PDA

View Full Version : Just got GTA V for the PC.



CreepyOldDude
04-16-2015, 05:19 PM
Going to install it tonight. My Queen has a cold, so she's NyQuiled into sleep, so I should have a chance to play. Anyone else played, yet?

Bob
04-16-2015, 05:20 PM
Not me. I have not played any GTA

Common Sense
04-16-2015, 05:29 PM
Not me. I have not played any GTA

Really? I kind of saw you as a big online gamer.

Bob
04-16-2015, 05:32 PM
Really? I kind of saw you as a big online gamer.

When I want to take my mind off this forum, I try Mahjong. Just to idle the mind.

Common Sense
04-16-2015, 05:34 PM
When I want to take my mind off this forum, I try Mahjong. Just to idle the mind.

Well don't play too much. ;)

Bob
04-16-2015, 05:35 PM
Well don't play too much. ;)

Maybe two games and I quit

The Xl
04-16-2015, 05:35 PM
I have it for Xbox 360

Safety
04-16-2015, 06:00 PM
Xbox one here. I switch between it and BF4.

Common
04-16-2015, 06:12 PM
I had to sit here and think what GTA was, then it hit me. I never played any of the grand theft autos

IMPress Polly
04-19-2015, 08:56 AM
I have rented (and completed) Grand Theft Auto V for PlayStation 4. It's not one of my favorite games, personally, but to each their own.

Peter1469
04-19-2015, 08:59 AM
Now I know what GTA means....

Common
04-19-2015, 09:04 AM
Now I know what GTA means....

Say thank you common lol

PolWatch
04-19-2015, 09:05 AM
thank you Common....the only video game I've ever played was Pac-Man so I don't even speak the language!

Common
04-19-2015, 09:08 AM
Ive been playing pc games since the first one Pong. My commander called me in many years ago and said whats up with you. Suddenly youve been late and youve called off more than ever. I said Im going to fix that Capt.

I was addicted to the original Wolfenstein then Doom I mean Crazy addicted lol. I had to break it or get fired or have my wife leave me or both

CreepyOldDude
04-22-2015, 02:33 PM
I have rented (and completed) Grand Theft Auto V for PlayStation 4. It's not one of my favorite games, personally, but to each their own.

So far, it seems fun. Although I'm not personally enamored of Trevor. I've never really enjoyed playing someone deranged. Evil, yes, deranged, no.

Safety
04-22-2015, 02:34 PM
So far, it seems fun. Although I'm not personally enamored of Trevor. I've never really enjoyed playing someone deranged. Evil, yes, deranged, no.

Trevor is f'kin awesome!

The Xl
04-22-2015, 02:34 PM
I have rented (and completed) Grand Theft Auto V for PlayStation 4. It's not one of my favorite games, personally, but to each their own.

Sexist.

















I kid

Bob
04-22-2015, 03:00 PM
thank you Common....the only video game I've ever played was Pac-Man so I don't even speak the language!

I played Pac Man until i would run out of quarters. Got very good though had to play it at the nearest hamburger place.

IMPress Polly
04-23-2015, 05:40 AM
CreepyOldDude wrote:
So far, it seems fun. Although I'm not personally enamored of Trevor. I've never really enjoyed playing someone deranged. Evil, yes, deranged, no.

I suppose my politically left wing orientation and outlook should, in theory, render me more amenable to a franchise like Grand Theft Auto that so obviously portrays itself that way, and especially in the case of this most recent installment, with its routine satirical jabs at businessmen and politicians corrupted by greed and power, at the corruption of government spy agencies and the (ostensible) ineffectiveness of waterboarding, at the Republican Party's principal voter demographic (the character Trevor), and with its radio commentaries on social alienation under capitalism accompanied by an overriding theme of cooperation and friendship. I suppose I should be able to appreciate this franchise, and this game in particular, more than I do.

