I recently spent a pleasurable few weeks reading David Kushner's love letter to the Doom generation and its two mastermind's Kleenex-like level of influence on the video game world. The nonfiction work was littered with anachronisms like modems, Usenet groups and "freeware," but perhaps the most glaring and oft-repeated outdated reference to this reader was the use of the word "levels" to refer to chunks of gameplay. Today's gamers simply don't think in terms of levels as they used to in the days of coin-op and the gameplay design that put Johns Carmack and Romero on the map in the mid-1990s.
The prevailing theory would be that the prevalence of narrative-based gaming, console hard drives and solid-state memory devices (remember those 8MB memory cards for your PS2?) has blended the experience of playing a triple-A title to the point where we think little of gameplay chunks when we jump into an immersive game world. In other words, our experiences are defined by the time between when we, the gamer, push the "on" and "off" buttons on our gaming devices, not pre-determined periods of time decided by a developer.
While this has turned the notion of playing a video game on its head immeasurably since the late 1990s (personally, I'll blame the advent of anytime saving in Half-Life and checkpoint saving first available - to my knowledge - in Halo: Combat Evolved on the original Xbox), there's something to be said for relishing the work video game developers put into crafting a perfect mini-experience into a more cohesive whole.
In no game does that passion for mission design continue so unabated as in the games of the revolutionaries of free-form mission design, the folks at Rockstar Games. It's defining franchise, Grand Theft Auto, features three console generations (and soon to be a fourth) of unforgettable experiences through its timeless missions. Below are a list of my ten absolute favorite, as I prepare to double-dip with the gorgeous-looking PS4 update to Grand Theft Auto V. Enjoy.
10. "The Exchange"
Game: Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001)
Mission Given By: Catalina
Rewards: A cool $1 million, a Rhino tank available at Phil's gun shop, and you get to shut Maria up
The capstone of Rockstar's "mafioso masterpiece," as it was proclaimed on the in-game poster shipped with my Playstation 2 copy of Grand Theft Auto 3, "The Exchange" saw Claude Speed rushing to enact revenge against Catalina, who was flying away from the Shoreside Vale dam with a kidnapped Maria awaiting her rescue. You had to fight your way through Catalina's goons armed with an extensive array of automatic weaponry in enough time to fire a few well-timed blasts with your rocket launcher at the fleeing heli, all with that damn clock running. As the credits then rolled, you were treated to Claude shutting up a nattering Maria with a shotgun blast. Bliss.
9. "Rub Out"
Game: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002)
Mission Given By: Lance Vance
Rewards: $50K, Ricardo Diaz's mansion becomes your own personal playground
In retrospect, Ricardo Diaz (voiced by Luis Guzman) would have been a much cooler sidekick than Lance Vance (Philip Michael Thomas), who is in fact a backstabbing, murderous traitor who you will later have to off along with Sonny Forelli (Tom Sizemore). Oops. Spoilers. Rub Out is a much more satisfying (and in fact carbon copy) of Vice City's final mission. You have to fight your way through Diaz's goons, eventually popping a cap in the fat man himself, all the while making sure Lance doesn't turn into Swiss cheese. Bonus points for that final view from Diaz down the barrel of your guns. "Good NIGHT, Mr. Diaz!"
8. "The Green Sabre"
Game: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)
Mission Given By: Sweet
Rewards: That dick Tenpenny takes your weapons, imprisons your brother and leaves you in the middle-of-nowhere
Sure, you could make a case San Andreas' final "Training Day"-inspired mission, End of the Line, was one of the most involved and cinematic in the GTA series up until that point. But "The Green Sabre" gave us a common enemy, beside those bustas the Ballers, and turned the narrative of San Andreas on its head. Fighting alongside a mortally wounded Sweet for Grove Street could have served as a nice crescendo for the final act of a Los Santos GTA adventure. As it was, we were just getting started.
Rockstar found the source material so compelling it repeated the theme in GTAV's "Hood Safari."
7. I Scream, You Scream
Game: Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001)
Mission Given By: El Burro
Rewards: $6,000, mafia goons flambéed
Rumor has it, this mission was so controversial it got overhauled in the 9/11 edit of GTA3 that delayed its release for several months. Originally, Darkel was supposed to call Claude and have him take out random passersby with explosives secreted in an ice cream truck. Instead, El Burro wants you to target mafia members who are cutting in on his business, which if his banter is to be believed involves selling burritos and fiendishly difficult to collect pornographic videotapes. Jingle jangle, KABOOM! Proving that GTA hadn't left its sophomoric streak of violence and humor in the 2D generation, I Scream, You Scream reminded us why it was good to be bad. And it wasn't the first time violence and junkfood mixed in the series, as we'll see later...
