Project Grand Theft Auto

Gecko Junior has decided that he wanted Grand Theft Auto for his birthday. And he's being going on and on about it for ages now. This is because The Grand Theft Auto was the game on my friend's 13 years old teenage son's brand new PSP, last Christmas! And of course Gecko Jnr was only allowed that brief few minutes on it and he's hooked, obsessed with this Forbidden Fruit ever since! Mind you, not exactly something any parent would want to buy a 7 years old......but really I can't see how we can go round this latest obsession of his other than to go with it, let him binge on it and detox it out of his system. Which I think he will. I can only draw faith and confidence from the previous situation whereby he'll be stuck with whatever game of the moment, every waking moment and then one day, he'll just play with it for a few minutes, realised it's boring, get up and switch that PS2 off and wander off in a different direction, looking for something new to do. In all these situations, he always ends up back to his trains and lego men.

So you see, there is a pattern to be seen here and it's always the same. Just like with his first Star Wars movie, his first Lego set, his first train set, his PS2, his first his Lego Star Wars game, and currently, the soon to be ousted Simpsons Game.

So now that I'm speed reading thru Gerrard Jones : Killing Monsters, Why children need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make Believe Violence, I have managed to absorb a few advocating pointers, enough to sum up courage to say "Yes, you can buy it when you have enough pocket money, and you're only allowed to play with it, only if either me or daddy is sitting next to you, and that you can only play for 40 minutes"

And since then, it's almost like he's been given the green light, and the binge is already starting. He's surfing YouTube for Grand Theft Auto movies. My son likes to refer to YouTUbe for any of his obsession, it's like him doing his research for his project, which is why I've took to naming this post Project Grand Theft Auto. And also when he gets his game, he'll be "re-searching" the internet for cheat codes!

But this time it's different for me. This is not Lego or trains we're talking about, which he can safely got about it on his own, with me nearby. This is about an age 18+ graded game and this time he'll definitely needs a chaperone. Which is why I'll be batch cooking over the next few weekendz so that I don't have to worry about cooking during the week, and also i'm mentally preparing myself for all those "i don't want to go to the park" behaviour! This means I'll be sitting and watching and playing Grand Theft Auto for the next few months to come too!!

Back to YouTube. I was really surprised that some of these movies is really good, there is one of Lego Grand Theft Auto too, loads of storyline wthout any gory shooting or stabbing, but some is just pure nasty and bloody, makes me wonder what goes thru it's creator's mind. Quite a few is actually all just about cars and driving around. It just seems to me that these young movie makers is using the sceneries, cars, characters and animation to facilitate the story that they want to tell, just like they used Lego men before. And you can tell that they are honing their movie making skill as they progress along. One of the movie we saw this morning was depicting this guy, who made tons of money, showing off his big house with all those little details like expensive paintings, showing off his swimming pool, showing off his massive garden, so huge that he actually got lost in the maze before he found his way to his garage, parked full with lots of sports car. It was like a documentary of some rich and famous but I was really amazed with all the effort and attention paid to details to make this movie a really entertaining one. And of course, my son enjoyed it every bit too, especially when it came to the garage, whereby Gecko Jnr was naming each and every car there was in that garage! From Ferrari to the Lamborghini. So well I can at least understand his need for this game, as the Simpson's selection of cars is quite limiting and his interest in cars just a few weeks ago was limited to our local public carpark. He was asking tons of questions about how do we know which car is which, and we then spend 10 minutes walking round the public carpark, looking at the cars parked there and it's badges.

"But in Grand Theft Auto, you get really really fast cars and they all have spoilers" commented Gecko Jnr.

Need I say more!