What annoys me about Grand Theft Auto is the same thing that annoys me about Call of Duty: it rather trivializes a range of quite serious subjects. Call of Duty eliminates all the weight of war with its lighthearted approach to brutality and bloodshed and Grand Theft Auto, including this fifth installment, analogously trivializes a whole range of serious social issues by refusing to ever take them seriously. Take the waterboarding sequence for example. Obviously it's supposed to be a joke. The problem for me is we're laughing at the victim, which kinda eliminates the weight of the subsequent petty criticism the people at Rockstar threw in, which complains that torture is wrong not because it's immoral, but because (yeah right) it's ineffective. That kind of logic is indeed a pervasive theme since the franchise does not allow for authentic moral concerns, as I guess they're unmanly or something. Another great illustration of this is the whole character roster the game affords you. Obviously they were going for a kind of id, ego, and superego set-up with the trio. The problem for me is that they're all so damn one-sidedly self-absorbed and greed-driven that all three just come off as id to me. Or take the minigame where your goal is to fondle an erotic dancer as much as possible while the bouncer isn't looking. If you succeed, rather than giving you a well-deserved kick in the teeth, she'll instead give you free sex at your place as a reward. Yeah I get that it's supposed to be a joke, but it's kind of a personal and offensive one for me because, once more, we can tell at whose expense the joke is: not the exploiter, but the victim. That happened to me all the time and I definitely felt differently about it than the exaggerated brainless bimbos that dominate this franchise seem to. The franchise is just like that, IMO. It's simply too callous for me to generally find amusing, which is problematic considering that humor is like half the franchise's appeal. Maybe I'm just too sensitive, I dunno.


The XI wrote:
Sexist.

I kid

Fake gamer! :wink:

CreepyOldDude
05-12-2015, 03:12 PM
Trevor is f'kin awesome!

I have to agree, he's grown on me. It's rather fun playing as someone who's delightfully deranged. Once he got into Los Santos, and started meeting people, he started getting some really funny lines.

CreepyOldDude
05-12-2015, 03:19 PM
I had to sit here and think what GTA was, then it hit me. I never played any of the grand theft autos

I've played all the Grand Theft Autos, and all the Saints Rows. Between the two, I kind of prefer Saints Row, just because the humors generally a bit better. Or, at least, more absurd. :)

I had some trouble with GTA 4, just because everyone you knew was a whiny-assed middle schooler. Or, at least, acted that way on the phone. I'd be driving to where a mission begins, and in a five minute drive, get around three phone calls from different people, complaining that we hadn't hung out in the last ten minutes. In one instance, I left someone at their apartment, to go on a mission for them. Before I got there, I got a call from the person I just left, complaining we hadn't talked in a while.

Bob
05-12-2015, 03:42 PM
Take the waterboarding sequence for example. Obviously it's supposed to be a joke. The problem for me is we're laughing at the victim, which kinda eliminates the weight of the subsequent petty criticism the people at Rockstar threw in, which complains that torture is wrong not because it's immoral, but because (yeah right) it's ineffective.

Water-boarding the way that 3 times it was done by the CIA at Afghanistan was ruled to not be torture because it is done at our own training facilities used to toughen up Seals in the Navy program.

I saw "torture" used in the Army training but one time.

I had successfully led my platoon of men to safety and was then at the safe zone at Ft. Ord CA

We were told to take a seat for the "show"

The setting was among oak trees on a hillside.

We settled onto the wood benches when a light in front of us turned on.


We could see a window. It had a chair that did not face us as I recall the event.

They had captured a lot of the guys and they took one of the captives into the room. They sat him into the chair that we had been told had metal in the seat. They commenced to ask him questions.

They got his name, rank and SN of course. They asked him to name his company. He says he won't tell them. They hit him with a jolt of electricity and he suddenly became very willing to talk. He told them the truth each time.

IMPress Polly
05-14-2015, 04:46 AM
In the first place, Bob, waterboarding is, in fact, considered a form of torture according to the Geneva Convention, which is a higher authority than the U.S. government. In the second place, I'm pretty sure the CIA wasn't trying to toughen up the Afghan prisoners in question (mostly falsely) accused of being enemy combatants, and neither are you trying to toughen up your victim in the Grand Theft Auto V waterboarding sequence. Finally, by your own admission, you've never even played Grand Theft Auto V or likely even watched a playthrough of it, so why should I or anyone care what your uninformed opinion of it is anyway? You wouldn't even have known that the sequence in question existed if I hadn't mentioned it!

