‘Why GTA IV is no Godfather’

Respected novelist Junot Diaz has said that GTA IV is no equal to classic US dramas The Sopranos and The Godfather.

Pulitzer Prize winner Diaz called the game ‘art’ in a piece in the Wall Street Journal, but said it was not the revolution”.

Diaz opened his opinion piece by statting his love for the GTA series, writing:

I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto since the beginning. I was there in 1998 when GTA was a throwaway with two-dimensional graphics on the original PlayStation. I was there in 2002 when Tommy Vercetti, the main character in a follow-up, blew a "Scarface"-size hole in Vice City.

I rebuilt my gang with CJ, star of another sequel, San Andreas. Sandbox games (which is a fancy way of saying a game where you can ignore the game’s objectives) shot through with criminal aberrance have always been a weakness of mine. Call it the American in me. Call it permanent adolescent.”

However, he later added:

I love GTA IV and I have no doubt that it is art, but an equal to The Sopranos or The Godfather? Narrative art of that caliber is distinguished by its ability to re-organize our preconceptions, to shift us into a world that’s always been there but that we’ve been afraid to acknowledge, and I’m not convinced that GTA IV pulls off that miracle,” said the writer.

GTA IV is brilliant, but despite what virtually all the reviews claim, it ain’t the revolution.”

Thanks to VG247 for the spot.