Grand Theft Auto: Lost and Found Box

The Lost and Damned expansion for Grand Theft Auto 4 seems to be caught in a paradox of its own design.

On one hand, you're the well defined character of Jimmy the Jew out on his quest for personal redemption.

At the same time though, you're also you, the jerk holding the controller.

Let's be honest for a moment, if you're playing a GTA game you're probably a jerk in some capacity. You may be a very well intentioned jerk most of the time, but at the end of the day nothing gives you a half mast faster than the idea of hurting someone you barely know. This isn't projecting really, as we all experience that momentary catharsis when we imagine all the ways we could hurt the guy who cut us off in traffic, the lunch line, what have you. The key thing that makes us function members of society though is that we never act upon those impulses.

At least with Nico, we at least had the excuse of our protagonist being a hardened war vet merely passing through greatest country in the world u s of a, very nice.

Johnny, however, doesn't have that luxury. He just wants to deal his drugs in his motorcycle club, not necessarily shoot a lad- who was merely enjoying his morning jog- point blank with a shotgun then dart away by driving over his forehead.

But you do because you're a jerk.

Grand Theft Auto 4's Liberty City was a fascinating microcosm somehow compressed to a DVD. Assuming you merely played the game as a linear sequence of game "bites", which they call missions, or, heaven forbid, played it like any of the other Grand Theft Auto titles, you would have missed out on the majority of the game.

Complaints abound on the internet over this fact and, to a certain extent, I can see why. Games cannot be games unless there are a definitive set of goals to be accomplished. If numbers aren't going up or down, it means nothing is happening and, therefore, you aren't playing a game. The old Grand Theft Auto games lived by this rule.

Collect enough dope bags? Get a new gun.
Fly through enough rings? Get a plane.
Etc, Etc, Ad Nasuem.

In GTA4, you can do the aforementioned actions, but there's no real pressing reason to.

GTA4 has a full subway and train system you can use for transportation. It's even modeled right down to the smallest detail of the NYC system. Never once in the game is it required however.

You can pick up objects and carry them around in a semi-realistic fashion. Again, it's never required though.

What the city is wonderful for, however, is being a breeding ground for your inner jerk.

The moment you grab that cup of coffee, someone in the distance will call you a nancy. It's at that precise moment you realize that you can toss the scalding coffee at them.

The trains could help you to get around town quicker, but it's more entertaining to drive a tour bus you stole from Times Square onto the tracks and see how it disrupts the rails.

The game exists as a living, breathing world with only one problem: you.
You are that fly in the ointment of the game's well oiled world.

In GTA4, it was acceptable since your attitude was reflected in the actions of a character who'd do anything for money. The Lost (much like the direction of this essay hur) do not have this luxury.

While the overall quest Johnny undergoes in his personal tragedy to save the Lost from destroying itself from the inside out is commendable, it feels too personal. We, as jerks and players alike, are able to glimpse into his world but never fully grasp what makes Johnny tick.

Nico's dispassonate attitude towards life and prison he has created for himself is a decent enough background to unleash our inner ids. Johnny is too active a character though. As a motorcycle gang member, having him drive around in cars seems out of place. Same with walking for anything longer than a short jog, his movements seem stiff and disconnected from the world he's in. Heartlessly stabbing a co-ed walking back from the mall results in Johnny screaming about the current condition of his foreskin and what potential things the young lass should do to it.

In short, he's trying to hard to be bad for himself.

As players, we're left feeling rather apathetic towards Johnny's plight as most of his screw ups involve him doing things no motorcycle gang should be talking part in. Moreover, his cutscene addled pleas for his club president to stop with his madness seem hollow when we know that we're probably kill at least two dozen gang member and end another dozen more civilian lives in the ensuing "colateral damage" in each mission.

This isn't to say that the game itself is bad, merely that it feels like the script writers broke into the programmers office one quiet Sunday to rewrite the game to their standards.

Admittedly, the living world I sang of so highly before isn't necessarily the focus of Johnny's existence anyways. The clothing shops Nico visited for new duds are gone for instance. On the other hand, high powered guns and bikes are just a phonecall away.

Johnny, then, is a character who is forced to be a toy. Nico embraced his clockwork role with vigor, Johnny just can't seem to stick with the script. Who can blame him however? His world is one where stage direction and set design take a back seat to watching actors perform their own minimalist interpretation. Theatrical? Certainly. But here's the difference: this is a game.

Nico understood that we have no interest his reasons for being in America. He left his problems on the back burner to provide us a suitable second skin. Johnny, however, wants you to become him. Those are some massive leather boots to fill.

I guess then, Johnny is a character two steps removed from the game. Nico's controls and actions felt as natural to control as the nervous system impulses that make us tick. Johnny, on the other hand, seems to be sitting behind our couch while we're holding a controller while nagging us every step of the way.