Grand Theft Auto: Knives And Losing Your Legs With Andy McNab
GRAND Theft Auto IV is on the streets.
It’s the game that will turn everyone into a car thief, and car thieves into stay-at-home video game players.
The Sun journeys to Croydon, where game fans, driven mad by the flashing images and far-out sounds, are standing in a disorderly queue waiting for their chance to seize the item in exchange for money.
Something is said. A boy lies bleeding. Says Marcus Henderson: “It seemed like a scene straight form the game itself.”
Another witness says he thought it was promotional trick. And it might be. But the Sun sees a “huge gash” and a “victim…covered in blood”.
The paper sees the victim taken to hospital, leaving hospital and “refusing to make a complaint”.
The Sun is left with little option other than to put away knives, steer clear of Croydon and play the game for itself. Will it be driven mad?
Says our intrepid writer: “Last night I stole 3 cars, outran the police in a high-speed chase, dealt drugs, shot a crimelord and picked up a prostitute.”
Who now dares say that investigative journalism isn’t what it used to be? But what about the game?
For an insight, we need Andy McNab, the Sun’s Security Advisor, the “SAS Hero” whose two-dimensional silhouette lends him all the qualities of a fantasy figure.
Says he: “If you kill someone you can see the look in their eyes, you can even smell their breath.”
Fighter pilots and soldiers with mile-long rifle sites nod in agreement. Says McNab: “Playing one of these games you may think you’re experiencing a lot, in reality you are just sitting near a computer screen.” Which is nothing like being in a modern tank, say, a navigator on a battleship or an RAF pilot.
Adds Andy: “In real life if you make a mistake you lose your legs.” It’s what video game players call “cramp”, or “fizzy feet”.
Take care…
April 30th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
iv been thinking for ages that parents letting impressionable youngsters play the G T A games are allowing them to grow up thinking that the behaviour depicted withthin is acceptable and that their actions are without consequence, thus giving rise to today’s ASBO culture and lawless society, i would like some one to try and compare the recent rise of knife crime and gang culture with the release of GTA games. im quite certain that gang culture in this country wasnt as bad as it is now before you could earn ‘Respect Points’ from performing gang related acts against other ‘hoods’ or post codes, in real life.just today ive seen a woman buyin GTA 4 for her son who was blatantly under-age, good, another potential crime statistic. Another point i’d like to raise is that it doesnt take a genius to read that prisons are full and long, deterring sentances are rarely handed out, this coupled with today’s feral youths growing from a young age, possibly not having ‘mature’ parents, mimicking the consequence free behaviour of violent games leads me sadly to believe that we are indeed living in the lawless society of computer games. Or at least thats how it seems on my council estate.
Darren Watson
28
unemployed.