Escalation
I’m playing Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad Of Gay Tony. I start a mission where I need to sabotage some building works. I get into the car that Tony has lent me, pull away from the kerb and thread my way through the traffic. I drive through the streets as Tony chatters away.
Then, some idiot changes lanes into my path and I can’t avoid driving into him. I reverse angrily and accidentally hit the car behind. Irate drivers toot their horns. I get out of the car, aim my gun at the lane-changer and shoot him through his windscreen. He gets out and tries to run, so I shoot him a few more times and he falls and dies on the tarmac.
I hear sirens and a police car comes into view. I open fire on it with my automatic rifle as it comes to a halt. I get one policeman as he jumps out and the other while as he takes cover behind the bonnet. Two more police cars arrive, so I throw a grenade at one, get back in my car and fire at them as I drive away.
There are now a police helicopter, a SWAT van and two police cars after me. I drive at top speed down one of the main roads in Liberty City, running over pedestrians, crashing into lamp-posts and smashing my way through a road-block. At last, after expending six clips, one grenade, some blood and seven lives, I manage to lose the police, so I follow the sat-nav in my clanking, smoking car back to the first building site that needs to be sabotaged and carry on with my mission.
The destruction is fun. It’s what Grand Theft Auto is about. But I like the moments when you’re in that strange mode where you’re still playing by the rules of the real world. When you can choose to ignore the driver who didn’t check his mirror.
