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Between Descent’s crowd-shooting, weapon-adjusting flair, Red Faction’s Geo-Mod experimentation, the 2005 licensed Punisher game having intense action setpieces within its interrogation and special kill interactions - albeit a bit too queasy for some people when uncut - and Grand Theft Auto’s lucrative hold on the gaming sphere in the 2000s, it’s no surprise Volition Inc. took a stab at the open world/sandbox pie with some daredevil attitude. Hell, they were already brainstorming and implementing ideas until San Andreas came out and beat them to some punches¹. What surprised me though, is that the oft-forgotten, console-exclusive first entry nonetheless managed to hone together a compelling package teeming with potential, most notably the ‘characterization’ of the sandbox in question.

Instead of copying Rockstar’s technique of incremental map unlocks through progressive play, Stilwater is completely opened up to the player’s whims, yet missions are blocked off through Respect, a quasi-currency system accumulated through various activities you partake in around the blocks or marginally through new clothing paraphernalia. Garner enough of these, and you’ll be able to tackle one of the three major gang storylines: suburbanites Westside Rollerz, megalomaniacal tycoons Vice Kings, and the Hispanic-Columbian drug traders Los Carnales. After those are finished, a section of their controlled area is now under the 3rd Street Saints, which means little to no hostile gang violence can occur, which means more free reign to try out activities, which loops everlong up til you hit the credits. It’s a commendable effort on transferring player engagement onto mental map-making and familiarization for the main missions, especially with each of their endpoints majorly plops next to a few or even several different ones, even a few through player-involved actions such as stealing a car with a passenger inside or holding a gun up to a store clerk². This, in part, stemmed from design protocol - Chris Stockman mentioned that crafting and testing the city itself came first, in order to help lay the land, which in turn helps better connect these numerous districts with their appointed gang affiliation, as well as nurturing player freedom/expression of what they want to do. I usually opted for Insurance Fraud (ragdoll simulator), Hijacking, Mayhem, Drug Trafficking (exactly as they sound), and Escort (maneuvering around traffic and paparazzi as a prostitute and her client fuck), since all are rooted around proactive movements within and/or outside the target area, which was more my speed. If I had to hard-declare what the duds were, they’d be Hitman and Chop Shop, due to their extreme specificity of city stalking, especially the former with the copy-pasted NPCs that the game doesn’t specifically detail their entire area of residences. Either way, the foundation worked, and though the city isn’t perfect, it does create a decent bed of miscellaneous schemes and entrenched road knowledge to give way for the “I want to cause untold chaos” side of a sandbox angle.

As for the story missions themselves, they’re a lot more mixed. Asking the player to repeatedly grind these activities out for proper progression is already a big ask³, onboarding them towards the “main” game that’s practically the same but worse isn’t delivering major favors. It was already hard to both control the vehicles - which, granted are a step above the PS2 GTA trilogy in momentum, handling, and parsable feel of differing form factors - as well as aiming your gunshots/explosives, but contextualizing them within a limited window or, god forbid, one of your “homies” driving you around with their proverbial need to slam against walls and oncoming traffic makes it more aggravating, compounded by having to redo the entire mission should you fail or wipe out on time. The shootouts in particular are bizarrely ho-hum, being linear room clears reminiscent of Punisher but without any of the routing or pizzazz that made those work before, due to enemy AI not requiring any further thought beyond standing still and spamming your shots as they beeline straight towards or further away from you. It’s fine that walking around, shooting and the mechanical contortions overall don’t quite get in the way of the core functions, but it could stand to at least spruce up these repetitive ideas into some level of remix. You can even see glimmers of that too, with a car explosion riffing on a similar one found in GTA3 to more destructive aplomb, a car garage shootout within a stronghold takeover, a rugpull twist of what one would’ve expected, and even chauffeuring a leader around town to better a retaliation front are enough to keep the interest going. The variety is there, it’s just lopsided to be more rudimentary than exhilarating, to the point I didn’t necessarily bother to attain 100% completion - doesn’t help I was also replaying Bully on the side, which is vastly leaner and meaner on this aspect.

One of the graces that makes the tedium somewhat palpable is the general writing and story direction; if Rockstar uses familiar genre cliches and tropes to craft an tongue-in-cheek yet ultimately serious pastiche for various tone/thematic motif, Volition instead took the contemporary elements before and around its release to heighten its spoofing nature into raucous affairs. It isn’t uncommon for each cutscene to include one aggressive snark or reaction to deliver a comedic reaction, and the frequency and timing are on point to not become overbearing and irritating. It’s no wonder Johnny Gat ended up as the ‘face’ of the series alongside the Playa/Boss, though even then my favorite jokes ended up coming from the latter’s rare outbursts. It’s already hard to balance rambunctiousness with the few glimmers of serious swerves, and while not perfect, the attempts here such as Lin’s demise or Ben King’s ruminations are satisfying enough that it doesn’t quite feel like a crisis of two ideals. If anything, it proved that Volition have the chops to successfully chase the rockstars, and perhaps with refinement, be better at their own game - something that ended up coming to fruition with the sequential entries increasing in popularity and praise, with a couple saying it’s on par or even preferred over GTA4 and 5. It’s a shame the initial outing, and the studio as a whole, have become unfortunate tosses of a prior era, but with Xenia’s advancements coupled with some tweaking allowing the game to be played in a better state than ever (you can patch it to play up to 60fps!), as well as a recent effort to preserve the studio’s history, it’s at least nice these stepping stones won’t quite be so easily forgotten nowadays.