Peter1469
05-14-2015, 07:06 AM
The Geneva Convention is not a higher authority inside the US than the US Constitution. And the GC's definition of torture is not Constitutional. It is too vague in its definition of the word torture. We must look to our domestic law for that.


In the first place, Bob, waterboarding is, in fact, considered a form of torture according to the Geneva Convention, which is a higher authority than the U.S. government. In the second place, I'm pretty sure the CIA wasn't trying to toughen up the Afghan prisoners in question (mostly falsely) accused of being enemy combatants, and neither are you trying to toughen up your victim in the Grand Theft Auto V waterboarding sequence. Finally, by your own admission, you've never even played Grand Theft Auto V or likely even watched a playthrough of it, so why should I or anyone care what your uninformed opinion of it is anyway? You wouldn't even have known that the sequence in question existed if I hadn't mentioned it!

IMPress Polly
05-14-2015, 11:47 AM
Sovereignty is one thing, but there are limits to it, just like there are limits to the rights of individual states. Anyway, even the current president considers it to have been a form of torture, which is why we don't (directly) do it anymore. Instead we take the morally superior route of having POWs shipped off to countries like Uzbekistan where torture is legal and have them do that and much worse for us. See, we learned our lesson! :wink:

Private Pickle
05-14-2015, 11:51 AM
From GTA to Waterboarding. The circle remains unbroken.

IMPress Polly
05-14-2015, 12:16 PM
Well, in my defense, the two things are related in this case, since we're discussing a sequence in the game.

Polecat
05-14-2015, 12:34 PM
Wow! Lot of old timers with popeye thumbs in this forum. My first electronic game was Zork. I remained on the PC platform up to Duke Nukem. Death match over the phone was more fun than should be legal. After that I finally got a PS2. I have three or four of the earliest GTA games. I never have finished any of them. I would get distracted from completing tasks and just engage in gratuitous brutality. I found a good place to hide when I got a 5 star wanted status and the cops couldn't get to me so I could sit there and listen to them crash and burn outside my hidy hole. They would actually run over each other trying to get at me. LOL!

Private Pickle
05-14-2015, 01:35 PM
Well, in my defense, the two things are related in this case, since we're discussing a sequence in the game.

Totally.

The Xl
05-16-2015, 09:18 PM
The Geneva Convention is not a higher authority inside the US than the US Constitution. And the GC's definition of torture is not Constitutional. It is too vague in its definition of the word torture. We must look to our domestic law for that.

True, but at the end of the day, waterbording is pretty clearly torture.

IMPress Polly
05-17-2015, 10:35 AM
Maybe for the sake of the connection to the game it might be helpful to just post the scene in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjlSmCm1K74

That's the context it's presented in. Now as with the Grand Theft Auto franchise in general, there's a lot of fairly overt political commentary here that in general comes from what might be considered a left-leaning perspective I suppose. Part of this commentary is that waterboarding is included amongst other obvious torture practices like electrocution and the extraction of teeth. It's even called torture. There's no mistaking the developer's perspective: as far as the people at Rockstar are concerned, waterboarding is torture. The sequence is, as you can see, a disingenuous critique of the U.S. government's participation in torture. I say it's disingenuous because obviously the scene is supposed to be funny, by which I mean that, in context, we're supposed to find the victim's plight amusing while the player conducts the abuse. That is why this critique IMO fails. A sincere critique might, for example, place us in the victim's position and it probably wouldn't trivialize the actions. The fault with torture we're supposed to find here isn't that it's cruel and heartless, but that it doesn't work; that it's stupid, although perhaps fun, to practice it. I find that a very callous position to take, whether the victim is "an Azerbajina" or not. The GTA franchise is just kind of like that: possessed of a rather callous sense of humor that I have a hard time appreciating. I mean there are a lot of progressive-minded people who are able to, but I'm not one of them.