6. Boomshine Saigon
Game: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002)
Mission Given By: Phil Cassidy
Rewards: $4,000; ability to buy weapons from Phil; seeing Gary Busey in his natural element in video game form
Vice City gamers would remember Phil Cassidy as that mysterious one-armed man who hawked weapons in north Staunton Island. For its prequel, it would take that character, add a mullet, Gary Busey and some illegal liquor, and convince us Phil was actually a nutjob out to dismantle the U.S. government. It does a great deal of that exposition in Boomshine Saigon, which explains the disappearance of Cassidy's arm in the 2001-set Grand Theft Auto 3. As Tommy Vercetti (Ray Liotta), you have to drive Phil to the hospital before he bleeds out. Of course, you've sniffed some of the intoxicating fumes of...whatever the hell Phil was cooking, sending you careening into other cars as the timer ticks down. This mission would be higher if it didn't introduce that hazy screen and wonky controls that would make another appearance in San Andreas' Are You Going to San Fierro? and to much more annoying effect in GTAIV and V after a night of drinking.
5. Hot Dog Homicide
Game: Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999)
Mission Given By: Russians
Rewards: $40,000, respect, and a copy of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
The brilliance of GTA's mission design is not confined to the 3D era. Hot Dog Homicide is another of the inexplicable reasons GTA2 received a "Teen" rating, as you play Claude Speed once again. This time, you're picking up fresh meat for a diner by stopping for passengers at various bus stops. That's not a mistype. You then herd the unsuspecting masses into a meat grinder and drive a hot dog van to the dropoff. Mission complete. But yeah, you probably shouldn't let your middle-schooler read Catcher in the Rye.
4. Vertical Bird
Game: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)
Mission Given By: Mike Toreno
Rewards: $50K, respect, a Hydra at your hideout and James Woods' undying love
Mike Toreno (James Wood) has Carl Johnson (Young Maylay) do some ridiculous things in San Andreas. Perhaps the most ridiculous is infiltrate a government warship to steal a high-powered, futuristic jet fighter. "Vertical Bird" had everything that made San Andreas bigger, better and more involved than the gameplay of its predecessors. There was even the opportunity for a bit of stealth as you stalked the Hydra on the off-limits real estate of the San Fierro military base. Some will say they prefer the assault on Area 69, Black Project, is their favorite San Andreas mission because it yields the game-changing jetpack. But Vertical Bird combines all the elements that make the game so fun.
3. Three Leaf Clover
Game: Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)
Mission Given By: Packie McReary
Rewards: $250K, achievement, your roommate feeding you Verbal Kint references
Three Leaf Clover provided the groundwork for GTAV's heist missions, and it was the first (and arguably only) glimpse of what the next generation of hardware could do to amp up the intensity of the GTA mission structure. Packie McReary provided a nice, light-hearted (but still deadly) counterpoint to brooding Niko Bellic, and it was nice to see Rockstar open up its mission structure to provide for some spirited gunplay and a truly impressive bank heist that has its routes as early as Vice City.
2. Caida Libre (or "Freefall")
Game: Grand Theft Auto V (2013)
Mission Given By: Martin Madrazo
Rewards: Achievement, the stunning brilliance of GTAV on full display
As the most recent iteration in the GTA franchise, V suffers from what I'll call "mission envelopment." The story arcs in GTA have become more grandiose through the years, with the game's narrative often supplanting the simple tasks at hand in recent versions of the game. In V, you're always working toward a bigger score, or a heist, or a hit, so that when you do finally achieve your ultimate goal, it feels more of a process than one long, extended chunk of gameplay.
Not so in "Caida Libre," which is a self-contained masterpiece showcasing the best of what GTAV had to offer - character switching, larger-than-life stakes and a trip through the sprawling dustlands of north Los Santos. Shooting aircraft out of the sky has been a feature of GTA since the aforementioned "The Exchange" in GTA3. But whereas all other versions were falling with style, "Caida Libre" showed just how far the series had come.
1. Bomb da Base
Game: Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001)
Mission Given By: 8-Ball
Rewards: $150K, Staunton Island, and 13 subsequent years of GTA gaming
"Alright, let's do this thing." 8-Ball was ready, and so were you, Claude Speed, for the mission that would define the next decade of GTA gaming. Armed with a sniper rifle, you were tasked with protecting 8-Ball as the AI-controlled character moved his way through a heavily guarded tanker to place a bomb. His hands were still pretty messed up, so you had to drive and take that adrenaline pill to slow time down long enough to stop the goons' automatic weapons from riddling your bomb-making friend.
When Rockstar began working on the sequels to GTA3, this was the mission they used as their guide. For good reason. Bomb da Base served as a bombastic (no pun intended) end to the Portland saga, and would have been a fitting end to the GTA3 story. But you had much crime ahead of you, none of which captured those sweaty palms of trying to pull off a headshot before 8-Ball bit the dust.
