Remember when Grand Theft Auto IV came out? Remember the massive critical acclaim, followed by increasing backlash on the part of players who deemed it too negative, too dour, too boring? Well I’ve been playing it again and I’ve rethought some of that, which I had largely subscribed to.

Let me be clear, I think GTA4 is a masterpiece either way. It’s vast, brilliant, important, and though the humor is a bit less stark, still has plenty of laughs. Now, I appreciate that those who loved San Andreas (i.e. those who played San Andreas) would possibly miss the craziness which that game became, especially in the endgame. Understandably so: Stealing jetpacks and airplanes was hilarious, and the antics of CJ (Especially when he was terrifically obese and dressed as a truck driver) were just insanely enjoyable. I still think San Andreas is the better game, and I think given the iterative return to craziness in The Lost and Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony, that Rockstar listened to the reaction from the public.

But in replaying GTA4 I’ve been playing along with what it asks. I’ve been using the subway to get around, taking cab rides, going on mandates with friends, all that jazz. And it works. It really does. When I got into the mindset it really started to all click into place in a way which it hadn’t before, however much I had enjoyed it. Last night I was doing the mission The Snow Storm, where an attempt to retrieve a ridiculous amount of coke goes very south. I had an epic, massive chase across Algonquin (The game’s stand-in for Manhattan) which ended with me disappearing into the subway to avoid the cops. And when I rode that train across to Bohan (The Bronx), with the sun coming up and the city bathed in dawn light, with barely any health left, the bag of coke slung over my shoulder… I really felt the game in a way I hadn’t done before.

So to give this post a point beyond my own reflections, have there been any games which you have really had to adopt a particular mindset to fully enjoy? Anything where you’ve gone back with a new approach that really meets what the developers had in mind, and found it better? Or am I all alone here?