Bob
05-17-2015, 10:39 AM
True, but at the end of the day, waterbording is pretty clearly torture.

Appreciate if you can that is merely your opinion. Waterboarding is done by the Navy on our own people.

Bob
05-17-2015, 10:44 AM
In the first place, Bob, waterboarding is, in fact, considered a form of torture according to the Geneva Convention, which is a higher authority than the U.S. government. In the second place, I'm pretty sure the CIA wasn't trying to toughen up the Afghan prisoners in question (mostly falsely) accused of being enemy combatants, and neither are you trying to toughen up your victim in the Grand Theft Auto V waterboarding sequence. Finally, by your own admission, you've never even played Grand Theft Auto V or likely even watched a playthrough of it, so why should I or anyone care what your uninformed opinion of it is anyway? You wouldn't even have known that the sequence in question existed if I hadn't mentioned it!

Read Peter legally take your argument apart in post 24. When the CIA did it, it was done to 3. And not on US soil. Would you agree that if it is legal in Afghanistan, it is legal period? Afghan law provides for far worse punishments.

Bush got a legal opinion that was based on the current Navy practices used on Americans.

I dunno why you argue over this issue. You are a gamer. Aren't you saying it is legal in your own games?

IMPress Polly
05-17-2015, 10:59 AM
*sigh*

I was addressing torture as more of a separate issue on page 3 since you brought it up on page 3 as a separate issue, but yeah games tend to have politics too, and a commentary on official torture is part of GTA 5's, which is why a discussion of torture is relevant to a discussion of GTA 5. I gave a full opinion of the way torture is used as a plot device in GTA 5 in post #31 above in case you're interested in that connection.

kilgram
05-17-2015, 06:01 PM
The Geneva Convention is not a higher authority inside the US than the US Constitution. And the GC's definition of torture is not Constitutional. It is too vague in its definition of the word torture. We must look to our domestic law for that.
From the moment that the country signed those treaties, they become law.

However as many other times they ignore it.

And yes, waterboarding is fucking torture.

CreepyOldDude
05-18-2015, 02:15 PM
Water-boarding the way that 3 times it was done by the CIA at Afghanistan was ruled to not be torture because it is done at our own training facilities used to toughen up Seals in the Navy program.

I saw "torture" used in the Army training but one time.

I had successfully led my platoon of men to safety and was then at the safe zone at Ft. Ord CA

We were told to take a seat for the "show"

The setting was among oak trees on a hillside.

We settled onto the wood benches when a light in front of us turned on.


We could see a window. It had a chair that did not face us as I recall the event.

They had captured a lot of the guys and they took one of the captives into the room. They sat him into the chair that we had been told had metal in the seat. They commenced to ask him questions.

They got his name, rank and SN of course. They asked him to name his company. He says he won't tell them. They hit him with a jolt of electricity and he suddenly became very willing to talk. He told them the truth each time.

They no longer waterboard SEALs. The Navy SEALs once used the technique in their counter-interrogation training, but they stopped because the trainees could not survive it without breaking, which was bad for morale. Which kind of puts the kibosh on the idea that it's not torture.

Bob
05-18-2015, 02:22 PM
They no longer waterboard SEALs. The Navy SEALs once used the technique in their counter-interrogation training, but they stopped because the trainees could not survive it without breaking, which was bad for morale. Which kind of puts the kibosh on the idea that it's not torture.

Here is how I see torture.

We have multiple levels used to try to elicit information.

Can be a smile and an offer of donuts and coffee that gets a person to talk.

By the nature of seeking super important vital information, the person with the information has a super strong interest in keeping his knowledge safe from his tormentors.

Torture must be accurately defined. If a man won't drink the coffee nor eat the donut, is force feeding them to him torture?

Torture in my view is super serious. It can lead to death. Yanking off fingers can lead to death. Kicking them in the head to get information can lead to death.

Waterboarding done by the Japanese (favorites of the left) could lead to death.

The CIa program never came close to killing. It was crafted to not lead to death.

Torment, certainly.

Torture, not at all.

Too many call what is torment by the false name of torture.

Torment won't lead to death. Torture certainly can lead to death.