why is that little star lit up? How do I get out of here?"

"Socar, you're the worst driver ever."

"Fine. You try it."

"Okay. Let me just get a new car--wait a sec. Where'd that cop come from? SHIT! More cops! They're everywhere! Driiiiiiive!"

"Hey, you have the controller."

She drives. Every few streets, she changes cars, because the one she's in is no longer pointing in the right direction. Stealing a new car is much easier than turning the old one. Turning results in fallen streetlights and flattened policemen. Turning is bad. She drives a red convertible along an airy stretch of coastline, overtaking clouds of pink-shortsed rollerbladers. She drives faster and faster, and then there's a break in the railing, and--

"Oy! Don't fall in the wa--"

(SPLASH!)

"--ha, ha, ha."

She falls in the water. The screen reads "WASTED". We didn't save in ages, so now we're back at the hospital with nothing particular to do.

"Oh, gimme that," I go, determined to carry on with the mission. "Okay, I'm seriously driving, now. I'm going to run over that pizza guy. Where is he?"

"Right! Left! No, other left! Left! Turn around! Straight! Straight! He's right ahead of you--no, that's a tree."

"Where is he now?"

"There! Get him!"

"My car is smoking. Why is my car smoking?"

(BOOM!)

"Oops!"

"So, how about that pizza guy?"

"I think he got away."

"Motherfucker!"

"Cuntyballs!"

Our swearing muscles get a hell of a workout. We create several brand new hybrid cusswords (like mothercunter, bastardfucker, and shitrat). We crash, bang, and plow our way into the hall of shame. The little statistics menu says we have completed a mere 3% of the game, although we've been playing all day. We've done no insane tricks, completed two 120-second taxi missions, found one of a hundred hidden packages, and assassinated a lone pizza boy (completely by chance, I might add. We chased the little twattypants for hours, then ran him down while trying to find our way back onto the road.)

"Is it supposed to be this hard?" she asks me.

"Search me," I shrug. "I heard the sequel is even harder, though. Man, there ought to be an easy setting--you know, for people who suck."

"I thought you played a lot of video games, ya hoser!"

"I do. Just not this kind. I play the ones where it doesn't matter if you can navigate your way out of a paper bag or no."

We switch off the box around midnight. We have not beaten Grand Theft Auto: it has beaten us.

"It wouldn't be so bad," I muse, "if we were just stupid--if we'd just not gotten in the right car, or not bought the proper armour, or something. Or if there were some trick we'd missed out on completely. Something that'd make these missions remotely possible for us. But, according to this Internet walkthrough--" (I am on gamefaqs.com, attempting to cheat) "--according to this Internet walkthrough, we're just bad at this. Monumentally bad. These impossible missions, here--these are the easy ones. Man, we're practically still on the training missions. Augh!"

"Well, at least we got that pizza boy."

"Hell, yeah. Let's go up the car park and drive off the roof."

And we do. (And it doesn't qualify as an "insane trick", which I find quite unfair--you'd have to be bonkers to try something like that.)

Fortunately, she brought Xenosaga as well. Even I can't munge up Xenosaga. Well, unless it's like Xenogears, that is. This was what I had to say about Xenogears, before I spent several hours learning to jump:

"If I wanted to fall off platforms all day, I'd get Super Mario Brothers. Do you see Super Mario Brothers here? Yeah. Exactly. I don't want to fall off platforms all day! Hey, stop distracting me. You made me fall in a hole. Thanks a lot."

And that's all from the Rat's Nest for today. I have to go drive over some more toadfucking motherhumping shitrats. I will not be trounced by a car game!