This is a rather late considering at the rate that news travels anything regarding GTA4 now would be considered as "OLD", but I was playing through the game yesterday and I was thinking about the point of the game. I mean, sure, each GTA since 3 has involved some protagonist who starts off as small-time and eventually raises his infamous level until he ends up being the Lord of the Underworld. However, despite all of the Mobster movie references, Hookers, and blatantly overuse of the F-word the main function of the game has always been about one thing.

Playing in Traffic.

You steal a car, you race it around the city until it explodes, and then you go steal another car/bike/truck/van/semi and then repeat that process until it gets old. What do you do when THAT gets old? You grab whatever is in your arsenal and then mosey out in to the busiest interesction and wreck up the place until the police and/or military shows up to kill you dead, but don't fret because your guy is basically immortal and can recover from any injury no matter how severe. Not to mention he must have the best lawyers in the business because you will be released from prison within 24 hours.

Guaranteed.

For what? So you can go back out in the middle of the street and play some more. Lets be honest, once you've completed the story mode of the GTA games you really didn't say to yourselves "Wow, that was such an epic story and I must relive the tales of Nico Bellic". No, the comment was probably more like "Holy shit! Did you see how many cars I just wrecked with my rocket launcher!?" and now that you've gotten that tired and bothersome bit of dialouge out of your way your free to roam about Liberty City and play in the middle of Traffic, all day long.

I understand that this opinion really serves no purpose other than being what it is: an observation. However, I can't help but think that Rockstar could have probably saved themselves a bunch of time and money by just releasing a sandbox world where it removes all of the stuff that people -dont- care about in GTA and just give them what they do want, Which is more playing in traffic, and people would have still bought the game in droves.

Anyways, you'll have to excuse me now because I'm going to take a street bike and sail it over the top of a subway station and in to about four SUV's while calling my cousin on my cellphone about Big American Tee-tees.